
The Founder Dating Playbook - feifan
https://firstround.com/review/the-founder-dating-playbook-heres-the-process-i-used-to-find-my-co-founder/
======
dumbfoundded
My best co-founder is someone who I would almost certainly spend little or no
time with outside of work. Our personalities are polar opposites. Together
we've bootstrapped a $2.5M ARR business in 16 months.

Some thoughts:

\- Cofounders are high stress and high time relationships. You want to find
someone who doesn't burn everything down every time they get stressed. Finding
someone who deals with stress in a healthy way is huge.

\- Don't let the small things get in the way of the big things. You have to
have tolerance for each other's mistakes. This was a huge problem for me and a
previous cofounder. The way I handle it now with my cofounder is we set a
price on mistakes. If you want to take a $1,000 risk, we don't even discuss
it. A $10,000, we talk about.

\- I generally prefer people driven by discipline than passion. Passion cracks
under pressure. Discipline keeps working.

\- Ego. Find someone who doesn't think they're god. I know in the SV hype
messiah driven world of startups everyone tries to be the prophet. Avoid these
people. For me, someone who has confidence but not arrogance is huge.

~~~
ummwhat
I thought the difference between arrogance and confidence is being right.

~~~
kelnos
A person who is confident speaks authoritatively and, when asks, backs up
their statements with evidence.

A person who is arrogant speaks authoritatively but tries to weasel out of
justifying their statements by using logical fallacies, deflecting attention
to others or other matters, or bullshitting.

There's also a general attitude component that seems pretty common. A
confident person doesn't need to put their ego on display for everyone,
because they believe their positions have a firm foundation in data or fact to
stand on. An arrogant person will tend to engage in a lot of bluster and
undeserved self-promotion to distract from the lack of quality of their ideas.

Both confident and arrogant people can be right and wrong at various times.
I'd like to believe the confident person is generally more right than the
arrogant person, but that isn't necessarily the case. Having worked for and
with both types of people, I would rather work for someone confident, even if
there was an arrogant person who was right more often. The stress and disgust
that comes with working with arrogant people just isn't worth it to me.

~~~
tomnipotent
Confidence and arrogance of two sides of the same coin, they're not mutually
exclusive and people can be varying degrees of both. The biggest difference is
always in the eye of the beholder.

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crsv
I mean it's an interesting idea that someone who hasn't actually founded a
successful company with a co-founder has a "playbook" for finding a co-
founder.

They've been working together 5 months and now that warrants the proclamation
of a playbook?

~~~
codesushi42
You must be new here. This same attitude permeates all of tech, especially SV,
where folks constantly tout their non-accomplishments publicly. Every idiot is
giving advice because every idiot is looking for some.

And there are a whole lotta idiots in SV smelling their own farts.

~~~
ai_ia
I agree 100%.

If only the news article/stories followed up what they had touted after two-
years it would make a good journalistic report. Or even trying to balance the
article by acknowledging the drawbacks of the the system they are advancing.

I like to read articles that debunk the previous hypes and put a retrospective
article detailing what went wrong.

For e.g. MOOCs were touted as game changing to the online education and after
years, it hasn't really 'disrupted' anything.

------
doctorpangloss
This affirms my experiences with getting to a venture-funded deal. The
stylistic elements of this piece, not its content.

Someone who can speak the product managerese--who takes 7,000 words to say
something and look thoughtful while doing it--is so essential to getting to a
venture-funded deal.

Being on the other side of the process she describes sucks. Like nobody wants
to be part of this imaginary, psuedo-scientific competition. In reality she
just acquiesced to whatever the 6th person demanded. The process wore her
down.

If the process didn't wear her down, there would be no deal, because the deal
only occurs when the product manager character moves along.

In quintessential product manager form, the process disguised a completely
emotionally-driven decision by providing a post-hoc rational for it.

------
opportune
I find it strange to not just use your personal network to find somebody. I
feel like this whole “detached cofounder” thing is for people making an
implicit agreement that you both intend to screw each other over if you ever
get the opportunity.

But if you’re a “product person” I suppose you need someone to actually build
the MVP for you so you can’t really do that part alone.

Personally I’d rather do it alone than make a huge decision like this with
some random. Passing an interview is easy if you know what to say, would be
too hard to trust someone to not just try to get a free ride. And it takes a
really long time to truly know someone, but it also seems crazy to me to spend
up to half a year “cofounder dating” before you get to work; that seems like
pseudo-productive procrastination more than anything

~~~
cabaalis
I've been the subject at least one of these cofounder "dates" and the worst
part is it was done under the auspices of speaking to someone who's found a
modicum of success in a startup.

The introduction given to me was that it was a person with an idea who wanted
a sort of "mentor" in the space who can help navigate the technology aspects.
The actual date consisted of them pitching me and gauging my interest.

I was a little turned off. So my suggestion to the author of this article is
to add "Be honest about why you're at the coffee shop."

I did see this, though:

> “‘Where do I find people?’ is one of the biggest questions I get when people
> ask me for advice. There isn’t a ‘Tinder for co-founders’ app that everyone
> is on. Sourcing is hard,” says Lin.

Anyone up for a new project? :)

~~~
opportune
I’m pretty sure that’s basically how accelerators work, unsuccessful
accelarees (?) quickly become early employers or cofounders of the more
successful ones

------
burtonator
Here's my story about looking for a co-founder for Polar:

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

I'm basically trying to build an integrated reading environment for people
like researchers and students. You can kind of think of it like IntelliJ or
Visual Studio but for books.

I shipped an MVP on Hacker News and right now we have about 5000 MAU. And our
users LOVE us.

I just found out that Roger Craig. One of the Jeopardy champions used Polar to
win Jeopardy.

[https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-a-jeopardy-
champi...](https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-a-jeopardy-champion-
remembers)

Now, being a solo founder is tough. A lot of VCs will hold it against you.
However, one of the number one failures of a startup is having a bad co-
founder.

My strategy has been to be VERY conservative here.

I identified five co-founders but just haven't had a good fit.

I think my biggest advice is to trust your instincts. Unless it feels perfect
and you've been working together for a while don't pull the trigger.

My plan now is to have sort of running co-founder search and bring them on
more as a senior hire with adequate compensation if I'm successful in finding
them.

It's hard though. I'd go so far as to say it's harder than finding a wife.

They need to have your back at all times but unlike a marriage there's no
actual love backing the relationship.

------
kadabra9
My friends outside of work aren't really technical, nor do they have any
interest in startups.

I've tried a handful of those founder dating sites, gone to meetups, user
groups, met for coffee/beers, and even travelled to meet up with other like
minded folks and try to get a feel about who would be a good fit. With the
importance of getting the cofounder right, I almost always left feeling like
it was too much of a leap to take with someone I just met from some website or
meetup.

But when I look at my own friends, there aren't any of them I would
conceivably work on something significant with. Maybe I need to find some new
friends, or maybe its a volume game.

~~~
yr1337
I'm in the same boat as you except I haven't started this dating game yet. I
know no one in my (admittedly small) network of friends and acquaintances, who
is willing to drop everything and create a startup with me. I'm not in the SV
so that doesn't help.

I'm trying to come up with a strategy including meetups. But how likely is it
that single founders going to these meetings with an idea of their own, are
going to give up on it and join someone else? And if someone is going to these
meetings without a strongly held idea, then what does that tell me about their
intention (free ride?).

The only way I can see this working is if 2 founders meet that have an idea so
close that they can see merging them. How likely is that considering
constraints of time and location...

I'm starting to find that the hardest part of my startup is going to be the
people factor, which I will say is my biggest weakness. I guess it's good that
I'm aware of it at least.

~~~
lam
To find cofounders, may I suggest that you add in your profile your interests
and some ways to reach out to you (e.g., email)?

------
kumartanmay
Just like finding a spouse is an art, there’s no science behind finding a
cofounder. You might a cofounder who does not fit the bill discussed in the
thread or the article. We get together to make something work with equanimity.

~~~
trumbitta2
I don't think finding a spouse is an art. You don't typically find a (good)
spouse by actively looking for one.

~~~
kumartanmay
So how is it different in case of cofounders?

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peignoir
Good article, I wrote a paper a while ago on that subject for startup research
based on my experience with startup weekend and the often asked question on
where to find a cofounder... I applied these principal for myself and Found 3
great co founder and launched 3 different ventures (one is a cash cow / one is
venture backed / one is a non profit)

Paper->

[https://www.joebarich.com/uploads/2/3/6/8/23683720/co-
founde...](https://www.joebarich.com/uploads/2/3/6/8/23683720/co-founder-dev-
mvt-final2.pdf)

------
heavenlyblue
Speaking of the _other_ dating... I had recently been messaged by a dating
coach on LinkedIn who specialises in software developers.

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thrwwy487
I didn't flag this article, but I consider it very inappropriate. Romantic or
sexual analogies should not be used in the workplace or startups. It's just
the wrong word to use.

