

Ask YC: Founders and Paradoxes (Paradoxen?) - DaniFong

Dear YC,<p>I'm trying to figure out how to resolve the following paradoxes. <p>It's difficult to find a cofounder without funding.
It's difficult to find funding with a cofounder (apparently).<p>Projects are unlikely to succeed without brilliant people.
Brilliant people are likely to be very busy with their own projects.<p>For a few weeks, talking to people and getting them interested has been a full-time commitment. I've heard universal expressions of support, and many, many people have offered to help, but thus far I haven't managed to get anyone to commit. The brilliant people are almost all fighting their own worthy battles (or are tied down in Canada, where I come from), while some of the others have impressively bad ideas they treat as sacred.<p>I have some inkling that it might be more effective to secure some seed funding first (and not necessarily through YC), and try to find cofounders thereafter. For example, there are specific people that I'd love to have onboard -- experts in computer vision. However, they're busy enough that I suspect they'd be unwilling to participate is business things, and could only be lured to work with actual cash.<p>What do you think? Should I try to apply alone to YC? Should I forget about the 11th deadline and just treat YC as another potential source of funding? Or, might you suggest I aim with full force toward finding the perfect cofounder, hopefully by that deadline?<p>--Dani
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cstejerean
Well, to quote PG, if you can't convince at least one other person to commit
to your idea then perhaps your idea is not that great (or you haven't talked
to right people). I wouldn't call myself "great" but while I'm always busy
working on something I'm willing to drop everything else and stick to
something if I believe in the potential of the idea. The only times I turn
something down is if I'm working on something that I believe has a higher
chance of success (or that I enjoy a lot more).

Perhaps you need to work at your idea more and get something that you can show
potential co-founders. Be careful however of picking just anyone as friction
between founders can be fatal. It might not be a bad idea to get someone to
help out part time for a mix of cash and equity (I'm guessing more equity than
cash since you say you need funding). Once this person gets more familiar with
what you are doing he/she might become interested in joining you full-time and
at that point you will have had a chance to evaluate how valuable of a co-
founder this person would be.

I wouldn't worry about the October 11th deadline, focus on your idea, you can
always apply next time.

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davidw
I really get the impression, from reading this site, reading PG, listening to
the interview with Jessica, that they are much happier if you have a co
founder that you've known for a while, so just finding someone to plug into
that role isn't as likely to work, even if they're good.

Maybe I'm wrong though, because my mind reading abilities leave a lot to be
desired.

~~~
DaniFong
That would be my choice as well. It's just really fairly to get someone to
join in a cofounder capacity, because the people I know well are all on the
east coast or Canada, and I have a lot of pull them away from.

I've had a lot of people willing to work part time. It's just all of the
people who are likely to be interested in my project are also likely to be
very, very busy -- part time is all I think I can get in the short term.

On the other hand, in the design stages many companies (Apple, Microsoft,
Yahoo, for example) had only one person working on things. Turning it into a
business before a prototype emerges might be premature.

~~~
aston
Apple had Jobs and Woz. Microsoft had Bill and Paul. Yahoo had Jerry Yang and
David Filo. Dani and ?

~~~
DaniFong
Woz did the Cream Soda Computer, and the Apple I and II on his own (though he
had Job's support after Apple I). Bill did BASIC for the Altair on his own,
and Yahoo was just David's list, to start.

There's a distinction between the seed stage and the regular early stage that
I'm trying to point to.

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aston
It's possible to find a cofounder without funding. Almost everyone does. Keep
looking for folks.

You need to convince brilliant people that your idea rocks enough to have them
leave whatever they're doing. I doubt this is as hard as it would sound, since
most brilliant people are wasting their talent.

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DaniFong
I don't know if fortune decided to smile upon me or what, but since I posted
this the three people I've been trying to get to join me all spontaneously
decided to do it.

Thanks for the encouragement =)

