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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

mixmax, I recognize you from your many contributions here and wish you the best of luck. My skill set is very close to what you seek, and I'd love to meet you and talk about possibilities some day, but for the time being I'm completely consumed by my own startup.

When you say "the upcoming YC round", do you mean 4/02/08? If so, I imagine that you'd be better off applying as a single founder. Probably not a good idea to go into business with someone you've only known for 8 days. As a single founder myself, I'd need at least 6 months to a year to get to know someone and work with them before I'd make a commitment. Better yet, I'd prefer someone I've known for years, but the dozen or so possibilities always seem to have some other road block.

Is there anyone you already know and have worked with before that could join you? That way, your odds would be much better (for YC and beyond).

Good luck and keep us posted.

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Yes, you're absolutely right - You shouldn't make a commitment to getting married after having known each other for a week. I thought about putting this in the submission, but that might put some great people off. My thought was to adress the issue in mail exchange, but since you bring it up here I get a chance of saying it up front:

My intention is to apply for YC founding in a week, and I'm looking for a technical co-founder. But I'm probably not prepared to make a total commitment in that time. There are many ways this can be solved. One idea goes along the lines of a contract that will give a co-founder an increasing number of shares as work gets done. This way I won't end up with a no-good co-founder, and a co-founder that actually produces good work won't be cheated out of ownership. This is of course pretty fluid, and there are a lot of details that need to be worked out. Other ideas might be viable as well.

And for the record: I fully intend to get this startup going whether I get accepted for YC or not. And I'm looking for a co-founder regardless of outcome. My belief is that a cake prepared by two competent people is more than twice as big as a cake prepared by one competent person.

There are a few people that I have worked with before that I would love to do something with again. Unfortunately they are tied up. So no luck there...

[nevermind] ---Untrue. Unless your product has already shown considerable traction or you're a startup legend, it is 100% percent certain that they will not accept you as a single founder.

Not making a judgement on this policy, it just seems fair for people to know before they take the time to apply as a single founder.

it is 100% percent certain that they will not accept you as a single founder

Two of the startups in the current batch were run by single founders when we accepted them. Neither was a startup legend or had any traction.

The odds of being accepted are much greater (roughly 4x) with a cofounder, but it's not impossible to get funded as a single founder.

Did they got co-founders? How does this work out?

This is an interesting question that I would love to see some answers to. Locating a co-founder at a later time doesn't seem to be a bad idea.

I also be it would be much easier to find a cofounder if you've already secured YC-status.

Thankyou for the clarification.

Do you have some kind of metrics for this, do you have inside information, or is it an educated guess?

its PG, a ycombinator founder, thus - his numbers should be correct

yeah I know, just posted the question before PG gave the answer :-)

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