Stop Looking for a Cofounder
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I think many entrepreneurs are less interested in building Billion dollar companies and are more seeking freedom from suppressive corporate jobs.
But when the only narrative you see is mega startups it starts to seem like that's the only worthwhile path to entrepreneurship. Small business sounds like your Mom's flower shop - lame. So you have to find a co-founder and raise VC and pick a huge market, and work on your pitch deck, etc. etc.
Reality is having a couple million a year business can really lead to a fantastic lifestyle if done properly.
The general narrative of "entrepreneur" is singular, not plural. Entrepreneur folklore is the individual (hero) fighting against the collective (culture).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
"The hero starts in the ordinary world, and receives a call to enter an unusual world of strange powers and events (a call to adventure). If the hero accepts the call to enter this strange world, the hero must face tasks and trials (a road of trials), and may have to face these trials alone, or may have assistance. At its most intense, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help earned along the journey. If the hero survives, the hero may achieve a great gift (the goal or "boon"), which often results in the discovery of important self-knowledge. The hero must then decide whether to return with this boon (the return to the ordinary world), often facing challenges on the return journey. If the hero is successful in returning, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world (the application of the boon)."
Notice the hero worship surrounding founders who's business had a near death experience, e.g. Elon Musk and Steve Jobs.
Reality is having a couple million a year business can really lead to a fantastic lifestyle if done properly.
Emphasis on the "if done properly." I know a man who own his own american manufacturing company (yes, they still exist). They specialize in electric motors. They do good business despite having fewer than 50 employees and gross about $5M a year. I'm not sure how much of that is profit, but I'm going to guess most of it. The owner is fanatic about keeping costs down.
On the other hand, he doesn't have the temperament for business. He's a ball of stress all the time. He's always getting angry over what many here would consider standard business practices. He micromanages his company, especially his IT staff (which is one guy). He's had 4 heart attacks in the past 10 years. He has fewer than 50 employees because he refuses to pass the minimum to qualify for Obamacare (which would raise his costs considerably). He's a good guy, normally, but business ownership has been a net negative on his health and mental status.
I knew one other small business owner that was similar. He owned a successful comic book store at the local mall. He did great business and made a lot of money. Then, about 6 month after he opened the store, he noticed that shoplifting was increasing. He then became obsessed about limiting his losses. The idea that somebody could easily steal his merchandise stressed him out beyond measure. Business started going down around then because the changes he made to limit shoplifting also limited his exposure to passers by and made the storefront look unwelcoming. He eventually moved the store to the first floor of a single family home just outside of the city limits. His profits dropped considerably, but so did his losses. His stress also went away; he was no longer worried or obsessed about it. The tradeoff was worth it to him; he literally traded high profit for low stress.
Maybe not a fair comparison.... but look at Google, which does $50B in revenues with 50,000 employees -- i.e. $1M in revenue (in a high-margin, software-centric business) per employee.
He's making a healthy profit. That has nothing to do with the stress. Some people just don't deal well with the risk and unknowns that come with owning a business. These are only two of many stories I know of people doing very odd things under the stress of business ownership. I'm sure people here can provide more.
If we assume 30% margins, then materials costs are $3.3M and "profit" is $1.6M. Subtract off employee salaries, and he's netting $100k/hr. And that's not even accounting for taxes or other fixed costs (eg. realestate). Given the strong competition in the electric motor market... he's living on a razor's edge.
If he can eek out higher margins, like 50%, then he's doing $1M pretax. It's not bad, but not great -- especially if there's volatility. Still a razor's edge in that market.
The guy probably has personally guaranteed loans, and running a low margin business where things can swing against you hard is no fun at all. We are incredibly lucky in the software world.
I'd take a steady 200k over the picture painted by op, and given the skills required to build such a business and the time investment, I'd agree that's not great.
Plenty of people on this site can make 200k contracting, and in terms of risk and return on investment, that's a way way way better position to shoot for.
Now, do those people having 200k have it great? In my view they do. But you are doing simplistic analysis of the situation and labeling dissent as delusional. That's cheap and why I replied.
The only difference between a "lifestyle" business and the "Silicon Valley" model is whether you are in control over your own destiny and focused on building a business, or whether you're selling out to people who want to increase your risk and their possible profits, with the expectation that you'll get a nice bonus in your acquihire.
In a way, YC and VCs have ruined startups, by making people think this SV model -- which is great for Facebook, google and yelp, but terrible for the billion other startups is the One True Way.
So businesses that could have been great bootstrap businesses will grow too fast with too high a burn rate and flame out at a series A or B crunch.
Meanwhile, if the business could have taken it slower they could have built something really valuable for themselves.
Smart, patient entrepreneurs can take advantage of this.
Let angel and VC-backed companies validate markets, and pursue the markets they vacate after the broader crunch occurs.
(This is more like advice to myself actually as I'm currently in a dilemma between that "wait" that you've just described and the intense worry of not getting first-mover advantage through that waiting)
Decentralizing economic power would shift our economy away from capital-intensive moonshots and toward consumer products though.
This was originally solved by selling stock in a venture to the public.
The narratives are much less about massively disruptive, world changing startups and much more about making a good living through mostly internet businesses.
Microsoft, Oracle, Ebay and Github were all bootstrapped.
It was a million dollar business, completely independent of the Gates family or its connections, while it was operating in New Mexico. Bill and Paul had sales almost from day one.
About his family, at least according to Phil Greenspun
[1] http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/092514/entrep...
“The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield”
Well, I wouldn't reject to build the next Google and enjoy a fortune and the influence I have on technology and on the world. I think when you are down for building your own business, many people will always look for growth and expansion.
The key here would be to not adjust your lifestyle too much.
If you can live on $30,000 a year (perhaps necessitating a move to a cheaper part of the country/world), you only need to have about $750,000 invested intelligently in order to live off of the interest (assuming a "safe withdrawal rate" of 4%).[1]
Even if you double that cost-of-living, you only need to save and invest about $150,000 per year for 10 years in order to retire at the end of your hypothetical successful lifestyle tech business.
As the person you're responding to said, "I think many entrepreneurs are less interested in building Billion dollar companies and are more seeking freedom from suppressive corporate jobs," and that is definitely in reach of a savvy lifestyle tech startup founder. In fact, I've met a few of those.
[1]http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/29/how-much-do-i-need...
Well put.
1. http://www.tillett.info/2014/11/24/lets-kill-the-term-lifest...
Terminology aside, Silicon Valley's argument that this is a what a real business looks like, not that, is ridiculous. They're all businesses. And if you really want to play that game, it's often the VC-funded startups that aren't "real" businesses (no profits, revenue, etc), not the derisively labeled "lifestyle" businesses.
The problem is if you don’t preface then someone else will do it for you. Letting the VC industry choose the preface is not ideal - I don’t run a lifestyle business, I run a serious and highly profitable technology business with the aim of maximising my returns as the founder. The fact that I don’t have outside investors is irrelevant to what my business does or the value it offers my customers.
This actually touches on an important point. The whole reason that, "No no, that's not a real business," gets bandied around is because it benefits VCs. If founders think that they need to take VC money to assuage their insecurities about being a "real" business, that doesn't help the founders. It helps the VCs' deal flow.
With technological change the need for VC money is much less than the past. With a relatively small amount of money these days you can start and build a very serious tech business (assuming you have the skill and drive) all on your own. I am not running a lifestyle business - I am running a business 100% focused on hitting my end value target and providing my customers with the best product possible.
What a colossal waste of time, considering many of the people getting involved in “startups” could start real businesses that generate real revenue and real profits ... without turning to VCs.
I think the aim should always be to support people building real businesses, not just those building unicorns. It is a real accomplishment (and one that should be celebrated) to build a business that makes a useful product that customer love even if it is only for a smallish market. Lets avoid using terms that disparage this effort.
A small business.
It's also nearly universally understood in regards to what it means. A layperson will get it immediately.
I agree about "serious" business but there are different types of businesses and terms like these help
Thus they do not hedge your financial risk they increase your risk.
VC only makes sense if you are bound and determined to make a billion dollar, or at least 100 million dollar company.
They do not give you access to networks IP or make things happen, they give you money and then they double dip on the backend.
The romanticized view of VCs present on this site is not reflective of reality... or my nearly 30 years of dealign with them.
Most companies YC funds do not have the potential to be on a stock market index, because they are features as much as products at that stage and often addressing smaller markets. They are still startups.
YC and VC are very particular avenues for startups, but they are not what DEFINES a startup. YC and VC are the sillicon valley model and that is really actually a small part of the total startup ecosystem, though it is the one that makes the most noise.
Who are you serving? Investors or yourself? The SV model is that this is all that matters but a 50M business is still a damn good business and not a "lifestyle" business.
Also, read the rest of the quite-- lifestyle business was only one of the options.
It's quite possible to build a fast growing business that you never sell, that's not a "lifestyle" business.
The either/or dichotomy is disproven by your quote.
You're confusing hacker news with "silicon valley". That's a mistake. And VCs are irrelevant, really, in this age of angels. Thank god they are going away, though of course they don't realize it yet.
VCs are the enemy. If you want to have a successful company, never deal with them, except at the very latest stages where you give them a bond like return in exchange for them getting to claim they invested in your company.
Angels are generally your friend, though.
Your thinking will be better off if you just don't think of the term "lifestyle" business. It's a pejorative used to manipulate you into wasting your life in service to someone else's narrative.
I'm not some kid with a keyboard- I've spent nearly 30 years in the trenches dealing with VCs and helping startups.
Exactly. I've only ever heard this from someone seeking transaction fees. As in, "Not there's anything wrong with running a lifestyle business." While their body language suggests everything is wrong with that.
It is entirely possible to start a business by yourself. People do it successfully every single day but there are a whole lot of complicated factors from financial, legal, technical and psychological at play just to get started.
Having a support system around you can insulate you from a lot of the complications that come from going it on your own, but that support system is usually based on goodwill not vested interest.
Even people who "go it on their own" but happen to be married when they do so very clearly have a partner in the business.
I think the bigger point is that when widely-respected entrepreneurs like PG automatically rule out those people who "successfully start a business by themselves every day," it can intensify the psychological blocks that prevent many aspiring entrepreneurs from starting in the first place. That means a net loss for everyone.
I've read a lot around this debate, especially on HN. And as someone a month in to their first solo venture, this idea of needing someone to keep you moving and cheer you up has been poisonous to me. I had my first moment the other night, laying in bed, when I realized I hadn't written a whole lot of code that day. I started feeling bad. "Maybe I'm not cut out for this," I thought. Or "this isn't for someone like me."
Luckily, I woke up in the morning and realized I know better. I love what I'm building without anyone telling me to love it. I code without someone telling me to code in the first place. This isn't everyone. But as mentioned in the article, the open source community is just one group of people that can build things without being externally "disciplined."
Self-discipline is a highly underrated quality. In my experience, most people can't work productively for an extended period of time on an open-ended project.
Also, most people don't believe that it can be cultivated, which sort of begs the whole question: how do you cultivate self-discipline without the self-discipline to try to attain it? It seems that most people gain it by trying successively harder things over a long period of time.
Truth is, give me a cofounder who has been working for startups for 10 years and what you say makes sense. But co-founding with someone whose first experience at a startup is founding one and it doesn't make sense.
And it's not like more resources are bad, it's a question of their cost.
It's not always going to be the same from an advice standpoint but at worst you will have the accountability factor from somebody who's equally vested.
It seems to me that PG almost certainly didn't mean people were better off starting companies with random strangers than they would be starting off alone.
Looking at the big successful companies that were started with multiple founders, it was almost always a group of friends, or co-workers, or acquaintances from school with similar interests, or something like that. There's more to being "cofounders" than just meeting randomly and deciding to start a company together.
A cofounder needs a very strong skillset, a life circumstance that permits them to drop everything for a startup without dire consequences, a level of enthusiasm and drive that to other people seems almost delusional, and your opportunity needs to out-compete all their other opportunities for more than a year. That's an incredibly rare person. There are probably more successful pop stars than there are people who fit that profile.
PG says if you're solo, you should look for a cofounder. When he gave that advice, it was because he observed that the majority of successful startups had multiple cofounders. But I don't think he bothered to consider the fact that approximately zero of those confounders met each other by going on a "cofounder search."
You don't do that to someone you've just met. That's akin to proposing after a one night hookup on Tinder.
This is probably the clearest refutation of Graham's single founder section I've seen.
I'd expound a bit on one of the later points:
If what you're doing is somewhat domain-specific, only the opinions of people in your target area and market matter. You might know a lot of people, but if they're not in your target area and market they might not get it. If you're getting negative feedback from them, it might be irrelevant. The only negative feedback you should listen to is from people who really get your target area.
I say it with first-hand experience. I spent a few months going to every possible tech event in my city and had no luck. Finding a good co-founder is not easy. It's almost like trying to find a partner to marry but every second is time against you because no real work getting done.
I'd rather build and get enough traction to the point where you can hire/attract some talent.
I have a lot of tech friends who are busy doing their own things. I set up an informal board of directors and I consult them on ideas, tech problems etc. I feel no need to have them as partners. They pick me up when I'm down, give me advice, help with direction, keep me focused.
And perhaps not even in that case. If they are entrenched in their ways or feel threatened then their advice may hinder. Still, is probably wise to get a variety of input just to avoid overlooking important fundamentals.
It was probably harder for 2 people to start a "growth" business in 2006 than it is for 1 person today.
Today we have a "stack" that automates a lot of the grunt work: ZenPayroll, Clerky, Stripe, etc. A single founder can just set up a business and run it using these services to do a lot of stuff that was once manual.
I personally think the single-arity is near. (Title for a blog post I never wrote.) The single-arity will be when we have the first one person "unicorn." It won't stay one person forever, but pretty soon we will see an example of one founder -- working as the only full time employee -- building something with astronomical growth.
On one hand it's pretty cool, and on the other hand it speaks to the degree to which we've created a winner take all economy with an insane hockey stick compensation distribution.
It's been possible to do this since the web came out. The problem is that it very much is a lottery, and the median startup usually goes through significant tribulations before striking it big, struggles that make most single founders quit.
These days I can do everything online, have a company rolling (incorporation pending approval of course), get payroll up, start advertising, and easily find others I can reach out to for help, in a single day.
On History, there's a self-filmed TV show about 10 survivalist dropped off separately on Vancouver Island competing for $0.5M to be the last standing. The show is fantastic, not for the impressive survival skills, but for the human psychology. The show is called "Alone," and I'm fairly certain they (re)named the show after filming. What you witness over the course of just weeks, is nearly every wilderness expert abruptly losing their will to go on because there is nobody to share it with. They openly acknowledge that they have what it takes to continue, and were originally okay with being away from their family indefinitely, but they all just completely lose their desire and interest in winning or continuing because they are so alone.
In short, isolation doesn't just make it more difficult for you to achieve your goals, it rips the desire to achieve them from your psyche altogether! This is empirically shown and self evident in numerous aspects of society: solitary confinement being classified as torture, team dynamics, mentors, pair bonding, tribalism, etc... It's also why YC (mostly) doesn't accept solo-founders, as well as many other respected VCs.
However, solo founders are not necessarily “alone”. Support networks exist outside of business partnerships: friends, colleagues, spouses, mastermind groups, etc. can all help alleviate loneliness.
But most programmers are introverts and lone wolfs and they don't necessarily need others to share their experience with.
Also, at some point that lone wolf programmer is going to need to stop building and start selling. Overcoming 100 compiler errors is much easier and faster than getting 100 nos and 1 yes. Try going through a brutal sales cycle like that and tell me whether that introvert would last without someone to ride the roller coaster with.
Selling doesn't require a co-founder, just sales people.
> Try going through a brutal sales cycle like that and tell me whether that introvert would last without someone to ride the roller coaster with.
I did for 15 years (till a comfortable exit recently). I'm not sure you really understand introverts. I was in hospital recently and left early because they could only offer 2-bed rooms for additional treatment, which felt like torture to me. No, no everyone is desperate to chat with others.
For example, i'm in the healthcare industry. I can name a whole bunch of problems here, but none of them are ripe for a new startup. That's because I really only find out about a problem from my little part of the world. The few times i've had glimpses beyond my world I certainly haven't had enough of a glimpse to really try and tackle it.
So to me, that's important. Without a cofounder who really knows an industry, you're going to work on 1st world problems that a normal person might run into, that are solvable by a single person.
To be honest, of the problems left in that space they're not really interesting businesses. Either they won't make too much money, or they solve a boring non-problem.
As a technical person I want to find someone who has ran into good problems, and will know if a solution will work or not.
Also, consider does this domain expert have the background in startups that would be useful? Or were they being an employee in that domain?
I can think of a half dozen purely technical problems that would improve a billion people's lives-- and I'm talking purely software here.
The author is talking about bootstrapped businesses. There are many niches where a well run business can earn revenue of $100,000-$500,000 per year, and be ably run by a single person. These niches do require upkeep, but they are not so likely to be invaded by major competitors or large companies. The returns are too small. However, the returns are excellent for a single founder.
It is also true that it's easier to scale such a business than it used to be. So there is probably more bootstrapping potential than before, especially as more people move online and there are therefore more niches to fill.
But this approach also rules out many types of businesses, and with rare exceptions it rules out larger revenue streams. These are among the trade offs.
Guy Kawasaki says that he's seen many more businesses die because they tried growing too fast (e.g. using VC money to scale the company) than because they grew too slow.
Joel Spolsky is famously a critic of the SV VC-based model as well. He put his money where his mouth is with Stack Exchange, which only recently raised VC money. He says the obvious, that if take things as far as you can without VC money, then you get better terms when/if you finally do take it.
There are a bunch of companies, especially those with strong network effects like social companies, that face a very real risk of growing too slow. There are others, especially hardware companies, where the startup costs are high. So the bootstrapped model is definitely not for everyone!
I think it's best to stay small and agile until you've found a strong product-market-fit that can the company can be scaled up into. You may or may not need VC money during that stage. When your biggest problem is you lack the resources to scale up as fast as your real product demand, then you should be looking for VC money (or a alternative financing like a loan.) Before then it may well do you more harm than good.
Certainly a bootstrapped business with employees can grow quite large.
(You can go higher solo too of course, it's just not common)
Yup, that's exactly my own motivation. I've set mine up to run fairly automatically. Obviously it needs oversight and growth. It just doesn't need them right away.
So if I want to take a couple weeks off, I can. And I don't have to hold that many details in my head/when working I can hold more longer run details in my head.
I value that more than earning a very large amount of money.
This is a good article laying out hte mindset behind this. The four freedoms are the main consideration:
http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2014/04/24/on-passive-income.html
You can do quite a lot while keeping all four, but it has some obvious tradeoffs at higher levels of business.
But a word of warning, make sure it's not because you're afraid of taking things to the next level. Adding employees (rising costs) and moving into more of a managerial role is something many engineers are afraid of on some level. Additionally, all humans are afriad of change to some degree. Make sure you really understand what motivates you. </armchair psychologist>
I think the less funding/marketing/hype your startup has, the longer it will take to find market fit but once you do find it, it will be rock solid. If you can find people to use your product in spite of it being completely unknown, then that is the highest form of validation that a product can receive.
If, on the other hand, people only use your product because 'every one else is using it' then that is a really weak form of validation.
This article is saying to those people: "Nevermind what you hear, go back to thinking you can do it on your own, because you can. I'm here as proof."
You're right though, for the people who are squarely in the YC/fundraising camp, this article is not speaking to them.
The closest things i've found for solo-support:
a) micropreneur academy ($50/mo-in 2009- but all solo software folks)
b) mastermind groups
Other Suggestions?
http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching-...
Two things I've seen kill startups are bad cofounder relationships, and Venture Capitalists. Almost 50-50, with VCs in the lead because they cause a lot of the bad co-founder relationships.
The person you are likely to make your cofounder should probably be your first employee. Make them significant, give them a VP title or whatever, get feedback from them, pay them in equity. But don't let them be in a position where leaving or failing to pull their weight would doom the company.
Finding a good cofounder is nearly impossible for many people for many reasons. If you are a group of people who know each other already and want to start a company-- great.
But cofounder dating is a bad, bad idea. Couples live together for years before getting married, yet co founders want to "get married" within days or months? Even if you choose well on a number of areas, you simply can't know your cofounder well enough.
There's a well-founded point of view that this is not a good thing for a strong marriage.
[1] For instance, there are portions of the republican party that would not condone the decision of a couple to live together before marrying (e.g. many of the religious conservatives), but others that would be expected to tend to be indifferent (e.g. much of the business and libertarian contingent). The same logic extends to claimed religious affiliation. For instance, I think that the Catholic Church's official stance would be against cohabitation before marriage, but among people who identify as Catholic, there are varying degrees to which the certain official policies are considered practical and/or legitimate. Keep in mind, lapsed Catholics/Jews/Muslims/Protestants/etc that still identify culturally with a religious group are counted as among those groups under the methodology. Overall, I would have felt more comfortable with the legitimacy of the conclusion if instead of looking for rough indicators of attitudes toward pre-marital cohabitation, they would have just chosen a few cohorts, and directly asked what their attitudes toward pre-marital cohabitation were, and then controlled for that factor.
http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/01/18/woz-on-creativity-an...
As for single vs. multi-founder companies. I see SV from afar as an environment where young VC's incubate all manner of ideas by young inexperienced people. It's an educated shotgun approach. And it obviously works or it would have died off a long time ago.
In that context I would say it is absolutely imperative to have more than one person on a team. Why? Because business is hard and most 20-somethings today have never done anything even remotely as hard in their lives. When business slaps you around and tests your limits and you are an inexperienced young person without a support system around you failure is almost guaranteed. Add co-founders to spread the stress, discuss, find solutions and feel like a team with a dose of guidance, money, advise and the benefits of the experience of good VC's and you can make interesting things happen.
Again, in that context, yes, you need multiple founders.
With more experienced entrepreneurs who've been tested in business I don't think the solo founder thing is a problem at all. We can manage the business just fine and we can hire good people to do what's needed. The benefit of experience is that problems are met with aplomb and a mental and business toolbox that turns mountains into hills.
Money is a a thing separate from the single/multi founder issue. You can fail miserably with lots of money and a large team and you can succeed with little money and a guy coding at home (PlentyOfFish anyone?).
What money can and does do is light a rocket under a good thing at the right point in time to make it go. Money is like the blood in the veins of a business. Without enough of it you are not going to go run a marathon and win.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_ISV
http://www.amazon.com/Micro-ISV-Vision-Reality-Bob-Walsh/dp/...
http://ericsink.com/bos/Micro_ISV.html
Make sure to read this to get a different take though.
http://www.singlefounder.com/the-day-the-microisv-movement-d...
I remained in the corporate world for about five years after making the decision mentally to quit until I had confidence that both the technology and my own skill had reached a point where I could have a good shot at hustling a living with my wife as "co-founder." The article somewhat vindicates my decision.
How many YC companies have failed or split or reformed because the founders visions didn't align?
Alas, PG's essay has come to be takend as "you must have a cofounder or you aren't serious" with little attention paid to finding the right person.
The right person is damn hard to find.
And when "not having a co founder means nobody believed in you" (the converse of what he actually said) then any co founder becomes the right cofounder.
This is the problem with HN, and even YC to a lesser extent-it's become cargo cultism based on PGs essays, propagated by people who have little to no experience in Startups.
"In order of utility: Good cofounder, no cofounder, bad cofounder."
Look at the most successful tech IPO's and funding rounds. Sure there's Amazon & Flexport etc. but those are exceptions.
Seriously, when is this "full-stack" nonsense going to stop? With the exception of a few geniuses, "full-stack" is just shorthand for "less than mediocre at a lot of different things".
Often, those that stay specialized in one layer of the stack are less helpful because they don't see the forest for the trees.
There's an analogy of specialization causing extinction somewhere in here, too...
I've found that people who might actually qualify for the title (and they do exist) generally don't use it to describe themselves.
I'm multifaceted but folks just assume I'm hiding weakness.
Also, at least in London, full-stack pays a lot less than devops.
Edit: A lot of devs are the same. I know at least 10 without giving it too much thought.
> Today’s "less than mediocre at a lot of different things" engineers have replaced yesterday’s sysadmins, DBAs, and webdevs altogether.
The OP's point still stands! So I don't see what you're on about :-P
However, I dislike the phrasing here:
> a 100% owner requires half the earning power of 50/50 partners–that gives him a huge advantage.
…which assumes the founder is going to be a man.
In my mind, the sexes are equal so him == her. It's something I feel strongly about too especially having a daughter. But nonetheless I understand the implications of what I wrote.
edit: Oh, and I upvoted you :-)
In this case: "...that gives them a huge advantage."
(and "their" for his/her)
And I agree with @sidawson that gender-neutral pronouns maintain the same rhythm besides.
Edit: And thank you for the upvote. I am glad that you are open to constructive criticism even if the crabby status-quo-loving anonymous users aren’t.
I probably feel this way because I'm so used with male pronouns to the point that it's become gender-neutral - but this might just be me. Weirdly enough, it annoys me to see female pronouns alongside male because it reminds me that gender does matter (Disclaimer: I am female).
I agree with you though, definitely more women is needed in this industry, but I personally can't see how adjusting pronouns can help very much. Something that's not being addressed properly is subtle sexism: prejudice at subconscious level that we don't realise about but is painfully obvious to the other person. I have worked with colleagues who I regretfully classify as "boy's clubs", because they would automatically change their tone towards me and sometimes even ignore completely. You might say that there could be a thousand other reasons for this, like perhaps I'm not communicating very clearly, but when you share the same interests, when your dismissed suggestions gets "suggested" by themselves later on, and when all this becomes a daily occurrence ... you can't help but think of the worst.
How this problem can be tackled, I'm not sure. We all have a certain level of prejudice though, so maybe this is a "spiritual" thing rather than a cause for activism.
The piece might as well be called "how to avoid building a business". If you want to build a business, shareware can be a good start, but avoiding getting help is no way to build something that eventually you want ticking without you. Building a business does not equate to simply making money. Any capable programmer can make money either through employment or on their own. This should never be confused with building a business.
As for building a world class business, no matter how capable you are, if you still believe you can do it alone, you still haven't grasped the magnitude of what you're in for or the foundations you need to build. Businesses are made of people. A business builder is a job creator. If you have a team working like bees, you've built a business. If you have money growing on trees, it's just income.