
The trend of finding an online stranger as cofounder for the Y Combinator program - keiretsu

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ivan
Many samples of (working and effective )online partnerships are in world of
open source where many hackers around the world are working on much more
complex problems than those backed by YC.

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pg
The main difficulty in a startup is not the complexity of the technical
problem you're solving.

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keiretsu
i agree. It is usually people problem. Personality clashes etc.

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pg
No, that's not what I meant. What kills most startups is that they build
something lame-- something users see and think "meh" and click on Back. It's
not ability to solve problems that makes the difference, but what problems the
founders choose to solve.

Friction between founders is somewhat of a threat to startups, but small in
comparison with making something users don't care about.

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keiretsu
so i would assume that you do not hold hastily put together teams with less
regards as long as the thing they're building is not lame?

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pg
I'd still worry more about an ad hoc group of founders than one that had been
friends for a while, but if I had to choose between an ad hoc group with a
kickass project and a group of established friends with nothing, I'd probably
choose the first.

The thing is, we rarely see ad hoc groups with kickass projects. I think this
is because such groups are less likely to build good things.

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keiretsu
I'm seeing a trend of hackers looking for fellow hackers online to apply for
the Ycombinator program. I was wondering how effective a partnership would
such an arrangement yield?

2 dudes. Total oblivion to each other's quirks. Joining force to undertake a
significant project. How realistic is that?

Also, would Ycombinator have less regards for such hastily put-together teams,
irrespective of their skills/ideas?

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gyro_robo
Rolling the dice - it may work, it may not. Your chances of getting YC'd
without it, however, are apparently nil. If you do get funded and don't get
along, you can always split up, and it'll be like the group projects in school
where one person had to do all the work while everyone else flaked. ;)

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SwellJoe
The companies that split have turned out to be failures (with the exception of
reddit). Try to pick a good co-founder.

So, while it's true that you'll probably fail if you get choose a poor co-
founder, it's also true that you'll probably fail without a co-founder. In the
end the result is that you're working alone, which is a bad place to be.

~~~
gyro_robo
> The companies that split

List?

