Under No Circumstances Should You Decide To Go It Alone
thefailingpoint.com
thefailingpoint.com
If you've got an idea, then go work on the damn idea! If you happen to have a co-founder that believes in the same vision, then good for you; otherwise, keep forging ahead and focus on what needs to be done. You may encounter that in order to be effective, you need another person to do 'X" because you literally cannot do 'X' effectively; but don't confuse that with a need to find a co-founder.
No question, you can work on your idea without a partner. That's the problem. You'll risk spending dozens or hundreds of hours on your pet project before showing it to anyone with the incentive and the social position to tell you that it won't work. Your friends won't do that. They like you. They don't want to hurt your feelings.
Worse, when you do find out that your idea doesn't work, you might become despondent. Too despondent to notice that all you need is a few tiny tweaks and suddenly things will be fixed. But there's nobody to help you find those tweaks, because nobody else understands the project. Your friends and loved ones don't get it. It's just you, alone with your problem. By the time you get ahold of yourself and get sober enough to realize that your project is salvageable, days or weeks might have gone by.
You can try to be objective about your own work. But be warned: Not only is it likely to be less effective, but it's torture. It's the source of the emotional roller coaster that entrepreneurs so often complain about -- the one where you're euphoric one minute and despondent the next.
Whereas, what you are really looking for in a great "partner" is really a "customer" that is willing to pay!
Because think about it, if your real problem is the question of whether you can create a real business, then wouldn't finding that first customer that is literally willing to pay you for your idea (monetarily or through time and advice) a much better avenue?
On top of that, there is also that assumption that your partner will have the necessary skills to somehow solve you "do I have enough of a business" problem; which isn't a guarantee either! Technically, you're both going to be dumb shits.
At the end of it, I think failures and co-relation to # of founders is completely wrong. It all comes down to whether you have the discipline to think about operating a business, and the ability to a) understand your weaknesses and b) find leverage in compensating for it.
The main argument being made is that founders share pressure. But how much of this pressure is self-inflicted by the need to support a large team or chase aggressive growth strategies that will justify getting funding? So much pressure disappears once you start making money, and if going alone means you've avoided the need to define compensation schemes then you can breathe easily.
I can see why larger teams are more attractive to investors. But I don't think this is good advice to younger technically-minded founders who can do the heavy lifting in creating products themselves and often just lack confidence in themselves or their markets to figure out the rest.
There may be no 'I' in 'team,' but you can't spell 'team' without 'me.'
Am I the only one who sees the no-I-in-team chestnut as obviously manipulative?
Not to mention, there was a great article about solo entrepreneurs on HN a while ago that, I think, is something of an existence counter-proof of this article.
After reading about people's successes here, I've taken it to heart that a team of founders is a better way to go than a single founder; but whenever I try to get a group of people together it ends up feeling like I've taken on employees instead of co-founders. By that, I mean that things only seem to get done if I personally push for them to happen. I'm not interested in having founding employees, if I'm going to go the route of having co-founders then I'd like everyone to have equal input and as equal contribution as we can manage.
However, it doesn't seem to be as easy as just saying "we're all in this together as founders, let's get on with it" (I've tried this tact and it just hasn't worked).
I guess the distilled question is: how do you find co-founders that are as driven as you are?
And as a follow-on, how important is geographic relativity to your co-founders? Being in a non-startup hub, it makes it a little tough to find groups of people out and interested in working on startups (versus going out to find interesting jobs).
The upside of our current era is that finding like minded souls is made much easier, even if you aren't living in a startup hub. However, from my experience living in Houston for a while, it's hard for non-founder types to understand why you would want to start your own thing. The startup hubs have more people who embrace this possiblity of failure.
I have met many an intersting potential founder at events like the bar camps, startup weekends, etc. It's not going to happen over night for sure.
Working with a remote team can be challenging, but with Skype etc, it's much easier than it used to be. However, when you are slogging out the long nights, having proximity to your team matters, especially your co-founders. It's not a deal breaker, but it will help.
All of the benefits he outlined were individual: motivation, skills, connections, perspective. All of these things are required to some degree in any startup, but individual experiences may vary.
Bottom line: If you have a need, fill it. If not, don't force it.
(The load would be easier to handle if I didn't have a full time consulting gig.)
The good thing is that I get to learn something about everything.