Stop Looking for a Cofounder | Hacker News Reader

Stop Looking for a Cofounder

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74 pointsjohnwheeler37 comments

It is a false assumption that pg's advice universally applies to all business. His advice is specific to startups, as defined by the SV crowd, which means extreme growth, intending to take on investors. If that path is not specifically in your plans, a lot of the advice coming out of VC/YC mouths should be taken with a grain of salt.

Many great companies can be started in 2016 as a solo founder. Not every company needs to be the next Google to be massively successful and rewarding.

Look at the Forbes 400 list. There are literally hundreds of solo founders who are the wealthiest people in the world.

Always remember, no cofounder is better than the wrong cofounder.

For those who want to understand execution, I highly recommend reading The 10x Rule by Grant Cardone

I am interested in your review.

The majority of "no single founder" advice I have heard are from investors, and that obviously includes PG as well. It is important to realize that investors have many incentives to fund companies with more than one founder. Not all of those incentives necessarily align with the incentives of the primary founder.

Being a single founder has some obvious disadvantages, but considering how many times "cofounder disputes" is cited as one of the most common reasons startups die, often by the same set of people with the above advice, I can't help but wonder if the benefit of derisking that particular concern by being a single founder is underappreciated.

Interesting point. Is this an issue of governance? To an investor, it's important to not have a single point of failure at the head of a company. If there are 2 founders and one loses interest or gets hit by a bus, the company survives. (Or to be more Machiavellian, if one is unreasonable, they can oust them without losing the company) If there is 1 founder, the power dynamics are different, because they have a much stronger hold on leadership and information. And more key-man risk.

I'm a solo founder. When I started my current company, I first developed a prototype then tried looking for a co-founder shortly after. There weren't many options within my personal network (few risk takers or people with savings to burn). I expanded my search to those I didn't know, which meant going through essentially an interview process with potential candidates, but I couldn't find a match. I even had people do reversals and pitch me their ideas.

My feeling is that this kind of co-founder matchmaking is just plain hard. First, like they say it's similar to getting married. You really need to trust the person, which is why your personal network is the best source if you can pull it off (see PG talk about college buddies). Second, many people interested in entrepreneurship probably have their own ideas already.

I think non-technical founders have the best chance at recruiting technical founders than the other way around. The technical role is more straightforward (write code for the idea that the non-technical founder came up with), and potential technical recruits may be more wealthy on average.

If you're a technical founder, I'd say recruiting a "biz" person is a lot harder. Fortunately, you can just do everything on your own anyway (not that it'll be easy though!).

Can you point to anything about PG and college buddies? I'm not seeing much on the subject.

Here he mentions staying in contact with college friends for use as future co-founders: http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html

Here he mentions founders knowing each other since elementary school: http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html

I believe I've also seen him on video saying that the best cofounders are old friends. I've always had this impression that he doesn't believe in "founder dating" or quick matches like that.

I would phrase it is that it is hard to recruit a good "biz" person - there are plenty of bad biz people out there.

I've had people approach me to be their cofounder on their projects, and I have almost always said no, because A) I have my own projects I'm interested in working on, and B) I didn't think they brought any useful skills to the table.

When you're teaming up with a cofounder, you're not just getting a free employee. You're getting a business partner, and that person needs to be someone who complements your skills. But too often, I see MBA types who are "looking for technical cofounder for lots of equity" to mean "need a code-monkey who I will boss around for free."

Even more distressing is the fact that so many young programmers will go along with it.

If we're going to be cofounders--and let's just assume for a minute that I have the technical part covered--then that means I expect you to be able to prove that you know how to perform the tasks of marketing and sales. I can show you several past projects I've worked on. What can you show me?

And you need to be putting in just as much effort on your job as I'm putting in on mine. And no, you are not waiting for me to finish the product. That's not how marketing works. You need to start now.

Nobody has managed to do that yet--and there have been several suitors--thus I haven't taken on a cofounder.

Excellent articulation. I feel the same ways about the potential costs of cofounders.

That is my experience as a technical cofounder. If your partners don't have the marketing or sales chops, you will live in a constant world of blame where they are waiting on you to complete the product. If only you could figure out how to do that last big feature, we could sell it... This customer says they will buy if it can do this...

I think this is a very common refrain in small startups. If the business side can't sell it, it must be that the product isn't good enough yet.

> I think this is a very common refrain in small startups. If the business side can't sell it, it must be that the product isn't good enough yet.

Correct, but fwiw, and speaking as a techie/marketer/sales I've more often than not seen this happen when the techie founder is not involved in the sales process at all, so methinks the blame is largely shared between the founders - you can't just blame the sales if whoever might be able to say "hey this is super complex, are you sure you need it now?" is not around during the discussion.

Not to mention that you need to find a product idea that you both are equally excited about.

Most of the times I've been approached, even though resonable ideas, haven't been projects that I've been interested in working on.

Yes. Unfortunately, I've only ever been approached with two ideas: "Facebook for Coupon Clipping" and "Stock Market for Small Business". I've been approached 5 times each for them, and asked to sign an NDA each time, but it's really only been two distinct ideas.

I am curious how anyone thinks "stock market for small business" is a viable idea? Did anyone who approched you do even the most basic due diligence first?

Indeed, they did not. I don't know if recent changes in SEC rules in regards to crowd funding alters anything, but at the time there was definitely no way to do it without running afoul of several regulations.

Plus it's just a bad idea. The sort of businesses they were always talking about (pizza shops, hair salons) are well-served by SBA and traditional business loans.

It's good to have someone there to push you, and vice versa. But definitely don't putz around wasting time looking, when you could be spending that time building. Bringing your idea to the light, getting critique from peers and users, is much more valuable starting out. If I waited to work with someone for every idea I had, I'd never get anything done. Worry about all that other business related nonsense when something actually gets traction.

I think these are all really good points, but I was sad to see it didn't address one of the largest reasons my side-business is going to stay side-business until I find someone I can envision really starting with -- you need someone to lift you up.

I sit in the school of thought that says you need a co-founder to disagree with you with a passion you won't find idly perusing Reddit, but you raise a few good points. One thing you don't address is the overwhelming feelings of "I can't do this" or "I shouldn't do this". Those are the points where you need someone you trust to be on your team, because it's likely these moments of despair won't sync between the two of you.

You're right - it's addressed at the bottom too

"The last part of the quote above, that you need colleagues to cheer you up when things go wrong, hits home for me. When I started developing eBay software, PayPal’s recurring payment system had a bug that was skimping my payouts more and more each month. It took me three months to get them to fix it, and although they ended up reimbursing me, it was stressful watching my revenues erode while my user count increased. In addition to crises, it’s also hard just staying motivated sometimes. The best way to cope is to maintain low expectations and stay busy working on things you can control."

For the emotional aspects of business, you DO need people. I posted this on HN because of the incredible stimulation I get around the discussion from all you.

Sorry about that, I thought I had done a thorough read and obviously hadn't.

3 LLCs, a trademark, a patent application, and 10 years later and I've learned so much more of solo founder success has to do with pure dumb luck. I've since given up. For every success story like in the article, there are 10 failures.

For every success story, period, there are 10 failures. Even if you find a cofounder, you're still likely to fail.

I think the point of the article is just an admonition to not ensure failure by settling on a bad cofounder under the idea that any is better than none.

> However, I created ebay feedback software by myself that’s kept me self-employed for the last four years

Commendable. But this seems to be what investors often call a "lifestyle business". Not the kind of thing that needs a team to grow.

The reason people look for cofounders (and why firms requires multiple cofounders for investment) is not a skill/productivity issue.

It's a risk adversity issue, as if something happens to a single cofounder, the startup is 100% dead.

Thank you for reading.

I'd extend the discussion to say you don't need investors either. The only participants you need are in your target market. And, you can prepare to bring in outside successors in the event of death, key person insurance, etc...

> It's a risk adversity issue, as if something happens to a single cofounder, the startup is 100% dead.

I think a keyperson insurance policy would be much simpler to arrange, though only maybe less costly.

Try getting key-person insurance for a solo startup. A cofounder is cheap by comparison.

Happened to sit next to a billionaire at dinner once. He asked me what I did. I said I ran a small business. He asked did I have a partner. I said I did. He said: "Get rid of them".

Suffice to say I am not a billionaire.

Ha my dad says the same thing, though he's not a billionaire. Says they're always more trouble than they're worth

The rule is pretty simple if you are bootstrapping. A cofounder makes your life easier now at the expense of making it harder in the future - the ultimate technical debt.

This is my advice: If a cofounder sounds right for you, you're probably doing the right thing by looking. I've tried several startups without a co-founder and I can tell you that having a partner helps immensely. Having someone in the trenches living for the same cause brings a spirit that's hard to conjure by one's self.

Sometimes it's easy, and sometimes it is difficult. The co-founder I'm working on Baqqer with happened because I posted in a FB group looking for a designer/front-end person that could share in some of the work. I had recently sold everything and moved in to my van to conserve my burn rate while I was building out of TechShop. My co-founder told me one of the reasons he joined up was because he found it inspirational that someone would go to such lengths to live for what they wanted to build. We get along as friends first and I think that's the most important trait required for early stage co-founders.

If you're looking for a co-founder I'd suggest just being open and honest with what you're building, tell your story, grow your community, build something people want. You also might have some luck over with the Baqqer community with the rest of us. https://baqqer.com/

[edit] I'd also like to point out that I was building while I was looking, so I had something to show that demonstrated my desire to keep moving forward and demonstrated progress on the idea. This is a good place to be. I'd say don't show up empty handed when trying to find a co-founder.

hey, we have the same logo

https://feedbackboost.com/

font-awesome FTW!

Hahah yeah, it started out as a placeholder. We're re-thinking the logo and considering something that demonstrates the utility of a community that works together to produce something. There's a trello card and everything! :P

You make some good points, but I think the piece could be a lot better if it weren't framed as a rebuttal to pg's article.

I know that it is far easier to come up with something to say at all when you have something to respond to and I know how tempting it is to latch onto a prominent figure and disagree with their famous ideas. But it is psychologically an uphill battle. It undermines your actual message by reinforcing the assumption that multiple founders is the status quo and you need to battle against it to go solo. That idea just feels exhausting to contemplate.

If you plan to write more on this subject, I would be interested in hearing a great deal more about specific success stories and the insider perspective in terms of process and how your day goes.

Edit: Inspired by this piece, I wrote my own blog post. http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/06/working-is-l... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11912395)

It in no way references this piece. It took me a really long time to figure out how to write something inspired by something I had read without making it a rebuttal or direct response to the thing I had read. So, as noted above, I am totally sympathetic to why that happens. And, to reiterate what I said above: I would sincerely be interested in seeing more info about what working alone is all about.

Thanks.

Cofounder helps because you have blind spots, there's a lot of work to do, and they can split startup costs. But, be very sure to understand what drives them, and what their threshold is for bailing.

Anyone have more information on that PayPal bug?

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