
Why PG was not right on co-founders or two points of view. - ivan

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sharpshoot
Depends on your definition of successful. If you want to build a website which
accrues large amounts of advertising revenue - sure what marcus frind has done
can be considered amazing.

Even making a 100th of what he does (maybe even a 1000th) would be enough for
one person. Guess what - this happens everyday on the internet.

If you want to build a google, a microsoft, a paypal or something bigger its
going to be hard for one person. From the investors perspective they want
companies to generate a lasting difference to people's lives. Doing that as a
one man band is hard. Generating monetary value for yourself is the flipside
to this. But then who needs investors.

Ivan i disagree with you.

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ivan
No problem I give a point to you and Who really needs investors could be next
question here to discuss.

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sharpshoot
I have no qualms about people creating cash generative websites either.
Especially when young - the limiting factor to how ambitious your idea is is
always capital.

Creating a cash-generative site and then selling it - or keeping it on the
side to supplement building other ventures in the future is a great option.
I'm very much thining about this right now.

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ivan
In connection with demomyapp?

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sharpshoot
not exclusively :)

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ivan
You can run your business alone and you can be successful. There is no reason
why this can't happen. Just from VC's point of view it's disadvantage.

Why? Say you created successful online web service. Alone. Than, accidentally
(ex. caterpillar behind the next corner) something fatal happen to you. Who
will care about running business. Do you think that by ex. PG has appetite to
search for new business owner and maintainer? It's not possible to simply jump
in the running train if you know nothing about business internals and by
Murphy's law one day after your death application stops working due some old,
forgotten bugs. Take any Y sponsored site and ask PG what he knows about its
source code. This is IMHO the only reason why VC's encourage you to find a co-
founder. I'm running my sites alone and still have not a feeling of burn-out
:) If you don't have enough skills to implement your idea, employ someone, if
you don't have enough time to work on business, employ someone.

Now think about it. If your online business idea is something what cure your
customers' pain, you don't need VC's capital to be sucessful. We are living in
age of blogs and other wonderful viral marketing tools. Cheap hardware and
hosting. Everything what you need is courage, kind community and forget
arrogance.

I don't want to say that have a co-founder is bad thing. I just want to say
that this must have reason and that reason should not be the VC's opinion.

BTW: find a dependable co-founder is like find a needle in hay stack :)

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davidw
I don't know... I think the statistics are pretty favorable to having a co-
founder. This isn't just something PG invented. People have been saying this
for years.

BTW, I'm saying this as someone who is going it alone, even though it makes
things riskier.

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boris
"I think the statistics are pretty favorable to having a co-founder"

It's all in the details. Let's say we have the same success rate for single
founder and multiple founders ventures. There are many more multiple founders
startups for at least two reasons: (1) it takes some guts to go alone and (2)
VC/angels won't fund solo undertakings. Since the multiple founders pool is
bigger, there are more successfull startups of this kind. Here you've got your
misleading statistics.

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davidw
Well, I would submit that it takes "guts" to go it alone, because you know
that it's harder that way and that you're more likely to fail. How's that for
a circular argument?:-)

Like the silly age debate, I guess it all comes down to this: do what you can
with what you have. I certainly think that there is some 'cargo cult co-
founder searching' going on around here, meaning that you shouldn't just grab
a warm body because PG said so, but you should already know that person by the
time you're ready to go. And if there isn't a someone, well, tough, do your
best in any case... that's where I'm at.

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SwellJoe
I've built a business solo, and I'm now building one with a co-founder. I can
say, without hesitation, that the latter is better. I'm a lifetime loner,
stupidly independent, and I don't play well with others, but having a co-
founder is still a major net win for me. I'm lucky in that I've been working
with my co-founder for years (I used to hire him for UI development work when
I ran my previous company), so I know that our various skills and our
personalities mesh well.

If you can't find a founder that fits well with you, and that you can trust
not to screw you at the first opportunity, then going it alone is the only
option. But, I'd recommend trying to find a co-founder. Sure, you can build a
successful business solo...but it gives you much worse odds.

