YC Cofounder Matching Is Bad

I find it funny that the "bad tech profiles" highlighted read just like the "good tech profiles" - the "good" one is as nebulous as second "bad" one

And the first "bad" one, which the author complains is too specific (because "person reading it has no clue what it means. Just say you can build frontend or backend or train ML models etc") is just about the best profile listed in the whole article

Also: do not broad-brush insult readers of others' profiles - you have absolutely no idea what the other person understands when they read something: the "person reading it has no clue what it means" ... really? You know that when I mention specific technologies and work areas someone else does not know what they are!? Even if they do not know what the specifics are (maybe you have never heard of ELK Stack), that categories in which those tools have been leveraged are also listed means that either a) context clues will tell me what I need to know, b) I can do a quick search to find out what they are, or c) I can move on quickly because your areas of applied technical know-how do not [seem to] fit what I want to do

These profiles ought to be like the Summary of a good resume - give a quick-enough sketch of your interests and experiences to be able to give reasonable clues as to your relative fit for a new role

While binarily-founded startups are not bad (in the words of the article, "one who can build (Technical) and one who can sell (Non-Technical)", the organization will be far better off of there are either three founders, or if both founders have technical ("build") and non-technical ("sell") skills

Selling is as much of a "build" activity (in some cases, even more so) as is the ability to "build" - the best product or service in the world that no one knows about, or that does not meet any [potential] customer needs is a pointless waste of time on the part of the creator(s)

If you have such a split set of founders as the article seems to imply you "should", when either decides they want to do something different, the company is very liekly to fizzle and die - a "pure" sales person is not going to be able to adequately vet and find a replacement technical partner; and a "pure" technical person is going to barely have a snowball's chance at a wiener roast of finding a reliable sales partner.

If, as founders, you do not have skills in multiple areas, you are practically guaranteed to fail

>This person can build fast: Quality rarely matters in MVPs, Speed and number of iterations is the most important factor when pivot is just down the road.

While this statement happens to be true[ish], that it is even close to true is a major failing in the startup (and even non-startup) world

If you are not thinking about quality, scalability, and security from the start, you have no business being a founder of any kind

You need to be at least planning for the tool/service to scale. This does not mean you build the Google-of-2023 before Google-of-1998. It does mean if you are not planning for reliable, sustainable growth (more customers, more features, more integrations, etc), you are planning to fail (or to fit into such a tiny niche you will be innovated around by someone else who is planning these things)

All too often the "MVP" pivots into being the product or service actually offered - necessitating massive rewrites and workaround later if growth, stability, and security was not thought about from the git-go

Will read.