

Ask HN: is single founder startup really frown upon / despised? - nonickyet

I applied to couple of accelerators and got shot down.<p>I am pretty sure the startup idea got their attention (I have shown my startup here and generally it is a positive feedback), however I think why I got denied is probably due to single founder.<p>Why is that single founder frown upon in the industry?  While I understand single founder has twice as much work, but I also think if they can build the startup from ground up to launch, it shows that they are capable of running the business.<p>A bit about me. I am a business founder with Product Management background. I do have engineering background, but not in web coding.  I build the startup myself by writing requirement, testing, everything that a tech co founder (CTO) can do except writing codes. I outsource the development using freelancers. I have few marketing strategies on how to spread the words out. As people usually say, Product Manager is like a mini CEO. I understand the mechanics of how it works, why it works, and how to run it.<p>The other reason I am a single founder now is because I want to prove to my future CTO (tech co founder) that I have what it takes to run the startup.  Without a web background, it is hard to attract or gather interests from a savvy web programmer, so I think it is necessary for me to show them that I understand it.<p>what is your take on this?
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steveklabnik
Business is hard. Programming is hard. Good at both programming and business?
More than twice as hard.

Also, from a scalability perspective, one founder means that everything blocks
on you. Going from one to two people significantly increases throughput.

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nonickyet
I understand that, but being a PM, I outsource my development to freelancer.
If you see it from the outside, it's like two people startup. I am in charge
in everything else, the freelancer is in charge of coding and build the site
based on my requirement

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gus_massa
In what language(s) can you program? How many LOC has the biggest program you
have written?

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nonickyet
my background is in EE, so HW coding, VHDL, Verilog, which is totally
different area than web programming. But for the last few years, I have not
done programming as I moved from engr to Product Management

