Working alone sucks

I know that by being a single founder I can't share the workload, and I don't really have people to turn to when everything breaks at once. I also know that my startup deals with extremely abstract concepts and that its been easier to 'hold it all in my head' than to have to work with the potential cofounders I had available when I started my project.

The big kicker for me is that I knew that without a cofounder I had no one to blame but myself if things went wrong. I find this hugely motivating, but I could also see it a major reason for people to fold too.

For me it was a networking issue more than anything. This is my first project and I didn't know anyone that I thought would be appropriate fit for my project. I would rather build stuff than do meetups, though I'll probably start attending more after I launch.

If I did find the right people then I wouldn't hesitate to bring them on board. I just couldn't find them and rather than wait I've done the best I can to make a successful startup. This was the right choice and things are going fairly smoothly.

I personally think that the number of cofounders for a startup to be successful is entirely dependant on the circumstances - its product, its market and its goals.

(I realize that this is an absolute copout of an answer. Sorry.)

I don't think it's necessary to share every detail either. I just believe that by strategically sharing key details with the right people, they will feel more involved and personally responsible. A part of that might actually even have to do with them feeling trusted and appreciated... which I think goes a long way.

Engaging single employees on a personal level obviously becomes more difficult the larger the team grows. You can't share every detail with everyone, and it can, at times, be very time consuming to manage this kind of relationship with everyone. But there are ways to handle this for large teams as well - perhaps by involving the team as a whole, and/or by designating a team manager, among other things.

For me, the worst thing in the world is to try and do something in a "team" which exists in name only. If the other folks aren't willing to run at the same speed, then it just starts draining the life out of me and the project. It sounds like the author of this post is in the same situation.

The flip side of this is that when a couple of people agree to really band together, we can go out and do amazing things. It doesn't even have to be programming. The nights when I got together with a couple of friends and decided to "beat the (ticket) queue down" were great. We were all "over it" and did not like our jobs any more, but the teamwork of getting in there and showing what we could still do was worth it.

Two or three of the right people could destroy a backlog of tickets which had accumulated over the span of hours or even days. It would make a dent which would last for several shifts, and probably rescued more than one ticket which would have been criminally mishandled otherwise.

The teamwork basically established that more than one of us felt this way. That's important, since if you're the only one of a kind in any situation, don't you start wondering if you've done something wrong?

I guess life is easier for those who aren't troubled by that sort of "do I even belong here" thought.

-- Paul Tillich