

What do you do when you have a great potential co-founder, but don't like their idea? - pxigorth

I have friends who are smart and talented and would make good potential co-founders.  And they want to work together.  But often the idea they want to work on isn't right.  Either:<p>1) I feel they're thinking too small.  They're incredibly talented people, but they want to pursue what I think is a really small market, and could be doing something more worthy of them.<p>2) We have different opinions on the business prospects for the idea - I think it's just OK, they think it's amazing.<p>3) The idea seems boring to work on, often because the idea is 95% marketing or content and not technology (e.g. a variant on an online store, blog, content site, etc.)  This is bad for motivation.<p>I have good ideas of my own, but it's hard to persuade people to change their mind once they've decided what they want to work on.  Since I'm not in school, I've had to work hard to find other good people (through a lot of networking) and it would be a shame not to do <i>something</i> with them,  So, should I move on and look for someone to buy into my own ideas, or start working with these talented friends of mine and hope to evolve their idea into something better?  
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mrtron
1) Starting small is often the best route to doing something big. Starting
small gives you the ability to complete something and not run out of steam
along the way. 2) Ideas don't need to be mind blowing, they need to be good
and for them to work well in a business they need to be solving some sort of
problem that will result in you getting paid. 3) That could be a huge problem
for your motivation. Is there some subset of the idea that you could run with
and think a little bigger than they currently are?

Finding the right co-founders is much harder than finding the right idea in my
experience, so I think that is why the general YC motto is the idea doesn't
matter nearly as much as the co-founders do.

Best of luck...

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ajkates
I think that honesty is your best weapon. If your co-founders are truly
intelligent and motivated, you can probably convince them to think bigger. Try
to do it in such a way as to show you thoroughly understand the current idea
and its merits, which demonstrating its shortcomings. Just be sure to be nice
about it; people tend to get angry when you talk about their own ideas that
they put so much time and effort into.

Your course of action, I guess, really depends upon how far along you are
though. If you're near a complete beta or working release, you might want to
just ride it out.

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brlewis
If you have great potential co-founders who are psyched about their idea, run
with it right now.

(1) As has been said many times, having 100% of a small market is more
attainable than having 1% of a huge market.

(2) If they think the business prospects are amazing, that's great motivation
for them.

(3) Boring is good for startup success. The last field you want to compete in
is the one everybody's excited about.

If the idea flops, drop it and do something else. If it works, use it to
bootstrap your next idea.

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eposts
Do you have an idea of your own? Talk about your great idea and see if you can
get your co-founder all excited...

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DanielBMarkham
Make a logical case for why the idea won't work in the marketplace.

If necessary, come up some criteria you both can agree to.

Remember that you both have to be flexible, or the company won't fly anyway.

