How to Avoid Mediocre Co-Founders | Hacker News Reader

How to Avoid Mediocre Co-Founders

ycombinator.posterous.com

29 pointsrams15 comments

I think this is very very important.

I'm myself suffering having made such a move. I get things done very fast, my cofounder doesn't. It makes me more tired every day, as I see that every problem that arises (or anything new that has to be created, administrated) will eventually end up on my shoulders. I do the programming, administration, legal work, financing etc... Everything we sell, all our intellectual property was created by me.

Also in our business plan (which he spent like 4-5 months working in it), we should already be ultra profitable right now. But guess where we stand. And this journey already takes over 1 1/2 years.

I guess it's time for a change soon. I wish I would have been much more careful choosing whom to start my business with.

There's often cultural pressure to take a co-founder. Don't listen to it. You are different, and what's worked for others is only a suggestion; never a rule.

Everyone should know that each partnership has one who works harder and brings more. You have to know, going in, that it might be you and how you would feel about it.

Finally, it's not your partner's fault the business plan isn't panning out; they never do. They exist to help you clear your thoughts, not to predict the future.

I don't have any problem with the business plan not working out as intended, but spending so much time on it, and then having nothing at the end, this is what I have a problem with it.

I would have rather seen him spending the time on selling our product.

Welcome to HN or are you posting with a fresh handle so the co-founder doesn't find out?

You'd think they feel guilty, or are they shameless?

I'm using a fresh handle.

Nice generalization that doesn't address the question of just what constitutes an A-player vs. B,C, and Losers and why I should think that an A-player in one situation will continue to be an A-player in another or if, given the right incentives, whether a B,C,Loser can become an A-player.

I dunno either. However, a while back I needed to bring a new technician on, and I was out of personal contacts, so I posted to Craigslist. I got a number of responses, and a couple of promising ones.

One of them was the "former senior software engineer" for a major newspaper in the Bay Area. The prospect of bringing on someone like that positively scared the piss out of me. I'm a young guy, my business is doing well in spite of me, and this person would probably be my senior in every way.

So after thinking about it for a day, I contacted him first. (As it turned out, the situation wasn't nearly as unbalanced as I thought.)

So I have no idea what an A, B, or C... player is, but I figure that hiring the best people you can, even if they intimidate you, is a good start.

Yeah, there are a lot of environmental issues that need to be managed to get the most out of everyone. That's why the overall team need to be balanced.

I think that people stating that things ARE a certain way or somebody BEING at a certain level, could gain benefit from looking at Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics or more particulary trying expressing themselves in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

It's not bad being judgemental however, and I think that going with ones gut feeling regarding co-founders is a good thing. I wish I had had no tolerance for bullshit and done away with some poor performing co-founders early on, because the net effect would have been better for everyone. It's the team that counts, and those people who fanatically prefer to do waterfall development and enterprise java solutions don't belong in a fast paced startup environment, because they cannot deliver good results in this setting, they count on orders coming in from "management" instead of being proactive themselves..

If you look at another and think "he is better than me at x,y,z" and you feel jealous, and want some type of retribution or revenge, you are a B player.

The A-player makes their skill or activity look easy and isn't conceited about it, they are primarily trying to out-do themselves. They aren't trying to add some egotistical emotional experience to themselves via the startup process.

A B-player won't want an already successful, serial entrepreneur as a co-founder. They want the glory. They want to own any success, even it is another's, with which they'll aim to claim.

Also, B-player investors are those that follow other investors, they can't make an investment decision on their own, so they follow the A-players and pretend to be A, but they're not.

"If you look at another and think "he is better than me at x,y,z" and you feel jealous..."

If you look at another an think of how that person being better at x,y,z would make them a huge asset to your company, you just might be an A player.

If A players hire A players and B players hire C players, how do the B players ever get hired?

Yes, I'm being facetious. But even fortune-cookie level business advice should pass basic sanity checks like this one.

By fooling A players into thinking they're As? Hard, but I'm sure it happens.

However most of it might be convincing Bs they are Cs ... and what happens after that is not pretty for the hiring B, I suspect.

One likely characteristic of Bs is less than total honesty, with self and others.

This post boils down to 'Avoid Hiring Mediocre Co-Founders by Hiring Good Ones'. Every day I learn something new here.

If you want to know what kind of player you are, think about how you respond to difficult situations or poorly done work. If you feel anger or kind of OK with it, then you're all but A player.

On the other hand, if you feel an urge to do the best possible move then you end up doing the work yourself, eventually turning into a star, or you hire these who can do better then you. That way you get the A score.

That seemed full of pretty bland "corporate" words until the last paragraph (of the quote) - which makes the point well.

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