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Solo founders

jmillerinc.com

35 pointsepi0Bauqu11 comments

One major point missed by this article is motivation — with a team of founders, drive to work is very high. You have someone else to interact with, work with, and keep you on task. I've found that working on projects solo, it's a lot easier to "fall off the wagon", so to speak — get distracted working on the wrong things, working without feedback, or stop working at all. This obviously differs from person to person, but it's one of the reasons why I believe more in a team rather than a single founder.

On the flip side - if your partners are demotivated you will lose motivation too. It's just an echo chamber.

It's much better to draw inspiration from your users and solid metrics about your business.

Not always. When one partner is demotivated, he/she has the other partner to turn to, discuss the problem, and pivot/change the project if necessary. The motivated partner can also start this conversation as well. Compare that to a solo founder who wouldn't have this support.

I'm not saying drawing inspiration from the users isn't important (ideally, all founders should be doing this anyways), but having another person on the team significantly helps to start.

I've had the falling off the wagon problem recently. The way I dealt with it was setting weekly goals and holding myself to them. It's been a big improvement for the last month.

One of the biggest reasons solo founder projects fail more than multiple founder companies is that a multi-founder company has already passed some tests of market, product, and team.

If an idea is incredibly stupid, but it's your idea, you can easily become deluded into thinking it's actually a great idea. Being able to convince another person that the idea is good is definitely a sign that the idea is good.

It's also a good check on the quality of the team -- if someone is obviously such a screw up that you'd never want to work with him, you wouldn't work with him. Even fairly defective people can notice flaws in others. Therefore, a group of 2+ people probably means the members are at least tolerable.

Pre-launch marketing or blogging can give you a lot of feedback about your idea.

I wouldn't consider a cofounder unless they could add serious value beyond feedback.

The link at the bottom has better content on the "why be a solo founder" question

http://www.somestartup.com/?p=36

Thanks for the article, I just posted it.

There are a number of disadvantages to being a solo-founder; however, as long as you are cognizant about it, you can take steps to compensate.

The real question you want to ask yourself is why you're going the solo-route. As a solo founder myself, I'm fine with the tradeoffs because it affords me certain other liberties. Do some soul searching and get in synch with yourself.

One of the compensating measures I have is a Braintrust with other solo founders. It's a pretty good place to bounce ideas off of other people in similar situations. Let me know if you are interested in joining.

Isn't a solo founder just a team waiting to happen?

I don't think so. If by team you mean co-founders, then no; as a single founder I spend 0 time and effort on recruiting co-founders. If by team you mean other employees, then optimistically, sure, but again, it's not something I'm spending any time on now.

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