
Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder! - BitGeek

An oft lamented consern is the difficulty in finding a co-founder.  Next to this is the regular discussion of what kind of founder to get, how to know you've got a good one... and all the possible problems that can happen when founders don't agree.<p>Well, I'm am old man at almost 40 and I've spent the last 18 years working for startups of less than 100 people, many of them successful, and almost all of them founded by more than one person-- and in almost all situations I knew at least one of the founders very well. <p>The number one thing that caused the unsuccessful companies to fail was fights between the co-founders.  And the successful ones-- were ones where the co-founders were very harmonious, because they had worked together for <i>years</i> before founding the company (multiple instances of this.)  Of course, there were also instances where co-founders had worked before and they still fought all the time.<p>A co-founder is not what you need, unless you already have one, and you have as good a relationship with them as the best relationship you've ever had with anyone in your life.  If you KNOW you're not going to have a problem, then great.<p>But for most of you-- those who don't know others who are as entreprenurial or don't already know someone - and have known for quite awhile that they would be a good co-founder-- you should not get a cofounder.<p>I know that PG says you need a co-founder, but while his intentions are good he's slightly off the mark.  Sure, its better to have more than one person in the company... and feel free to call your second thru fourth employees "co-founders" or give them "founders stock"... whatever.<p>But at the end of the day, if its your idea and you are the one who has decided to dedicate the next several years of your life to this project, then found the company and make everyone else who joins you an employee.<p>Employees can have good chunks of stock.  But you gotta have the authority question out of the way.  You have to be a good leader to run a company... and getting people in you don't know too well works much better when you both know they are employees (Even if they are called founders or whatever, how about "founding team" or "founding employees".) <p>Its  better for you to have the ultimate say and make a few wrong decisions, than for you and your co-founders to be fighting.<p>Nobody will ever have as much passion for the idea than the originator, and genuinely visionary people understand their idea on a level and in a context that nobody else will ever... thus you have to lead.  <p>Next to Venture Capitalist (who force companies to misallocate funds or go after longshots and abandon sure things), co-founders are the biggest reason companies fail.   And actually its even worse- when you have co-founders VCs like to get involved and start manipulating things. <p>Every time I've seen one founder pushed out or marginalized in favor of other founders by the VC firm, the company has not lasted 9 months after that. <p>For an example of the success of a single founder with founderr employees--look at Amazon.com.  Bezos is clearly the founder, and he got engineers in early, they got good stock, but they knew what they were.  The company would be much different if these employees had thought they were equal with the guy who had the vision.<p>So, those who are desperately seeking a co-founder.... stop... employees are much easier to find anyway.  And you can find ones who will take stock as compensation.  (Just don't be stingy-- I once was in talks with a company who was building out the founding team and offered me %1 stock plus a serious pay cut... I turned them down-- why take the real risk of a pay cut when there's no equity upside?)<p>Anyway... think about it-- and don't be held up waiting for that founder... start pressing forward without one and when you need to build your team, bring people on who are ready to follow you... and when their egos are not involved, things will go much better.<p>
======
pg
The fact that most plane crashes are due to engine failure doesn't mean planes
shouldn't have engines.

All you have to do is look at the empirical evidence. Successful single-
founder startups are so rare that they're famous on that account.

I'm not saying that having a cofounder is so important that you should take
someone lame, or someone you don't know well. Maybe if you can't find a
cofounder you're just screwed; I don't have enough data yet to say for sure.
But someone going into a startup as a single founder should be aware they're
doing something that, for whatever reason, rarely works.

~~~
BitGeek
The plane analogy doesn't work because dual engine planes are more reliable
than single engine planes... unlike founding teams, engine can't decide that
they want to go in different directions and engines are not insecure, ego
driven, or prone to misunderstanding each other. Nor do engines have investors
coming in sowing dissent between them.

If you look at the empirical evidence, you will see that most successful
companies are started by an individual. Now, of course, a successful company
needs more than one person to be involved-- they need employees. And early
employees can be very well rewarded and significant contributors to shaping
the idea.

But leadership by consensus does not work, as anyone who has belonged to a
high school club or organization knows. In a business environment, it is
death- the founders never reach consensus and generally they constantly pull
against each other, undermining each other and ultimately undermining the
company.

Leadership by consensus is quite literally the absence of leadership.

When there is a leader, and that leader is capable, the company succeeds.

If you have a pair of people who work well together, then as you concede
generally one of them will be the clear leader. Dividing the work and having
each lead sections of the company is fine- if you know the person who you can
do that with. But such people are generally quite rare.

Unfortunately, the advice that you must find a founder in order to start a
company is bad advice-- in most cases this will lead to the company failing.
There are, of course, examples of pairs of people who co-founded companies
together and they are well known because they are the exception. But the vast
majority of successful american enterprises are started by an individual with
an idea and the dedication to pursue that idea.

Forming a company takes vision. It takes dedication and it takes certainty
that there is something there- and opportunity to add value that has not
already been seen and seized by other entities.

This is why leaders who start companies are far more likely to success than
friends who decide to "do a startup" and "manage by consensus."

If you don't have a cofounder already- you shouldn't be looking for one. Hire
some employees.

But you're far from screwed-- simply looking at the history of startups in
America and you'll see that single men with vision are most often the ones who
succeed.

~~~
pg
_Leadership by consensus does not work, as anyone who has belonged to a high
school club or organization knows._

Worked for us at Viaweb and Y Combinator. Works for most of the 58 startups
we've funded.

And btw, you're misinterpreting my analogy about the plane, but I'm out of
stock on "no, what I meant was" so I'll leave it as an exercise for readers
who care to figure out how.

~~~
BitGeek
Your plane analogy was responding to a strawman anyway... thus it was pretty
asinine to begin with.

I'm sure concensus management has worked for you-- never said it didn't and
haven't said its impossible. However, the problem is that you're saying people
_must_ have a co-founder, and that they _must_ manage this way... and there's
a big difference between having a cofounder you've known a long time and
getting a cofounder because you foolishly followed the advice of a self styled
guru.

If my response seems harsh, its because your tone is pretty strong. If you
expressed your opinions in terms of preferences it would be one thing-- but
you lay them down and defend them like they are religious law, and do not
respond to the fact that this religious law does not work in all situations...
which brings us back to the plane analogy-- its great for trying to make me
look stupid, but its piss-poor (actually irrelevant) for arguing against what
I was actually saying.

------
BrandonM
I like the case you're making here, which mainly seems to be that if you're
waiting around on a cofounder, you're trying to solve the wrong problem.
Unless you already have a potential cofounder in mind, you may be opening
yourself to other problems by trying to find one (delaying the project,
working with someone who turns out to be not as good as hoped, etc.). So I
have to agree that your advice to just start working anyways seems quite good.

That said, just tonight I was able to see what value a cofounder can have in a
simple programming project for a class. I had an idea for a project, and he
already had some ideas for how we could go about doing it (various machine
vision algorithms). We then bounced various ideas off each other, came up with
a good interface, argued a little bit about some small details, and came up
with a good, shared-effort approach to tackle the problem at hand.

Having a "cofounder" in this case already has proven to have a few worthwhile
benefits:

1\. Shared knowledge leads to less time necessary in research

2\. Ability to think out loud to someone besides yourself or a pet

3\. Having to work with someone forces you to come up with decent interfaces
for the pieces of code, leading to more modular, maintainable code than if you
just jumped in single-handedly.

4\. The work is shared (duh :-)

5\. If I don't feel like working on the code the day before our planned
meeting, that's too bad. I'm still going to have to do it or look like an ass
the next day.

Maybe point number 5 is the biggest one. Inevitably, there will be stupid
little stuff which is part of the project that you just don't want to do.
Having someone to face at the end of the day may just be that little bit of
extra motivation you need.

Of course, it's still possible to do much of this stuff on your own. Being
able to leverage open source libraries helps with 1 and 4, so if you can
handle 2 3 and 5 on your own, then you can probably do it without a cofounder.

~~~
copenja
Getting along with a co-founder is nothing like getting along with a partner
in a class project.

I have friends that I worked great with in college. They all remain my dear
friends, but...

after years of hacking together, and literally hundreds of thousands of lines
of code, sometimes you just don't see eye to eye..

I agree a co-founder is beneficial, but it is very different then just hacking
a project out with a buddy.

~~~
rms
>Getting along with a co-founder is nothing like getting along with a partner
in a class project.

The OP compares a good cofounder to a really good relationship... it is
probably not a coincidence that "partner" applies both in the sexual/societal
union sense and in the business sense.

~~~
copenja
Sorry I came off harsh.

I was not questioning whether a "really good relationship" was a good
foundation for selecting a co-founder.

I was questioning whether a one night project signifies a "really good
relationship".

It may or may not.

I think the OP had many great insights and I enjoyed reading his post.

Also, W3STS1D3 4 L1F3!!

------
pius
In my (truly) humble opinion, co-founders are overrated, especially by this
crowd. The value of an inner circle of talented and trustworthy first
employees, on the other hand, can't be overestimated.

------
BitGeek
My title gave a little bit the wrong impression-- it sounds like I'm saying
that cofounders are bad. I'm not.

What I mean is, if you don't already have a cofounder, don't get one. You
don't need one.

If you find someone, then maybe that's great... but understand the risks.

But you should never go get one because you think you need one... that's a
recipe for failure.

------
Lockheed
Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder for the sake of getting a co-founder.

~~~
BitGeek
And don't for a second think that getting a cofounder is a requirement for
success.

------
gigamon
BitGeek:

Your post is simply amazing. I couldn't agree more. Having multiple co-
Founders does not guarantee success but also does not guarantee failure. But
if a startup with multiple co-Founders were to somehow become successful, it
is still very difficult for it to grow beyond the bootstrapping stage. I
actually have one chapter planned for my on-line book to be entitled "Middle
Management Gone Wild" which is what happens to the later stage of a successful
startup with multiple co-Founders. It is the same difficulty that a hunting
party would have growing into a village.

Thanks again.

\--Denny--

Denny K Miu

<http://www.startupforless.com>

~~~
BrandonM
_It is the same difficulty that a hunting party would have growing into a
village._

Maybe it's just me, but this analogy is not all that clear to me. What exactly
prevents a hunting party from growing into a village? If the point is that a
village would require people to fill support roles, I think that is what the
employees of the company would be for. That would destroy the analogy, so I
think I must be missing something.

~~~
gigamon
In the beginning of a startup, especially one that has multiple co-Founders of
equal stature, the command structure is exactly that of a hunting party. That
is, members of the party do not have rigid roles although they each have
distinct skills. Their lives center around well-defined hunting events, the
success of each is important for their subsequent survival.

The decision making process tends to be ad hoc and each person can take on
multiple and often overlapping roles which can change from event to event,
depending on the need of the team and also their ability to perform that same
role in a previous event. In other words, the command structure is very flat
and communication between each member is direct and unambiguous. Most
importantly, consensus is a requirement since everyone is equal and while
there might be a leader, there cannot be a dictator. It is a democracy as well
as a meritocracy.

An operating company is like a village which is led by a single leader who is
not popularly elected but appointed by a group of elders, and has dictatorial
power over the villagers. There is usually unspoken but well understood rules
on what is proper conduct for each member of the village include the leader,
the elders who are the ones that bestow the authority, the captains, the foot
solders and all the other supporting personnel including the children that
make the village livable and sustainable.

The command structure of the village is no longer flat. Decisions that are
made at the top need to be propagated as well as diffused into the
individuals. Consensus is less important and is replaced by consultation.
Decisions are made by mandates and not through bartering among equals. In
order to function, there has to be both punishment and rewards. Punishment of
the non-performers is actually an important form of rewards for the
performers. Most importantly, unlike a hunting party, the roles are much more
well-defined and much more rigid.

It is very difficult for a hunting party to naturally evolve into a village.
The requirement is for some of original hunters to give up their executive
power to become non-executive elders and to elect a single leader to become an
authoritative figure who can make unpopular decision for everyone to follow.

It is almost impossible for a startup with multiple equal co-Founders to grow
beyond the original flat command structure because it is unnatural for anyone
to give up power (or influence), especially if they were the ones who made the
company successfully in the first place.

The hunters are individual contributors who at best can evolve into middle
managers. But middle managers who are also major shareholders would have a
hard time separating their ownership interest from their fiduciary
responsibility.

It is a very interesting problem to solve.

\--Denny--

Denny K Miu

<http://www.startupforless.com>

~~~
BrandonM
Thank you for the very thorough explanation. It does bring up some more
questions in my mind, however:

Even in hunting parties, aren't there leaders who need to resolve disputes or
ultimately take on the responsibility to make tough decisions? Isn't the most
experienced or best hunter the one in this role? I'm not sure how this maps
exactly to a cofounder situation (unless, of course, there happens to be a
parallel in the startup in question), but wouldn't it make sense for this
hunting leader to become the elder?

Is it not possible for the single leader situation to be replaced by a ruling
group? As long as these members continue to do some of the other work involved
in the village/startup, it does not seem like it would become a situation
where there are too many leaders and not enough workers. Of course, this
assumes that the group can continue to reach decisions in a reasonable manner.

I'm not saying these situations could occur easily or frequently, but they
seemed to fall outside the realm of your explanation while remaining
hypothetically reasonable and workable.

~~~
gigamon
The problem is not one of skills and affinity but one of command structure.

A startup with multiple equal co-Founders is a partnership. No one in a
partnership bears fiduciary responsibility. Each partner is responsible for
their own interest and that of their family and no one else. So for partners
to make decision, they barter. They each decide what they want from each other
and out of necessity, they come to a common ground.

At the beginning of a startup, this is not a problem because like a hunting
party, they are consumed by their own survival and their common ground is the
only ground. The hunters are both owners and executives but there is no
conflict.

But as the startup grows and becomes successful, the partners (i.e., co-
Founders with more or less equal stature) will have a problem finding common
ground.

On the other hand, a company is not a partnership. Company is owned by
shareholders, whose interests are represented by the Board of Directors. The
Board members (i.e., village elders) are not the executives but instead they
appoint an executive (village chief) to run the company (village) on their
behalf. The chief executive is given a mandate by the elders and he/she
surrounds himself/herself with fellow executives, who together share the
fiduciary responsibility.

So for a hunting party to evolve into a village (or a startup to evolve into
an operating company), the original co-Founders will have to evolve from a co-
owner to co-executive, replacing their ownership interest by fiduciary
responsibility, and learn to change their decision making process from one of
bartering to one based on mandate.

This sounds easy but almost never done properly.

\--Denny--

Denny K Miu

<http://www.startupforless.com>

------
jetpack
I'm really on the fence about this because both arguments have truth to them.
If you look at many successful companies, they were often founded by two
people. However you'll also find that usually one of the founders leaves
eventually (usually after a short while compared to overall lifetime of the
company), and the other stays to run the company.

I can give a whole bunch of examples. Apple: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
Microsoft: Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Valve: Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.
Id Software: John Carmack and John Romero. People split for various reasons,
sometimes due to disagreements. Sometimes personal reasons or change of
interests. In the end most companies seem to end up being run by one person
whether or not they were founded by more than one.

There are also successful companies that were founded by one person, like Dell
and Amazon. So to me it seems that statistically speaking eventually you'll
split up and one of you will have to leave the company.

Ultimately it seems that the co-founder issue is mostly an issue of initial
mutual support. It's tough to go through the early stages on your own, and
having someone to share the workload with and get moral support from increases
your chances of success. But it can only truly work in the long term if you
decide _at the beginning_ that one of you will be the president and have the
final word in major decisions. Otherwise it's a recipe for trouble down the
road.

~~~
BitGeek
Right, and that mutual support can come, in large part, from other employees.
One company I worked at, due to the personality mix, was kinda rough, and we
were in a tough time funding wize and market wise-- but the office manager,
and older german woman with a strong will, took it upon herself to fix things
and thru random help, negotiation and general positive attitude really made
things a lot better- she was a one woman support organization for a 12 person
startup.

Finding great people to be employees is very important, and I'd say more
important than finding a co-founder. In a way your co-founder has to embody
everything... but each employee can contribute a part to the whole.

------
sspencer
I kind of wonder if there is a middle ground. There are two different posts on
the front page right now: one deriding the idea of co-founders and one from
someone desperately seeking a co-founder.

My (worthless) advice is to let it happen naturally. Neither seek out a co-
founder nor refuse co-founders who approach you. Just try to make friends with
similar people who are interested in startups. Talk about ideas. It definitely
helps if you have known these people for a while before starting a business
with one. I can't even imagine going in on a business venture with a total
stranger.

~~~
davidw
This sounds like good advice to me. This YC requirement has led to something
akin to "cargo cult cofounders" - getting someone else involved because it's
"better that way". While I tend to think it _is_ better to have one, it has to
be the right person, not some random dude who you barely know. It's sort of a
catch 22 in that it's got to be someone you've already known for a while when
you start looking or discussing the idea of doing a company.

------
senthil
RailsFactory is a Ruby on Rails development shop based in Chennai, India.

when you are a very small startup, and self funded, you just need to make 2-3
bad moves to go into bankruptcy and closure.

Startups have its Eureka moments and frustrating times

I consider myself more of a visionary than a implementer, I get into high
energy mode in short bursts, but my partner keeps our company sane.

I find my co-Founder a great stress buster for me.

~~~
staunch
Why is this post is at -3? It may be a little rough (non-native English
presumably) but it's totally on topic and not spammy.

~~~
falsestprophet
I think the word visionary set against "not an implementor" may worry a lot of
the people here. How many of you trust MBAs?

------
german
That's a good point but besides fighting, having at least one co-founder is a
great deal (if he/she is a close friend). I'm telling this because a lot of
startups change their business ideas several times, and sometimes your vision
is not the right one.

There's one big issue here, if an employee tells you that your company will be
better doing X instead of Y is totally your decision, it can be right or wrong
but that employee will never talk to you about that idea again.

Sure, you can have a lot of discussions with your co-founders, but having a
combined vision of the project helps a lot.

In my case, having one of my best friends as a co-founder is the best thing
that ever happened to me.

~~~
BitGeek
IF you treat an employee with respect and take him seriously and explain why
you are doing Y instead of X, that employee will tell you again when he has
other ideas.

You can have as close a relationship with an employee as you do with a
founder.

I think the problem is that people get stuck on labels here-- the idea that
only cofounders can have an opinion or will have their opinions listened to is
probably pretty accurate in reality, but it doesn't have to be that way.

In fact, one of the most valuable and rarest commodities in a high tech
startup is humility. Always hire for humility along with confidence- they
aren't contradictions!- and show it yourself.

I think that employees are generally pretty good about letting people know
when they are doing the wrong thing... even if they think you're not
listening. You don't have to listen very close to tell which way the wind is
blowing.

The problem is that too many people are too arrogant to take the direction of
the wind seriously, and this can actually be worse with co-founders because
their grousing can drown out the employees.

------
edw519
I have been desperately looking for a co-founder who thinks just like me and
now that I've read this post, my search is over!

<on knees>

BitGeek, will you be my co-founder?

</on knees>

------
tlrobinson
I mostly agree with this, except I also think it's pretty important to have at
least one other co-founder... but it's even more important for you to be able
to trust and work well with those co-founder(s).

Going out and finding some random dude that you don't know or trust to be a
co-founder for the sake of having a co-founder seems like a huge gamble and
just a bad idea.

~~~
BitGeek
If you've known someone for awhile and you know they would be a great person
to start a company with (and you have the emotional maturity to be abel to
tell that- I mean, how many people think they are going to get married to the
person they are dating, 5, 8, 12 times before they meet the person they know
they are going to marry and with whome it works out?) ... if you already have
a cofounder, even if you don't have an idea for a company yet... then start a
company with them. Nothing wrong with that.

My point is just that if you don't have this person... don't hesitate for a
second. Just go forward and get employees or go without them.

If it means you don't get YC funding because of PG's bias, then you didn't
want it anyway.

Just don't hesitate to start a company without a cofounder... most successful
businesses are founded by individuals.

------
brett
<http://blogger.com>

~~~
myoung8
this wasn't started by just one person, though. granted evan finished it by
himself, proving the point below about co-founders leaving.

~~~
wyday
I think brett was suggesting rambling, angry, posts are better suited for a
blog.

~~~
BitGeek
Hmm... I don't know what was angry about what I posted. I just saw another
"how to get a founder" thread followed close on the heels of a post on another
site from someone lamenting that they couldn't find a co-founder.

Sure, it has sucked to when the founders were fighting... but its been years
since I went out on my own.

Don't confuse confidence and passion for anger.

~~~
david927
There was nothing angry about it. The culture around here borders on a
personality cult around Paul Graham, which explains all the "how to get a co-
founder" threads.

Thanks for the great essay.

------
richi
not having a cofounder can be used as an excuse for not starting anything at
all. it's probably better to start and take action. that might be the best
strategy to attract the right cofounder anyway.

~~~
Mistone
this is very well said, the single biggest determent of a startups success is
product/market fit, not team (i.e co-founder)

(see:The Only thing that Matters: <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-
gu-2.html>).

If you've got a solid idea you need to push it forward, not having a perfect
co-founder right away is a lame "go or no go" decider.

Pitch constantly, get out of your apartment, and scour your networks for co-
founder prospects, sooner or later you going to cross paths with someone that
believes in your vision and has skills/experience/connections that will add
significant value to your business.

To me, its go forward and keep things moving - and be aware that this needs to
be bigger than you and teammates help you achieve that.

~~~
BitGeek
"the single biggest determent of a startups success is product/market fit, not
team"

I believe this must be true because I can't count the number of times when
I've heard investors say "it doesn't matter about the product, we invest in
the _team_." (I'm not being sarcastic, its only dumb money out there.)

------
BitGeek
For instance, look at plentyoffish.com

Not only did this guy not get a cofounder, he has never gotten any employees.
He's making millions by himself, a total solo effort.

In fact there area lot of examples out there of people doing this... many of
them are of the professional blogging/seo/domainer variety. What people on
here would deride as "lifestyle businesses" (Personally I don't think you get
to deride someone's choices until you've done better than them.)

But further, there's a whole movement of "micro-isvs" - a poor term as it came
from someone with a microsoft perspective-- but these are people who make
software themselves and sell it. Many of these businesses are on their way to
becoming large enterprises. Omni Group is an example of one that's had several
years, but Delicious Monster is one that's only been at it a few years- very
successful, good number of employees now, single founder. And of course
there's scores more.

You know, what we really need is a version of TechCrunch- but one that covers
these non-VC backed startups- the companies that won't get coverage in
TechCrunch because they are not following the latest fad and burning money on
lavish parties to invite Michael Arrington to. For all the little companies
you never heard of on TecCrunch there are other little companies who are going
to be more successful ... but are under the radar now. I think this is what
leads to a distorted perspective of the startup landscape.

~~~
pocketofposies
Great post and I completely agree.

I am of the opinion that the ability to quickly make a decision and get
everyone behind it is often more important than the decision itself. A "wrong"
decision can be corrected if there is a concerted focus while even a "right"
decision won't work if founders are hashing out an internal pecking order
rather than implementation of said decision.

------
myoung8
Just because there's an example of a single co-founder company succeeding
doesn't make your hypothesis true.

Statistically, it seems that multiple founders correlates more highly with
success than single founders.

Perhaps there's an underlying reason that the companies you've worked with
have failed when there were multiple founders (e.g. personality clashes,
inability to resolve disputes, etc.).

~~~
dood
_it seems that multiple founders correlates more highly with success than
single founders_

I keep hearing this stated, but I don't think I've ever seen the stats. Anyone
got a cite?

However, assuming there is a correlation, this doesn't tell us much about
causation. Perhaps a much larger percentage of single-founder startups aren't
started seriously, and are therefore irrelevant to the numbers.

As a single-founder, what I want to know is: will adding a co-founder increase
my probability of success? What if the co-founder is not a good friend? The
simple correlations mentioned above aren't very useful in answering these
sorts of questions. If there is any good evidence either way I'd very much
like to see it.

------
aceregen
If you want to start something, and nobody is interested in your idea or you
can't find anyone good enough - Just start it alone.

If you have an idea, and you know a fellow co-founder that's interested in
starting up - Just start it with him and work together.

Bottom line: Instead of thinking about the non-essential stuff- Just get the
first prototype up even if it might mean doing it yourself.

Any school of thoughts that places restrictions on an ideal founding team size
is crap. The debate that advocates an optimum team size is no different from
saying that man cannot complete a mile in under 4 minutes.

Work with what you have, not what you don't have.

~~~
BitGeek
Exactly. And be aware of the risks. As a solo founder you need people you can
bounce ideas off of. (And in my opinion this is the purpose of an advisory
board, or even friends who have no skin in the game)... and as a group of co-
founders you have the serious risk of conflict among the group.

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ctkeene
I think you are confusing founders with leaders. Companies do not need
multiple leaders. Just like teams, however, they do need multiple players,
each providing different skills.

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BitGeek
Actually, I'm not confusing them, PG is. What I advocate is having a single
leader, and whether you call employees 2-4 "co-founders" or not, they all know
who is boss.

PG thinks that you have to have consensus and multiple founders all with an
equal say. Thus, multiple leaders.

The whole cofounder thing has taken on quite a weird perspective-- I think
because PG doesn't have much experience with it, but is adamant, and most of
his readers have never worked for a startup, let alone started one, so they
believe he's preaching the gospel.

There has to be a leader, that's my point.

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mikesabat
Fighting with other founders is the absolute worst thing in the world.

Don't get a cofounder because you think he/she will do all the work that you
don't want to do.

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staunch
The title doesn't match the content. A more accurate title would be
"Absolutely, DO NOT, get a bad co-founder!"

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rms
>A co-founder is not what you need, unless you already have one, and you have
as good a relationship with them as the best relationship you've ever had with
anyone in your life.

My co-founder and I work incredibly well together as complements, what we are
doing would not work if it was just one of us starting.

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webwright
Man. Makes me want to create a satire post titled:

Absolutely, DO NOT, get married!

This is an argument for being VERY careful about your co-founder and having
good agreements in place when disagreements occur.

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BitGeek
You presume you have to have a cofounder...even that having a cofounder is an
advantage-- while you recognize the results of having one.

I'm telling you that there is no significant advantage of consensus
management-- that there is a big detriment.

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chaostheory
i think the title is misleading.

"Sure, its better to have more than one person in the company... and feel free
to call your second thru fourth employees 'co-founders' or give them 'founders
stock'... whatever."

it's alright to have co-founders as long as everyone agrees that at the end of
the day one co-founder has the final say no matter what, though I don't think
it's necessary to be disparaging and think of them as just "employees"...

~~~
BitGeek
I think its kinda arrogant to say that founders are superior and thus its
disparaging to call someone an employee.

Employees should be highly valued.

Inadvertantly you've highlighted another problem with having cofounders,
especially in a startup- you have an intrinsic clique of inner circle people,
the founders.

~~~
chaostheory
if you looked at my first reply you can see that I didn't disagree with your
main idea(s) in the first post. I just didn't like the way you said it.

"I think its kinda arrogant to say that founders are superior..."

intentional or not given the semi-bitter tone of your main post, that's the
impression that I thought you were trying to make

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caveman82
Great article, will you be my co-founder?

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augustus
Great article. I see your point.

