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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

Trevor: Thank you for replying. I hope you (and Jessica, and everybody else involved with Startup School) don't take what I've written personally -- I nearly didn't post it for exactly that reason, but decided in the end that you're all grown-ups who won't be offended by honest criticism. ;-)

And thank you for your comments when we met -- talking to you was the highlight of the weekend for me (I didn't mention it in the blog post simply because I don't like "outing" people, in case they didn't want their presence at an event to be widely known), both because "Hey, it's tlb!" and because of the confidence you showed in Tarsnap's potential. Thirty seconds of talking to you was more inspiring than the rest of the weekend.

As for finding a co-founder... you're not the first person to say that, but after 8 years of writing code I really don't think I could bring in a co-founder at this point.

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You'd make a perfect business co-founder for Tarsnap. The math problems standing in the way don't even crater the approach to the bridge of the Putnam.

This is the point of Thomas and I trying to convert you to The Dark Side, for values of dark which include "delighting more people, including more Colin."

I really just want him to pick better fonts.

What on earth is wrong with the fonts?

The picokerning!

I think that Thomas often gets excited enough that his integer counter wraps.

I rather like your fonts.

The thing that is hardest about tarsnap is that it is not possible to predict my costs, as potio11 noted some time ago. I am OK with the picodollars, personally.

I feel there's something inconsistent to be reconciled here.

On one hand single-founder startups don't get as big, which is a bad thing. On the other, writing code for 8 years as a single founder is right about the definition of doing things that don't scale, which is a good thing. So you can't say Colin running Tarsnap as a single founder for 8 years was bad for Tarsnap.

But it also sounds like unexplored terrain. The more specialized a skill you need for some types of work, the more likely this scenario is to happen. What's missing here is a way forward. If the goal of Tarsnap is to grow, the north star is Tarsnap's growth rate.

Colin, could you share more about what you are looking for?

If the goal of Tarsnap is to grow, the north star is Tarsnap's growth rate.

Well, Tarsnap's goal isn't to grow. I mean, growth is nice, but I'd be perfectly happy if it stayed at its current size; my priority is to have a good product.

I deeply admire anyone who does business like you.

I am curious; how do you come to the conclusion that staying small is better than growing the product/business and taking over as some suggest?

I said that Tarsnap's goal wasn't to grow, not that Tarsnap's goal was to not grow. What it comes down to is that Tarsnap is large enough now to be easily self-sustaining (it pays me more than I would expect to earn anywhere else), and my goal from the start was "build the service I want to use", not "become rich".

That's how I run my game project as well. Except that I haven't gotten to a point where it can sustain working on it full time. Have you written about the history of Tarsnap like how you started it, how long before you were able to use it as a living, etc...?

I haven't written any sort of history like that, although you can get a few bits of history from looking back at my older blog posts. Tarsnap has always been my full-time job, though; when it was still very small I supplemented it by doing some consulting, but mostly I lived off my savings.

"Single-founder startups don't get as big, which is a bad thing"

Setting aside the question of whether this is true, why is it bad to have a smaller business? I can think of several advantages, not the least of which is the luxury of remaining the sole developer.

It's weird that you spend the comment telling Colin what he's doing wrong, and then ask him at the end what he wants.

I didn't say it's bad to have a smaller business. I said it's bad to have a smaller startup. Because by definition a startup is a company designed to grow. If a business isn't growing then it's not a startup. Between the two extremes of being a Google or a barbershop, it's closer to a barbershop.

It also isn't as weird that I wrote that comment considering I alarmingly find myself falling into Colin's shoes as a single founder. If there's a trap laying ahead that I could avoid, I'd rather know about it sooner than later. It's not to disparage Colin that I wrote the comment. It's to learn from him. I like Tarsnap and I'm a Tarsnap customer.

If there's a way forward that is unexplored terrain, I at least would like to learn more about it.

I wonder how far YC pondered over this question actually. What do you do with the cpercivas?

This gutsy, uncompromising quality is a trait of successful founders. I'm curious to see what will happen.

"Because by definition a startup is a company designed to grow"

That is not what the word means in common usage.

Merriam-Webster: "a fledgling business enterprise"

Oxford: "A newly established business"

Wikipedia: "A company, partnership or temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model"

Etc.

Paul Graham: "A startup is a company designed to grow"

No wonder that's not what the word means in common usage considering startups themselves haven't been common enough to make it into hundred-year old dictionaries.

Yeah. Stupid old dictionaries. Hey: a good YC application idea! Disrupt them!

The biggest thing I learned from this downvoting is that sometimes it's better to only quote new knowledge and let others pick up the conversation from there.

>>On the other, writing code for 8 years as a single founder is right about the definition of doing things that don't scale, which is a good thing.

Doing things that don't scale isn't good in and of itself - it's just a means to figuring out what product people want, and offering an early version of it without investing in the ability to scale. Once you've done that, I think the point is to figure out how to scale the previously un-scalable activity, and then you have a business.

I don't like "outing" people, in case they didn't want their presence at an event to be widely known

I understand where you're coming from, but in the present context this is consideration bordering on madness. Trevor is one of the founding Y Combinator partners. How on Earth could it be "outing" him to note that he was at Startup School?

I never assumed that every YC partner would be at every YC event. As far as I'm aware Trevor wasn't organizing Startup School, merely attending it; and PG (for example) didn't seem to be there at all beyond his appearance on stage.

I wouldn't say that Trevor was trying to go incognito, but he certainly didn't seem to be trying to make his presence obvious either.

While I admire your conscientiousness, I think you may be overshooting caution and flirting with timidity. Audentes Fortuna iuvat.

>really don't think I could bring in a co-founder at this point.

Rather than a co-founder at Tarsnap you might consider a co-founder at a new backup venture using Tarsnap's technology but with a new brand name and user friendly stuff like a graphical interface and not deleting everything if you don't pay for 2 weeks?

> talking to you was the highlight of the weekend for me

Sounds like attending was worth it for you, after all, and for the same main reason you noted in your post: networking.

We may be running into terminological variance here. By "networking" I meant meeting new people.

Why not (re 8 years)?

Leaving aside the semantics, I'd always begrudge any control I gave away after being 100% in charge for so long.

I don't understand either why many are suggesting you get a cofounder. You just need another person who can work on UI, branding, PR, etc. Don't give them any equity, don't give them any control over the innards of tarsnap, just pay them a handsome wage (for the handsome job that they'll do).

p.s.: in my ideal world, you are every founder (doesn't partake in shitty, ethically-questionable growth-hacking techniques), and your company is every company (offers a decidedly great service, no gimmicks). I think it's extremely unfortunate that you have to do these extra things to be successful on the next level... I wish things weren't this way. But unfortunately you do have to play this strange ballgame to get there.

Right, and that's exactly what I'm planning on doing.

> p.s.: in my ideal world, you are every founder (doesn't partake in shitty, ethically-questionable growth-hacking techniques), and your company is every company (offers a decidedly great service, no gimmicks)

Are you a Tarsnap customer?

Not yet, but I think I probably will be in 3'ish months (because of startup's needs). Why do you ask?

I think you're underestimating how hard all those non-coding skills are. When you laundry list "UI, branding, PR, etc" I can almost see you doing a hand-wavy motion. The reality is, anyone that's truly awesome at non-technical things deserves some equity for the 10X-100X growth they will help bring to the business. The truth is you can be 8 years in, but only 10% of the way there.

I say this as a person who has worked as a front end engineer for a fair bit of time that a handsome-looking salary (like, say, ~200k) is more than good enough for great work on the laundry list of non-tech tasks of a startup in the beginning stages. Couple that with the fact that right now this is a tech engineer's market, not the business/frontend person's -- even the great ones are a dime a dozen out there.

> The truth is you can be 8 years in, but only 10% of the way there.

I don't think this is true for tarsnap. tarsnap at this moment is a finished application people can get right now. The technology component of the company is completely solid, not in need of any repair or improvement, it's only the UI and other things that have to be improved. Colin's gotten it more than 80% there.

> The technology component of the company is completely solid

But the technology component is only ~2/10ths of a company.

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