Ask HN: How did you and your cofounder meet? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How did you and your cofounder meet?

46 pointszackattack57 comments

I've heard it many times: cofounding a startup is like getting married. So, like the stories that couples tell, tell us your stories: how did you meet? From the first time you exchanged words, to the moment that you fully made the plunge .. what happened?

View on HN

My cofounders were my best friends from uni. I met Scott during freshman year. At Oberlin, students have 5 weeks off in the middle of winter when we're expected to cook for ourselves. I probably would have eaten ramen all 35 days for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but we banded together and became expert hash brown cooks.

I met Nick and in sophomore year and we started a street art group. We did some pretty crazy stuff that made a lot of people smile. I actually met my girlfriend because of an art project we pulled off particularly well.

I introduced Nick and Scott during the end of junior year. Nick and I needed another house mate for our sweet off-campus diggs and so I suggested Scott. They got along well, so we dragged Scott with us. Nick and Scott actually were working on a recreational project for a while called Marblar, it was this horrible 3D game where you are a marble and you wander a crudely created world for several minutes before the psychics engine crashed.

When Nick came up with the idea for the company, he kind of roped me in, and it was pretty obvious Scott should join us.

I have a few close friends who attended Oberlin, and I was always impressed with the 5 week break in winter. IIRC, its not so much time off, but rather time you're expected to pursue something, anything. Is that correct?

I wish other colleges would follow their lead. It leads to some really amazing experiences.

Grew up together, fell out of touch, reconnected during college (NCSU) and became good friends again.

Later, after we'd both dropped out and were working shitty jobs (read: retail), we both decided that this wasn't going to be the way our stories played out, and decided to start a web design company. I quit my job almost immediately, and he did soon after. Three years later, still going strong.

Failure has never been an option, because if this doesn't work I'm back to square one, and I'm not going back. That urgency has forced us to rapidly evolve our business model and given us the strength to tighten our belt buckles through the thin times.

I wouldn't change any of it, but holy shit was it scary.

Wow, I can't believe your office is 3 miles from my home, and 1/4 mile from my friend's business that I often visit. Small world.

That's wild. Drop me a line sometime, email's in my profile.

We were literally married. We met in an honors algorithms class at nyu.

My freshman year of college my cofounder and I were arch enemies in the web programming course at school. There was a competition around the final project and we were on opposing teams. I think it was mostly because we were jealous of each other's skills. That summer we both worked on research projects at school and became friends and caught the startup bug. At one point he mentioned that we should start a company together and I off-handedly agreed (I only vaguely remember this part although he's told me about it many times).

We tried various little side projects but never got very far during school. He graduated a year before me and got married and moved to San Francisco. Now that I've graduated and moved to San Francisco too we both live together in the same apartment with his wife, so in a way being cofounders is like being married for us :-)

Now we just have to find more time to hack on our stuff...

We were introduced by a mutual friend when we were in high school. We dated through college, and then got married. :) (Yes, my co-founder is also my wife.)

I'd always wanted to start my own business since as long as I could remember, but was biding my time in the corporate world until I felt I was "ready". She'd never really considered it, instead studying industrial/organizational psychology with the intent of becoming a professor.

After she passed comprehensive exams for her Ph.D., she started getting the feeling academia might be not be for her. Around the same idea, I had the idea that would eventually become our startup, and we started talking about it. As it turned out, she had studied the same topic from another point of view and had some great insight. The rest was dollars and cents.

My friend tells me that it is very difficult for those involved in a romantic relationship to go in business together as well. She says that it can be an additional source of conflict due to differing work styles, finances, and other problems. How do you two manage it?

My mom brought her home from the hospital when I was 3.

elaborate?

his sister

or half-sister, or that-kidnapped-girl-i-live-with

I'll take your sibling co-founder and raise you one. I have a twin co-founder

Clara & I met socially in college, partnered up for a compilers course (CS143), then did a fellowship together during our masters. Went our separate ways for 4 years after college (me to Seattle, she stayed in SF) but stayed close friends & traveled together, both for work & play.

We both quit our jobs this year to start something together...we've been talking about it for long enough it was about time. :)

Originally met each other at a local hackerspace http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Metalab

Spent lots of time together and got friends, then he decided to go after a product idea and I joined him.

For the valley folks this probably means hanging out at the Hacker Dojo http://hackerdojo.pbworks.com/

He was one of my good friend's boyfriend's roommates. We met at a party on my good friend's boyfriend's best friend's birthday.

All clear now?

I think so but can you show me a directed edge graph?

I lived in the same boarding house for two years with my first cofounder (Steve), who I started my first business with 7 years later. I was working for Accenture, and looking for a way out of the corporate world, and in fact was actively looking to start my own business, and Steve called me up and asked if I'd like to help him with this business idea he had...

My cofounder on my next business (Bob) is Steve's brother. I met him when I moved back to the UK, but obviously knew of him before, and had a strong introduction via Steve. I slept on his couch for 2 weeks when I first moved to London. Then I met him every once in a while for a few years, almost moved into the same flat-share at one point (the estate agent screwed up so it didn't happen). Then, at some point, the idea for Woobius came together (it was called Citeworks at the time...) and we got started on it.

haha. my cofounder and i are married. we met playing ultimate frisbee. we "adventured" more so than "dated," and were soon engaged. the startups came soon after. it was lucky that although we were so much in synch in spirit, our professional skills are complementary.

I first came across Justin when he blogged from the FamilySearch development conference back in March of 2008. My wife and I had been looking for months for a technical co-founder with a strong interest in family history. Justin's blog posts were noticed/quoted by a genealogy blogger I followed and that quickly led us to him.

Emails and phone conversations soon followed, and within a month he had started making our fledgling app his own, taking it in all sorts of new and better directions. Through it all, we've only actually "met" face-to-face for a total of about five days during the 20+ months we've worked part-time on Genlighten.

At the first Atlanta Startup Weekend. It was only after continued meets, coding and planning things out over coffee on saturdays, and so on, that it became apparent we were both interested in working together. 2 years later, still kicking it on Skribit.com and it's a good fit. We're both technical, he's a better overall developer and brings some previous startup & finance experience to the table, while my main hats include front-end and (some) design, etc.

team page: http://skribit.com/about

We were sitting next to each other during our Intro CS lab when groups were being assigned; I asked if he wanted to be my partner. We've been partners for pretty much everything ever since.

My cofounder Steve tried to hire me for a videogame startup. I ended up hiring him for my compressed air energy storage startup. He brought on Ed, a partner he worked with more than two decades ago; they created a startup, Cubicomp, that produced the first ever 3D graphics software running on a PC. It ran on an IBM XT. We've all switched back to physics/engineering from more of a software focus through our careers.

Its interesting to know from engineering startup. Would you mind telling the name of your startup.....

LightSail Energy. There isn't much on our website. We're stealth.

Mark and I for Ramamia (side project)- Met on hacker news!

Me + Cofounder of unannounced startup- Worked together at first startup + met through mutual friend from college.

Startup conference event. But we met 2-3 times in different conferences, recognized each other every time, updated our progress about what we did from last conference, and eventually decided to meet for coffee.

After 3-4 coffee meetings, we decided to join the hands.

And I'm very happy with the results. Its been 2-3 weeks only we started working together, but I already started seeing huge benefits.

One of my cofounders, we met because we were at the same college (I was an undergrad; he was a grad student.)

We met again years later as part of the same research group; by this point he was a postdoc and I was doing a PhD. Finished that, moved departments, and that's how I met my other cofounder: we were part of a team working on the same research project.

Meeting my co-founder was love at first sight - we were the only freshman in our discrete math class at Berkeley, so the GSI paired us up to be homework buddies. It was our first week in college.

What started as doing problem sets together ultimately turned into building a company together. As they say, "you'll find the one when you're least expecting to."

Sophomore year...of high school. Now ten years later and we're doing a startup together.

Grew up in the same neighborhood and went to elementary school and college together.

Went looking on elance for some help on a project.

2 years later we're founding a company together.

We met through craigslist but didnt work together initially. As time went on we were then connected to every social site out there. I hit him up on facebook to do lunch about an idea I was had and the rest is history.

At high school, in our dorm room; he was a junior, I a senior. I met our third cofounder years ago on the internet in a blogging network called Random Shapes.

We were in an entrepreneurship club together at our university (well techinically we had met a few times before in various classes and parties).

I'm involved in a couple of ventures and I've met each of my co-founders through past employment (all of us working at the same employer(s)).

College buddies - now working on Optask (http://www.optask.com)

Tennis match in a singles league... still kinda surprises me to this day that we're business partners now!

As interns at Google. We shared a workspace there, but it turned out that we attended the same university.

In university. We worked together on paired work and group work, and I rented a room in his house.

I find it interesting, that as far as I can tell, only a couple people said "previous co-worker".

I met mine via a previous job. We worked well together and decided to go create our own startup.

Through a bay area car enthusiast club. We realized we both had a passion for startups.

On a date.

Who hooked up the date, startupfriendfinder?

Hehe, nah... just good old-fashioned craigslist.

That's how nerds meet in the Bay :)

Freshman year in college. Ten years ago. At a math class.

Highschool baseball team ... best friends since

1) Sophomore Year in HS 2) IRC

First day of University

He read my blog

college and TECH cocktail

At a sausage fest like most hackers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com