Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find a good cofounder? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find a good cofounder?

21 pointseliam218 comments

As a YC founder with lots of time on my hands, I’ve recently become obsessed with this question. I’ve interviewed dozens of founders, studied existing solutions (e.g., EF, OnDeck, YC Cofounder Matching), and devoured everything I can find on the topic. I’m deep in the rabbit hole and want to go deeper.

If you are actively looking for a cofounder, are struggling or broke up with your cofounder, absolutely love your cofounder, or have an interesting point of view on finding a cofounder, I want to speak with you.

Please grab a time that is convenient for you: https://calendly.com/eliammedina/30-minute-meeting-cfm

Let’s solve this problem once and for all.

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Because it’s about partnership on an adventure, and that requires trust. Compare with the other partnership scenario that people are more familiar with: finding a romantic partner, and accomplishing something together like raising a family. Founding a company and taking it to success is in many ways more challenging, risks as much emotional damage if things don’t go right, has a much much higher failure rate, a much less refined cultural playbook, and almost no help from biology. I conjecture that the business playbook typically being transactional makes healthy founding relationships further hard. Doing things together is a fundamentally human thing, but conventional “startup advice” can often get in the way. There’s also probably something to the fact that people are raised to obey institutional rules & roles as individuals rather forming fruitful collaborations and partnerships.

In my opinion, the hardest part about finding a cofounder is getting people to be committed. I’ve tried working with friends but they just didn’t take it as seriously as I did. Plus, getting people to be interested in the same problems is tough. I’d love to see this being solved.

I think it's multiple problems that compound when combined.

1. You have to find someone who is as passionate as you about whatever it is you're going to work on. 2. You have to find someone who wants to (and is in a life place where they can) take the risk of starting a company. 3. You have to find someone who is responsible enough to help run a company.

You're weeding out most people once you hit all 3 criteria...

And 4 - whose working style and personal behavior under stress is productive and constructive with yours, instead of resulting in drama and destruction.

1. Most people I come across see businesses as a way to do minimum work for maximum profit. It really is a lot of work of to get them to work.

2. Then you have other personality/cultural fit. Things that you can't change. Risk tolerance. Attitude towards employees. Negotiation styles. Attitude towards growth hacking.

3. Out of the remaining, most are not interested in the domain.

4. And once you get past all that, most just can't quit their jobs and jump into something with a 90% failure rate.

You want someone extremely motivated, who needs to share your vision and passion and probably needs some specific knowledge or training. That person is hard to hire for 200k, not to mention the almost nothing you're offering, if you're hiring on the open market or otherwise trying to convince people in a relatively short period of time. The only option I can think of is someone you have a strong relationship with, who has known you long enough to believe in you. No shortcuts there, but I think that is the solution you're referring to.

Being motivated and "probably" having some training seems like a very low bar for 200k. In the UK / EU you have scientists working for 40k.

I think these types of complex people problems are fundamentally unsolvable, especially if you're looking at it from the perspective of a software engineer. It's like trying to solve hiring, or solve matchmaking, or anything where people and relationships are at the root of the issue and the solution. The best solutions to these problems are still really bad because every person is unique and deeply complex in their own right.

Maybe look at the parallel metaphors of marriage matchmakers, and of sports coaches team building 2 or 3 person team sports that have unequal roles.

I co-founded a successful small SaaS, however we had all worked closely together at another company, so we knew each other’s personalities and work traits (plus one guy was the load bearing axle, and the other cofounders mostly worked to support him at other roles).

In my view it's because often, when co-founders fall out, the company is either badly damaged or ends. This can happen early or after many years. So the requirement for a good co-founder is really high.

There's not necessarily anything to indicate that this critical relationship will be a success because anything can happen, even with the right co-founder.

The problem is the title "cofounder". The job description is much too vague to mean anything, and if you put definition around it, you lose the appeal.

Let's look at headhunting for some inspiration. Headhunters hate it when companies don't know what the requirements are for the role because it is impossible to search for. Headhunters also dislike it when the role is very custom and requires multiple domains, because there is a very small candidate pool and low chance of matching. Headhunters love standardized roles because they can find a (large) pool of people that match those roles and skills.

Finding a great "cofounder" is the headhunter equivalent of finding a great "programmer". The first question any headhunter would ask is, what kind of programmer - frontend, backend, UX, systems...?

So let's begin defining "cofounder" into a role that can be matchable.

If you define a founding team as the minimum set of skills needed to make the startup succeed, sales (which includes talking to users and finding PMF) is definitely one of the key skills. Coding is another.

But.. b2b sales are different than b2c sales. And arriving at PMF is very different based on the type of product you are building... you have UX based products, business needs based products, media products, domain knowledge based products... some PMF ideas require years of industry specific domain knowledge to arrive at. So sales cofounder still isn't very matchable because most people can only sell a very narrow set of industries or ideas.

If you did somehow manage to find a person who could sell pretty much anything... you have to realize how valuable they are to other industries as well. Instead of going to high risk startups, they can probably sell hedge fund money level of deals.

Coding founders are often the more "ideal" solo founder because if you can code a full app well, you can essentially build a working startup. Also, there is very few industry alternative that are exponentially more profitable for developers. BUT coding founders often get tempted into the valley of solo complacency. Why build a billion dollar business with others when you can build a million dollar business by yourself?

Finally, the cofounder ecosystem is leaky. Cofounders do not go back into the market - successful founders either run their business or become an investor. Serial cofounders find their niche and do the same play with the same people they know. Why expose yourself to risk if you've found a great team already?

Summary:

- vague role, hard to search for

- custom role, small candidate pool

- lots of competition on sales side for more profitable, less risky alternatives

- lots of competition on coding side for less painful alternatives

- no "growing pool" of experienced candidates - if you're "good" (successful) you're often permanently off the market

The candidate pool that you're left with is a bunch of "unknown potentials" that have resolve. It's in essence a very low hit rate ecosystem.

In a sense, it's better to leave the job description vague too, because as soon as you begin vetting the candidates, you lose the only thing they have going for them - their willingness to face the unknown.

Amazing response! So, what are the highest impact ways to make it easier to find a good cofounder?

Because one has to be honest, own equal stake and plan for long run. Most startups are built for growth and raising next round quickly. As a result purpose and focus changes with time.

Have you had a best friend you didn’t meet before age 22 (or whenever you finished college)? I imagine it’s the same sort of mechanics at play.

yknow what they say in yc startup school, having a cofounder is like choosing someone for a marriage.

it takes a lot of chemistry to get it right.

Ask yourself why "good cofounders" are not seeking you out, or reciprocating your advances.

If you can do it yourself, do it yourself. Don't choose a cofounder unless you have to.

What if we could expand our universe of potential candidates globally? Perhaps that could increase the number of viable cofounders by a factor of 10 or more.

Rather than starting from the obvious reasons why finding a good cofounder is hard, I’d love to hear how it could be easier.

Let’s explore the hard part of this problem. Ideas?

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