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Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

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Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#81

Post by BadassFractal »

unusualmonkey wrote: post #78
snowmaker wrote: post #48

Hello - I'm one of the people at YC who work on YC's co-founder matching site (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching ). It's not totally clear to me if OP is referring to that product specifically or something else, but I figured I would take the opportunity to get feedback anyway! We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear…

> We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear from people who have used it - what your experience was and how we could make it better. I used it a year and a few months ago. I'm a technical person with 10 years working in startups. I treated it the way I'd treat a job search etc. I matched with ~150 people. Talked to ~50 people. Got close/did trial project with 3. Did a deal wi…

Similar situation here, thanks for sharing your journey this last time around, I'll have to reuse some of those ideas myself.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#82

Post by jacquesm »

999900000999 wrote: post #73
jacquesm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's always ' I want Multi billion dollar company X combined with multi billion dollar company Z. Build this for me in exchange for 2.5% equity vested over 5 years.' Those are the generous ones. If you're a tech person and you 'join as employee #1' then you have just decreased your chances for a reasonable payday by about 90%. So make sure that salary is a substantial one, or negotiate for double digits stock. Othe…

Oh the idiots I was talking to didn't want to actually pay me any money. It's just equity in whatever far off pipedream they have.

That's borderline abusive.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#83

Post by BadassFractal »

benguild wrote: post #75
snowmaker wrote: post #48

Hello - I'm one of the people at YC who work on YC's co-founder matching site (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching ). It's not totally clear to me if OP is referring to that product specifically or something else, but I figured I would take the opportunity to get feedback anyway! We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear…

it’d be great if you could find a way to screen out “lurkers” and “shoppers” … in other words, people who just like the idea of having a startup

Yes! YC calls them "scenesters", but the reality is that often you don't know if you're cut out for the gig until you actually do it, so lots of people have to experience it first-hand to realize they don't actually want the job.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#84

Post by BadassFractal »

snowmaker wrote: post #54
amir734jj wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for the reply. Can you please add a search or filtering? I don't want to keep clicking "next"

Yes, this is one of the things we're working on next.

Excellent, thank you! The swiping model didn't feel like an ideal solution for the task.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#85

Post by BadassFractal »

mettamage wrote: post #69
exolymph wrote: post #16

Cofounder matching is a market for lemons, much like online dating. The best prospects are either never on the open market, or get snapped up very quickly. So it's always a problem of sorting through many low-quality options to find diamonds in the rough (and if you can find one, upgrading a rough diamond to a shiny diamond is still a nontrivial process). Point being, cofounder matching is inherently a frustrating gr…

My experience with Tinder does not match what you describe as "lemons". I'm an average looking guy at best. To be fair, I did hack the process a bit. I definitely do not have an average strategy ;-) With that said, I did notice that Tinder in the US is just utter garbage, even with my strategy. The best places so far have all been in Europe (only tested the US a bit and some European countries).

Request for startup: Tinder in the US that isn't utter garbage. Maybe you can find a cofounder on this platform :)

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#86

Post by jokethrowaway »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #56
999900000999 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I've met plenty of idea guys in real life. I can't imagine the internet somehow being worse. It's always ' I want Multi billion dollar company X combined with multi billion dollar company Z. Build this for me in exchange for 2.5% equity vested over 5 years.' Then if you do waste a weekend on a POC you'll hear it doesn't match their vision. You don't even get a thank you from these jerks. TBH I've given up…

I mean you could always disappear to somewhere with nicer weather and run away with their idea... Every time I've been given an annoying "you do all the work" offer like this I've entertained the thought. I'm surprised you don't hear about it happening more often to be honest.

Because someone else's idea is always worse than your idea.

The only ideas I considered stealing were ideas I had previously (or close to that).

There is an upside, you can talk about your idea freely, chances of theft are low.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#87

Post by joandeg »

cwcw wrote: post #62
snowmaker wrote: post #48

Hello - I'm one of the people at YC who work on YC's co-founder matching site (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching ). It's not totally clear to me if OP is referring to that product specifically or something else, but I figured I would take the opportunity to get feedback anyway! We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear…

First of all, thanks for building it and as a user, the product is solid that matches the needs well. Note that I used 'matches' not 'solves' as the problem itself is so messy and difficult that a product like this could help but fundamentally it requires two people working together, which is super hard. My way of somehow hacking it is to come in with low or no expectation. There are otherwise tons of great people on…

Also chiming in from the CFM team. This point resonated with me based on conversations I've had with some of the teams that matched & are still working together. The evaluation period: asking tough questions, trial projects, equity expectations, and setting a strong foundation to work together are important steps to add onto any cf search -- CFM platform or personal network.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#88

Post by joandeg »

unusualmonkey wrote: post #78
snowmaker wrote: post #48

Hello - I'm one of the people at YC who work on YC's co-founder matching site (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching ). It's not totally clear to me if OP is referring to that product specifically or something else, but I figured I would take the opportunity to get feedback anyway! We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear…

> We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear from people who have used it - what your experience was and how we could make it better. I used it a year and a few months ago. I'm a technical person with 10 years working in startups. I treated it the way I'd treat a job search etc. I matched with ~150 people. Talked to ~50 people. Got close/did trial project with 3. Did a deal wi…

This is cool to hear (as another member of the CFM team!)

We have admittedly less insight in this type of 'success' (we talk to all of the teams that end up in a YC batch) but if you stopped actively using the platform and paused your account, you would have told us you met someone you were working with.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#89

Post by jmacd »

BadassFractal wrote: post #80
sdrinf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I have been using it since launch, have reviewed ~100s-1000s of profiles, have talked with ~50-80 people, did a try-out with 2, for 6 months each. (Background is: I am a technical founder with 6 prior startups, 2 of which were successful; still want to build something, looking for good ideas, and great execution people) I'm still actively looking for high-quality cofounders to join, and will take anyone who jumps…

+1 on the site being lower value than it could be for repeat founders with previous successes, but who still want to build things with other people with extensive experience and a track record. You could argue that if you're in that situation you should be relying on existing networks to propel you into your next thing, but sometimes you want a new start or things just aren't aligning time-wise with your former allie…

I was in a similar position to OP. I'll comment on

>You could argue that if you're in that situation you should be relying on existing networks to propel you into your next thing

That was very much the case for me. My network is the most valuable thing I posses in many ways, but it is 20 years old and it does stagnate a bit. I used YC founder match to find new connections with (younger) ambitious people who had a strong success drive. More established people tend to have far less bias to commit and act.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#90

Post by fl0ps »

exolymph wrote: post #16

Cofounder matching is a market for lemons, much like online dating. The best prospects are either never on the open market, or get snapped up very quickly. So it's always a problem of sorting through many low-quality options to find diamonds in the rough (and if you can find one, upgrading a rough diamond to a shiny diamond is still a nontrivial process). Point being, cofounder matching is inherently a frustrating gr…

I pointed to this in another thread, but:

"for some reason, a lot of people treat choosing their cofounder with even less importance than hiring. Don't do this! This is one of the most important decisions you make in the life of your startup and you need to treat it as such.

And for some reason, students are really bad at this. They just pick someone. They're like, I want to start a business and you want to start a business, let's start a startup together. There are these cofounder dating things where you're like, Hey I'm looking for a cofounder, we don't really know each other, let's start a company. And this is like, crazy. You would never hire someone like this and yet people are willing to choose their business partners this way. It's really really bad. And choosing a random random cofounder, or choosing someone you don't have a long history with, choosing someone you're not friends with, so when things are really going wrong, you have this sort of past history to bind you together, usually ends up in disaster.

We had one YC batch in which nine out of about seventy-five companies added on a new cofounder between when we interviewed the companies and when they started, and all nine of those teams fell apart within the next year. The track record for companies where the cofounders don't know each other is really bad."

from https://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec02/

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