
You can now use YC's Startup School directory to find a cofounder - kevin
https://twitter.com/ilikevests/status/1148991554624688128
======
pbiggar
Looks like a good time to write my guide on how to find a cofounder and what
to do when you do.

Quick summary:

\- based on 3 failed cofounder relationships, 1 successful company (CircleCI)

\- current cofounding ([https://darklang.com](https://darklang.com)) very
strong

\- spoke to 50 potential cofounders (not 2-3 like before)

\- 50% of my pipeline were founders with underrepresented backgrounds

\- after first 10 had a profile that I was looking for (PM in consumer or
devtools)

\- had a 40 part questionnaire that potential cofounders filled in, took about
90 mins, sent them my answers after I got theirs

\- prioritize chemistry and company value alignment (eg questions like when do
you want to sell the company)

\- worked together on small company-building projects for a few weeks to
assess fit

\- went to cofounder therapy (still going, it's been two years)

\- getting 50 is hard, I asked for recommendations from friends, colleagues,
investors, posted on social media and linkedin, used angellist, went to
meetups, cold emailed people, cold linkedin messaged. All produced good leads
and lots of bad leads

~~~
rmac
Can you share the questionnaire?

~~~
atlasunshrugged
I'd also love to see the questionnaire if you're willing to share it

~~~
natrik
Me as well (There needs to be a way to save comments)

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Common problem for many HN readers. Some partial solutions in an old thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637835)

------
kevin
If you register now for Startup School 2019, you can now start using the
directory to find other single founders looking for a cofounder. Filter by
proximity, vertical and company description. This is a really great free
resource to help you do the single best thing to help your startup.

Over 11K founders have already signed up for Startup School. Classes start
July 22nd. [https://startupschool.org](https://startupschool.org)

------
ekc
"Cofounder dating" is a bad idea. Cofounders should be friends before starting
the company.

\- pg

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/852493839176785921](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/852493839176785921)

~~~
kevin
Startup School is a good way to start finding a friend with similar interests.
You gotta start somewhere.

\- Kevin (YC Partner / Startup School Instructor/Host)

~~~
eloff
I'm with pg on this, starting a company with someone is a bigger commitment
than getting married and without the physical chemistry to help things through
tough spots. You'd be crazy to do that with someone you just met. I can't help
thinking you'd actually be decreasing your odds of success versus just being a
single founder. I'll stay a single founder and I feel that's the right
decision for me. I can weather the highs and lows. I remain curious to see if
the data will back this up more generally.

Long term this could be a good idea to meet people with similar interests, but
to partner with for your next startup maybe. Not for now.

~~~
mrep
> starting a company with someone is a bigger commitment than getting married

How? You can leave a company you founded at any any time without any financial
repercussions usually but marriages you cannot unless you get a prenup (which
probably costs legal fees) and that's not even including the ring nor wedding.

~~~
TuringNYC
>>>> starting a company with someone is a bigger commitment than getting
married

>> How? You can leave a company you founded at any any time without any
financial repercussions

Absolutely not! Leaving a company has huge financial repercussions! If you
have no agreement, you are either killing the company (as everyone disbands)
or end up with either no ownership or end up with some uncertain amount of
ownership as all the owners fight amongst themselves. If you do have a vesting
agreement, you've usually lost everything if you haven't reached your 1st year
cliff vest.

Either way -- you've lost a lot --

0\. You've "lost" all the work you put in (often at zero or low salary). You
often put in 80hr workweeks -- at that rate you could have made a boatload of
money with a real job or contracting, and instead you put it all in as sweat
equity and now the company owns all that unpaid effort, not you.

1\. You've lost all the money you may have invested into the company

2\. You've lost all the IP you came up with but may now be owned by the
company

Also, I'd be worried if the startup means so little that you are willing to
walk away without disappointment -- because startups go through hard times and
you have to be willing to slog through the despair without quitting.

~~~
EGreg
This is silly. Most startups funded by these VC types are “go big or go home”
and “fail fast” types. All this stuff you said about the company failing is an
what the VC pushes you to do 9 out of 10 times and move on. The money lost
came from various sources including investors who take risks for a living.

How do you say that is worse than kids growing up in a broken home and many
lives affected? An entrepeneur can have 5 failures and 8 successful exits. Do
you want to say the institution of marriage can be like that?

~~~
TuringNYC
My comment was that "walking away" every time one has a founder conflict is
not without financial consequences.

I didn't actually make any comments about marriages being more or less
important or impactful than startups.

~~~
EGreg
Ah I see. I saw your comment in the context of the pg comment being debated:

“I'm with pg on this, starting a company with someone is a bigger commitment
than getting married”

------
priyankt
Just like “Who is hiring” thread, a “Looking for co-founder” thread every
quarter or 6 months might be helpful to the community? That can help start the
conversation which is the first step towards finding the right co-founder. You
can also get a good idea about a person by looking at their submission/comment
history on HN.

~~~
tyleo
Someone posted one of these recently. I am looking for a cofounder and don’t
find one but still found the thread interesting. I think it would be good for
the community.

------
burtonator
Screw that... I'm going to find a co-founder right here! :)

[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

I need someone really awesome in product + growth OR an amazing React +
frontend developer.

We've made GREAT progress so far..

Here's the rough elevator pitch.

Polar is a tool for managing knowledge which is kind of a hybrid of Kindle,
Github, and Slack. Polar allows you to keep all your knowledge and reading
material in one place. You can easily suspend and resume reading complex
technical material and annotate and take notes directly without ever having to
leave your reading platform.

More specifically, Polar implements spaced repetition, is a technique from
cognitive science to prevent the user from forgetting the material they've
read. This same technology is used in other platforms like Duolingo but we
apply it to other areas outside of just language learning.

... and here's what I'm struggling with at the moment.

1\. The long term vision is large but I have to do a better job of explaining
the short term vision.

2\. I need to do a much better job of conveying the 'aha' moment to our users
who visit the site.

3\. Marketing right now can definitely be improved. Huge opportunity there.

I've nailed a LOT but of course everyone has limited talents and time. The
areas where Polar shines:

\- our users that 'get it' LOVE Polar.

\- we have a lot of users that STILL love Polar but are waiting to come on
board due to one or two smaller missing but critical features. Like Firefox
support or mobile or something along these lines. They users LOVE the app once
they get the aha moment.

~~~
jpking
Polar sounds interesting. I've got experience in helping the tech-focused sell
their visions, so I might be able to help.

Despite that I'm probably not co-founder material. I'm heading back to Uni in
September to study comp sci. But I'm interested in finding impactful side
projects.

If you're interested in a chat email me: jpk@zealous.digital

------
baby_wipe
This works great as a reality check to see how my idea isn't as original as I
thought.

~~~
yeldarb
I browsed through the hundred or so other Startup School companies in my
vertical and there’s nothing even close to my vision of the future (using
computer-vision to add a software layer to real world objects; proof of
concept:
[https://twitter.com/braddwyer/status/910030265006923776](https://twitter.com/braddwyer/status/910030265006923776)).

It’s pretty frustrating actually; it seems obvious to me that it will be the
future of human-computer interaction.

I have been waiting for someone to build it for the past 18 months... but
nobody seems to be working on it. I finally said “screw it” and I’m going to
build it out myself.

If this sounds interesting feel free to reach out! I’m one of the ones looking
for a cofounder. (Twitter is easiest. My dms are open)

~~~
machinelearning
Isn’t that the goal of every AR startup/project? Care to explain?

~~~
yeldarb
Maybe I haven’t been looking in the right places but I’ve downloaded most of
the AR apps and games that have come out for iOS thus far and they’re almost
all gimmicky.

Simply plopping a 3D model into the room isn’t particularly compelling or
useful. But that seems to be the bar for “AR apps” today.

~~~
machinelearning
Most AR apps today are based on the same toolboxes, either opencv, arkit or
arcore. The latter 2 are actually pretty good (in terms of tracking and plane
detection) for more simple use cases.

So by gimmicky I assume you’re talking specifically about the use case?

If so it’s probably true that majority of ar apps are games that don’t work
too well or ar just demos/prototypes.

However there are a few that are pretty functional e.g. the measuring app in
iOS. Was your idea to consolidate all such use cases to create a general
purpose app?

~~~
yeldarb
The magic comes when combining AR with an app that understands what it’s
looking at and how to contextually interact with it.

The AR toolkits tell you about the 3D environment but they don’t do anything
to tell you about the context.

When your app understands what it’s looking at it can add relevant
functionality (eg solve a paper Sudoku puzzle, give hints, check your work,
scan into a playable app, etc).

Happy to talk about it more! Shoot me a DM.

~~~
machinelearning
Generalized scene understanding is still a hard problem in both academia and
industry. The big companies are working on such things with access to tons of
data.

Assuming you do know what’s in the scene semantically most ar applications
that aren’t games do intend to use that information. I’d say the primary
hurdle there is still general scene understanding.

It’s easy to identify a sudoku puzzle but not so easy to identify and classify
all 3D objects with any sense of precision yet. Seems like a large scale data
play to me..

~~~
yeldarb
Definitely. Not everything I’d like to do is possible at the moment but
Machine Learning is getting better so fast that more and more will become
feasible bit by bit.

I have a bunch of ideas that seem like low hanging fruit, a bunch that seem
hard but possible, and a lot that will be possible someday. And hopefully I
can help accelerate that timeline.

------
claudiulodro
So, the part I don't get is how you need to have already started working on
your startup to get access to the directory. Like, if you find a co-founder on
it, won't one or both of the founders have to shut down their start up to work
together?

------
andrewstuart
PG both highly recommends having a cofounder and also identifies cofounder
conflict as a leading reason for company failure.

So what's the "right" thing to do?

Have a cofounder to greatly increase your chances or success, or endanger your
company by getting a cofounder?

~~~
ttcbj
The answer, as with all things in starting a business, is that you have to
make wise decisions that yield good results. Seriously.

If you choose a great co-founder with complementary skills and personality, it
will drive you forward. If you choose poorly, you would have been better off
staying single. The only thing that is really going to matter is your specific
results. There is no reason for there to be a general rule that applies to
everyone.

------
friendscallmejw
As someone with two acquisitions under their belt (now technically three since
IBM acquired Red Hat, though I wasn't part of that deal in any significant
capacity) I can say that the next time I look for a cofounder, I'm going
straight to the YC Startup School directory.

Nothing like a cofounder with no real world experience, YC level entitlement,
and a history of running/failing out of an overcapitalized tech-startup.

~~~
haggy
Your sarcasm and snark is next level. Well done.

~~~
friendscallmejw
Thank you, I put extra effort into it on that comment.

------
holoduke
A little bit off topic and a bit pessimistic, but I have just started a new
company and I am surprised how high the rates are for services related to job
postings/cofounders. Linkedin, angellist etc. If you don't watch out you can
easily spend 50k on zero result. Unfortunately not all startups are backed by
5m. Wonder how much this service costs.

~~~
opportune
I've never had this issue before but why not either

1) act as recruiter yourself. Yeah, some activist investors will tell you to
only focus on core business stuff/creating product market fit but that's just
certain people's opinion. Presumably you have some kind of network you can
leverage + you can cold message people earnestly

2) Contract with a recruiting agency to perform some of the
administrative/vetting part and give you the candidate for 1-2 interviews. You
only pay for each hire. Expensive (I've heard of rates in the 10-30k range)
but definitely does not cost $50k for zero result. This has the added benefit
of allowing you to bundle recruiting tasks that you yourself probably don't
have time for like background checks

------
zafka
Are there many young hungry lawyers who go to startup school? I have always
felt if I could hook up with a good lawyer who liked dealing with the
bureaucratic stuff the sky would be the limit.

~~~
avinium
What field are you with so much red tape that you need a lawyer cofounder?

~~~
zafka
The Field I am currently working in is "medical devices", but I have a very
wide range of interests from agricultural to grinding and cutting tools,
Ceramics, etc. Obviously you really don't need a lawyer on full time, but
someone with that bent could be taking care of all the paper stuff which I can
comprehend, but all too often put off.

------
segmondy
If you're an amazing frontend design who can write nice HTML/CSS from scratch,
ping me.

------
m0zg
This is a _profoundly_ bad idea. Cofounders should have a strong personal
relationship before they start a company. They need to actually _know_ and
_trust_ each other. I'd rather start a company without a co-founder than bring
in someone I don't know as an even remotely equal partner.

~~~
kevin
Most people are in Startup School haven't even started or have no idea. SUS is
a perfect place to start on a small project with other people. From our
experience at YC, getting a cofounder is the single best thing to improve the
odds of your startup.

~~~
m0zg
That could be at the same time true on average and not true for the specific
case where the founders don't know each other all that well (and therefore
don't trust each other much more than you'd trust a stranger). If you have
stats on the latter case, I'd be curious to see them. If not, consider
collecting the stats from this experiment.

Maybe people are "good by default" and all that, but I do have some very early
stage startup experience (VPEng), and both the founders and the employees have
enough trouble trying to not get screwed even without such additional
complications. Money and egos always find a way to ruin everything.

------
azhenley
This is great! I've been looking for a way to find a cofounder.

~~~
logicallee
what are you working on or would like to do?

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andrewstuart
Is this an official Ycombinator project or something else?

~~~
verdverm
Yes, it's a ten week program. You should see a link at the bottom of HN

------
OrgNet
he tells you that you have to have a cofounder to get funding and then tells
you how to get a cofunder... thanks pg

------
crimsonalucard
I'm a senior developer. I'm up to quit my job and start something for anyone
who's looking for a technical cofounder. Specifically though I prefer people
who compliment what I lack in areas of salesmanship and social engineering.

~~~
noloblo
Crimson what’s your email

~~~
crimsonalucard
heynairb@gmail.com

------
devteambravo
I'm a passionate born entrepreneur with a powerful story and a weirdly
extended network. I'm a warrior, a recruiter, and I believe in violence of
action.

Are your a chess player with a taste for risk? I'm interested in creating the
company of the future, heavy on processes and UX. Let's mix empathy and Sun
Tzu's the Art of War to create a global conglomerate?

