Startups Cooperative: Workable or Pie in the Sky Fantasy? | Hacker News Reader

Startups Cooperative: Workable or Pie in the Sky Fantasy?

8 pointsKaizyn9 comments

As you know, the idea behind the corporation is the pooling of assets by many individuals to provide greater operating money and to spread out the risk of failure among the group. Could such a collective approach work for startups?

The idea here is less like a corporation and more of a cooperative bent. Each individual startup is still independently run and operated. However, because infrastructure can be troublesome and expensive, some sort of sharing agreement is in play. Instead of everyone writing all the components necessary to make their own startup function, such an arrangement opens up the possibility for code reuse. Granted if the component is a vital part of what makes your startup valuable or unique, it would not be reasonable to share it. Authentication code, web GUI frameworks, database(s) and the like seem like reasonable candidates for this sort of arrangement. Labor pooling and/or sub-contracting possibilities may also be viable as well.

Obviously, two startups in competition would not be ideal candidates for such a strategic partnership. However, companies using similar platforms and languages could benefit tremendously from such an approach.

One last thing of note, cooperation may also be useful in matters of platform creation. Consider the possibilities for say a purveyor of blogging systems, a photo hosting service, and a collaborative news service to join forces and build a common social graph to compete against Facebook, Google and Myspace.

I realize people don't usually get along very well together. However, some frameworks (like constitutional government) have succeeded in the past. So what do you think, is this idea totally ridiculous?

Not at all ridiculous. In fact, I was thinking something very similar about a week ago but I didn't really dwell on it. After reading PG's most recent article, a couple things he pointed out seemed like a solidification of what you and I are thinking. Particularly, the last section: 'Faster Advances'. I don't want to be redundant, so if you don't remember, here you go: http://paulgraham.com/webstartups.html.

More broadly, simply sharing some of the things you mention is cool and all, but what if teams with complementing ideas collaborated. If our team is accepted, I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for teams who may be in related problem domains, or are approaching issues we expect to encounter further down the road.

How about a start-up coop on a beautiful island somewhere?

Cheap-as-dirt living, gorgeous surroundings, fun as anything.

Get enough of us out there and we'll have that spark of community we all need, too.

Even if a group doesn't want to ultimately headquarter there due to distance from end-users/investors/whatever, set up a place where groups/duos/individuals can come for retreats (2 days --> 6 months, whatever you desire).

I'd go. Heck, I might do it myself.

(I'm not saying it wouldn't take some ingenuity to make this work practically. But it just might be worth the trouble.)

I've been thinking about this for a long time now.

The idea is sound, but I really think what it comes down to ultimately is People. If you have a bunch of the right people working together, previously difficult things suddenly become possible.

My idea revolves like yours around shared infrastructure. I would like a physical space, with servers, domain registration, payment gateways, and networking already set up, where groups of people can congregate for a long weekend of hacking. But to really produce quality work, it depends on the quality of the people, and the passion they have for the particular project.

Perhaps with enough different groups congregating often enough, eventually good ideas can take shape and good work can be done. I feel that creation of a platform may be aiming too high, I would be happy for just any type of startup to be created out of it.

So I think the idea has merit in some shape or form, but to my knowledge it hasn't been successfully done before.

Kaizyn:

The whole entrepreneurial system is based on competition, my friend. However, there's no need for each startup to re-invent the wheel. I, for one, welcome a change and a bit of experimentation of the startup variety is definitely keeping with the spirit of things. Why not see if a kind of parasitic, symbiotic relationship can be setup? I cross-posted on your piece to http://blog.innovators-network.org The Innovators Network is a non-profit dedicated to bringing technology to startups, small businesses, non-profits, venture capitalists and intellectual property experts. Please visit us and help grown our community!

Best wishes for continued success,

Anthony Kuhn Innovators Network

I don't like the idea and here's why.

At the earliest stages, you don't know what will give you a competitive advantage. You may think you do, but you really don't. As things get off the ground, you may find yourself in a totally different business that what you planned.

I have had several experiences where I rolled out several tools needed to do the real work, and it turned out that the tools became the product. Who knew. Good thing I didn't share them or I would've ended up with nothing.

Finding a community of like minded people, either in person or a place like here is a great idea. Sharing what you've got before you know what's really important might not be.

This is an excellent point. Had Joel Spolsky 'shared' the bug tracking system in such a cooperative pool, things would have turned out dramatically different for FogBugz.

Absolutely true. He could have wound up being the creator of THE major bug tracking system, used by nearly all web developers, large and small, and have created a major company that makes loads of money off of providing services, enhancements, training, etc. to the massive ecosystem of users that he created.

Instead, he runs a small, fairly non-influential company that sells a pretty minor, non-differentiated, proprietary bug tracking system that nobody in the mainstream tech community uses.

Dunno - sharing worked pretty well for RedHat and MySQL.

Who actually uses FogBugz? All his blog marketing does is make you think people use it but here in Silicon Valley I've rarely heard anyone use it.

I did a stint at a company who had bought it, and no one was using it. All the developers expressed disgust at its user-interface, and management didn't care what they used so they ended up writing their own.

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