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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

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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