My co-founder took my company and my girlfriend | Hacker News Reader

My co-founder took my company and my girlfriend

blog.cubeofm.com

140 pointsjot57 comments

Strange article.

Totally unsolicited feedback: It's kind of hard to convey teachable points when the bulk of the article is opinion related to a story about another person but none of the details are shared. I understand wanting to keep it vague to avoid a dustup with the people involved, but it just felt a bit devoid of specifics. If you're going to use an anecdote, either give us the details or just make fictional and do some character development.

I'll have to agree with this. These always read like they are totally made up but he doesn't want to put effort into making it a good story, so he tries to pass it off as a real story without the details. Sort of like thedailywtf but without being as over-the-top phony. This one was barely readable.

Give me an idea what to do. If I have to prove all my stories, it limits the types of stories I can write. This story, for example, I could not have written, because the person may not want this information linked to him.

I have the choice between writing stories about people vaguely, and getting to select the interesting stories that fit, or writing stories I can source, which limits me to only a very few stories.

If I don't use any stories at all, then the posts are less interesting. Your comment puts me in a bind - I'm not sure what the way out is.

Honestly, I felt like I was reading the cliff notes version of a personal anecdote. I didn't read the rest of the article. I might have if I didn't think that headline and "anecdote" were just there to make me click through.

Write the stories you can source. Sure you'd write less, but it would have more impact. As is your writing is frequently vague and anecdotal, and easy to dismiss. I might be more inclined to believe the anecdotal stories if you had other posts with more meat to them.

NB, I find it interesting that you refer to your posts as stories as your usage connotes that they are fiction.

keep doing what you're doing and know that some people won't like it. your audience is not them.

Ignore it, I guess. People should know that some people don't like their life stories being posted for everyone to see.

You think that thedailywtf examples are phony?

You don't want to come around to the company I work for, then (heck, I've ADDED some of the WTF-worthy code myself :) )

I really envy people who think the Daily WTF stories are phony. They must have been so lucky to work all their careers in jobs with no WTFs...

I have submitted a WTF to thedailywtf before.. they do publish user submissions.

They're always edited beyond recognition into vague parables.

He often does shit like adding weak framing ripped from the plot of Office Space, changing all of the proper nouns, combining multiple stories, etc.

This is how Max writes. A short intro followed by a personal anecdote. Which segues into the point(s) he is making and then finished with a conclusion to the anecdote.

I personally quite like it :)

That certainly makes one of us. I find these trollish posts annoying. I wish he'd cut 60% of the article and just make solid points, after the 15th extremely unlikely personal anecdote I figure they're all spun out of whole cloth.

I think calling it trollish is disingenuous. Certainly the post and title are written to attract an audience; but it has value and is a fun read. Better than some of the crap that gets posted ;)

I think it makes a great title and a fantastic link bait. Nothing wrong with that and a great strategy.

Agree...the unrelated photo (stock?) doesn't help the credibility here. That plus the vague story made me think this was content from an article farm. Doesn't seem to be though.

Kind of unfortunate that the maligned co-founder didn't end up making it big in Country Music. That would have made for a better story.

Totally offtopic I suppose, but relevant to the parent comment..

Per David Allan Coe, this would have made it perfect Country Music story (from the song: You never even call me by my name):

I wrote him back a letter and told him it was NOT the perfect country-western song because he hadn't said anything at all about mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin' drunk.

Well, he sat down and wrote another verse to the song and he sent it to me And after reading it, I realized that my friend had written the perfect country-western song.

And I felt obliged to include it on this album. The last verse goes like this here:

Well, I was drunk the day my Mom got outta prison.

And I went to pick her up in the rain.

But, before I could get to the station in my pickup truck She got runned over by a damned old train.

I know HN is largely male and single, so here's my hindsight advice that I'd give myself if I had to do it again (I'm married and went through some #@$%):

The girl that ran off with the other co-founder? Just by reading that blog post and not knowing any of them, I am willing to bet there's something in her past that has not been resolved with professional help (i.e. therapist/psychiatrist), and that I am also willing to bet that the co-founder that she ran off with - they probably did not sail of into the sunset and lived happily ever after.

If anyone knows for sure that I am wrong - I would be very curious to know, but I'm pretty sure about it. At the surface, humans make their own choices, but there's usually a pattern - as much as we won't like admitting that we can be predictable - being shaped by our parents and upbringing.

Some advice that I wish I was told, that I had to learn the hard way:

* (Very) Red flag: F'd up parents or f'd up childhood upbringing. You'd think that you're marrying her for what she is today and what she will be tomorrow - but no - all that stuff in the past needs to be dealt with first - and I mean, professionally (therapist/psychiatrist). Maybe obvious, but it's easy to be blinded when you're love. If you meet a woman in a bar for the first time and she casually mentions about this fact in her past: RUN. Move on to the next girl while you have not invested anything in the relationship, before you've now sunk in time, energy, money and emotion.

* Go for the outspoken / confident ones. Or at least, do not be fooled: the quiet / shy / low self-esteem types .. could mean that they're just hiding a lot more than you know. The ones who blabber and talk to much? Well, at least you know there's less that they are possibly hiding (generalization of course).

* Anyone who's had this happen to them before? NOBODY saw it coming. If this happens, you will always be blind-sided. So therefore, pay serious attention to your due diligence.

Don't let the complete lack of detail in the original article hold you back from making some giant extrapolations there.

My comment was not scientific, but it served to counter-balance the lack of hypothesis from the other comments at the time, where basically nobody read more into it and the consensus was "oh well, shit happens". Sure, it's from my personal bias / experience - but all I was saying is that nobody pointed out that there's a strong likelihood / probability that <hypothesis> the girl had some issues </hypothesis> - which could <hypothesis> be independent of the whole startup drama </hypothesis> to begin with.

So "girl ran of with my co-founder" without any analysis on the girl herself, only serves to sensationalize the startup drama more, as opposed to asking "did the drama have anything to do with girl running off with co-founder, or vice versa"

And my tangential point to the post about the startup drama is, aside from watching out for the co-founder dynamics gotchas / pot holes, watch out for girls with issues. Hypothetically, what I'm also saying is, if you were the other co-founder (the one that "got the girl"), don't be too quick to think you've won everything (meaning, you may not want that girl). The statement that you just read is also a hypothesis, just in case.

http://blog.daryn.net/post/32264049/paul-buchheit-limited-li...

I can't edit the comment I originally posted - by I now wish I started it with, "anybody who's been burned like this before knows exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, feel free to pooh pooh my comment and disregard - I apologize for wasting your time."

p.s. the remark I made about this being a pattern can be argued that it's not just a personal bias - if there's anyone who's familiar with family therapy / psychiatry here - you'll know what I'm talking about.

This is essentially the justification for arranged marriages. (I definitely got this from my father)

Have an upvote - arranged marriages are extremely poorly understood by the West. There's the impression that they are anti-woman and coercive, which is far from the truth for the majority of cultures that practice it.

For the uninformed: for most cultures (that I've seen) that do arranged marriages (in modern times, anyhow), the woman and the man both have the right to veto. Think of it as an extremely pre-vetted, parent-driven dating service and you'll have a better idea than the "ohnoes! people pressed into marriage against their will!" swill that the media likes to spin up.

Instead of you going out to find your mate, your parents/family do it, they do all the groundwork, and you simply meet the girl/guy a number of times, then both of you get to decide if that's it.

I don't personally find arranged marriage inviting - but I agree it's a cultural thing. At least done right (as you explain) it's just a different way of doing things.

But be careful painting a 100% rosy picture. There is a large problem with arranged marriages "forced" through familial, social and religious pressure.

I think people (rightly) disapprove of that and by-extension accidentally disapprove of arranged marriage in general.

I think even in the West a lot of relationships are set up that way. We're just in denial about it.

Your parents meet someone who has a cute son/daughter.

Lightbulb goes off.

Events suddenly mysteriously convalesce to bring the two of you together for a "chance" meeting.

I have never heard of a marriage starting from this, apart form in the movies.

You probably don't live close to your parents.

As somebody from that culture, I think that's way too simplistic. Like all other things, there are good sides and bad sides.

Good things:

- Pre-vetted as you say, so there's some due diligence done.

- It's easier(in some aspects) if your partner belongs to the same community(religion, sect, whatever)

- Longevity. In such cultures, marriage is held sacred, and people put up with lots of strain to keep the thread going. This is good for kids, if not for the individuals.

Bad things:

- Parental pressure: Though there's no compulsion, there's immense psychological pressure from relatives/peers/friends. In my culture, the girls bear the brunt, although the tide is slowly changing. It gets worse when your parents are financially or socially backwards.

- It's very difficult to find somebody aligned to your interests/tastes - essentially a lottery.

- You get very little time to socialize and understand each other. This is changing a bit, but still the socializing starts after you're engaged, which is basically pointless IMHO. The go/no-go decision is usually a snap decision. That sucks.

I'd write more, but hey this is hacker news..

I think that people see arranged marriages for what they were in the past in Europe (i.e. royalty being forced to marry foreign royalty to seal a treaty or ensure peace, etc) or in the Middle East (i.e. The father needs some goats, so he trades his daughter's hand in marriage for 10 goats).

It also doesn't help that most of the arranged marriages in the movies or on television just use it as a plot device to throw adversity at the main character (i.e. evil mother doesn't like daughter, when the father dies she 'sells' her daughter's hand in marriage to a wealthy slob).

Westerners like to view any marriage practice other than their own as sexist (polygamy, arranged marriages) without realizing that traditional Western marriage is sexist as well. Modern Western marriages are less sexist, but it's not especially or necessarily true that self-arranged monogamous marriages are less sexist than the alternative.

Interesting!

My entire knowledge of that is from Fiddler on the Roof. http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/doyoulov.htm

IMHO there are problems with arranged marriages - for one thing I personally don't believe that a few supervised visits are sufficient to really determine if you want to spend the rest of your life with someone.

But, the numbers do speak for themselves - divorce rates are much lower for arranged marriages. Perhaps there is social pressure preventing divorces in that context, but IMHO the objective, neutral third-party assessment of your potential partner plays into that as well. "We love each other so things will work out" is a nice thought, but often not reality.

That being said, I'm culturally ingrained to find my own mate, so that's that for me :P

Go for the outspoken / confident ones. Or at least, do not be fooled: the quiet / shy / low self-esteem types

Hmm, empirically I think this is the wrong way round. Or rather, yes, the shy girl may have emotional issues. But she is unlikely to leave you (instead become dependant). Rather it is the extrovert ones who will quickly move on to someone more interesting.

To be honest your mostly making a few gross generalisations based on some personal experience. I could pitch plenty of counter-examples from my own (and friends) experiences to invalidate pretty much all of it as an absolute theory :)

I think the error is in concluding outspoken == confident and quiet/shy == low self-esteem.

Let the startup go. If it was meant to be yours, it will come back to you.

Or, for Neil Strauss fans: You have startup one-itis. The best therapy for you is to go start up a new company every weekend.

"You do not truly know someone until you fight them"

-Seraph, The Matrix Reloaded

In the interest of not quoting films:

"For a friend is not to be had without trial and is not a matter of a single day, but time is needed; hence the peck of salt' has come to be proverbial." -Aristotle (Eudemian Ethics)

"A man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him." is the alluded-to proverb, and that particular wording is from Don Quixote (Cervantes).

> "A true friend is discerned during an uncertain matter"

--Cicero

Isn't this something you discover by yourself in the early teenage years, in terms of lesson learned, and don't do it again (trial-error)? At least it was for me.

PS: Thanks for the quotes. However I failed to explain this lesson to my little sister.

Agreed 100%. You never know what someone is willing to do until you are in a heated argument with them.

"If you don't have any co-founders, when you hit that dip, that speed bump along the road, you will be unable to continue."

I disagree. It depends how much grit you have. In fact, looking back, I would have been much better off without a co-founder.

I did a lot of follow up work and watched as he basically out competed his old company to pieces.

I can't help but wonder if the pain of losing so much to his co-founder gave him the motivation to beat his old company and become a success.

Ugh. If there's anything that makes a fight between friends worse, it's women. Having lost a (basically) fiance to a close friend once, I can only imagine how devastating it must be to have business involved as well.

The startup crowd is generally okay with instability in life, as it comes with the territory. But kudos to him for being able to get over it, move on, and succeed. Great story.

I don't agree with the inequality of shares when each party is the founder of the startup. I think that everyone should have equal shares. In my experience not having equal shares causes people to gripe over stupid things such as the amount of work to do based upon percentage. It can also breed resentment.

Paradoxically to my previous statement, I do agree that a business is like being in a marriage. That means that at times, one party is working harder than the other party.

The real key to success with partners is conflict resolution, communication, candor, and empathy.

Anybody else immediately think of "The Door into Summer" when they saw the title?

"took ... my girlfriend"

This implies that your girlfriend was something less than a rational, value-seeking adult human being; that you own her, in some respect, as property. This is so completely wrong that I don't think you really meant it, but that's what those words mean.

In all realms, including romance, your girlfriend is a free agent, and so are you.

And if your former girlfriend just wants whoever has the most money/status, without being valuable in her own right, why do you want her anyway? Contrary to popular conception, love is something you can reason about.

"lured away the girl who was in a relationship with me" is just wordy.

"took" and "my girlfriend" are accepted contractions of that. There doesn't appear to be any insinuation of possession :)

The headline, and the story itself, is what we call a narrative hook. Their purpose is not really to inform the moral of the story, although they should not be totally unrelated, but to grab your attention and give you some kind of emotional attachment to the "lesson" and cause you to pay attention; and keep reading. Whether the story is true or not, and whether the details actually warrant the conclusions are largely irrelevant to their actual purpose within the piece.

The actual message of the piece can be boiled down to "Pick your business partners like you pick your wife/husband/significant whatever." The anecdote _does_ have a resonance with the message, so works quite well in that regard. Also note the "resolution" paragraph at the end that wraps up the narrative and gives you that warm, all's right with the world, happy ending buzz.

And it did cause you to read a bunch more verbiage that you might have otherwise. A little hint of sex and betrayal can really spice up an otherwise trite and shallow piece (sometimes you need to file some copy even when the muse isn't stopping by today...)

All it means is that women are usually passive when it comes to relationship-seeking behavior. This is a fine strategy and it doesn't make their choices any less valid, rational, value-seeking, or adult.

I disagree completely. Drifting along and dealing with life in a passive way is sure to get you something that doesn't make you happy, or something that won't suit you, and won't be good for your long-term rational self-interest.

The world is a big place, and wrong possibilities are endless. Adults are able, by and large, make correct choices - not all of them do it, mind you, but they are capable nonetheless.

All I meant is that one is usually asking the other out on dates, not the other way around. I have no idea why this precludes living an active life.

Incidentally, the pick-up artist method is all about enticing girls to go out and get you instead. And we know what all winners those guys are.

eh, he says "Co-founders are both the most important thing that your company needs and the most likely reason your company will fail."

I'm not entirely convinced of #1; a good employee can do nearly all the things a co-founder would, but when they do leave for a real job, (and they will, just like a co-founder will) you have the option of continuing rather than laying down your arms.

Really, I think it comes down to the quality of people you can get. If you /can/ get someone better as a co-founder than as an employee, then yeah, having a co-founder might help your survival chances a lot.

The quality of people you can get as a co-founder depends largely on your sales skills, though. so if you are as bad at selling as I am, you might actually be able to get /better/ people as employees than as co-founders. Of course, if I was better at selling, and worse at hiring, this would be reversed.

I gotta confess that after reading the title I laughed out loud and now I feel bad for my utter lack of empathy.

The title is so incorrect. Knowing maxklein is author of this blog, I thought it's his story when he has "My" in the title. He should say - "Someone's co-founder took his company and his girlfriend."

Why people skew the titles so much, keep it vague, and sometimes even incorrect to just get the eyeballs?

So it's better to go it alone, as Eric succeeded the second alone but failed with a cofounder.

yeah such is life. it happens.

http://blog.cubeofm.com/cofounders

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