

Ask HN: Need advice: Single founder and Early stage chances with YC? - tckb

Earlier today I asked fellow hackers about their take on my app. But, just in the matter of hours my situation changed dramatically.<p>We were a team of two founders, me being the developer and the other cofounder, a marketing&#x2F;sales girl. Ours&#x2F;mine is a crowdsourced based non-profit startup in its early stages of development.<p>Due some reasons, she quit on the startup and I am now the only founder left in the company, I&#x27;m really determined to go ahead and apply for YC.
I have been working relentlessly to get to a shape.<p>I was wondering if this happened to anyone before and if yes- how did you manage to compensate the loss(may be for a good reason).<p>PS: For the curious, here is my original ask hn: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9267658
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loumf
I have absolutely no experience with YC applications and know almost nothing
about the teams that got in.

Given that -- my take:

You are worried about all the wrong things.

Instead, you should worry about whether you are making something people want
and effectively communicating that you are doing that. All this other stuff is
sapping your energy to accomplishing the one thing YC says over and over again
that means the most to them. The second thing is relentlessness -- if you are
relentless, these are very minor setbacks, and not worth your attention right
now.

~~~
tckb
Past the demotivation, PG lists "single founder" as [one of]the top mistake
that kills a startup.

"it's a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn't talk any
of his friends into starting the company with him. that's pretty alarming"[1]

"Ideally you want between two and four founders. It would be hard to start
with just one. One person would find the moral weight of starting a company
hard to bear."[2]

There could be other reasons why a founder chose to be single. In my case, my
other friends who _were_ interested in joining as co-founders but, I chose
not[include/work them] because they didn't had the same values as I imagine
one should. for me, this is more important than their respective abilities.

[1] The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups [2] How to start a startup

~~~
qtheninja
its doable. Not enjoyable.

You go to "war" with the army you have not the army you want. if you want to
get a new founder on board then start looking but I wouldnt delay today
because of it.

If you are having second doubts. Then reevaluate. Ask why she left and get
More feedback from others.

People will start joining when you least need them ( when you start becoming
successful ). So I'd advance only if this is your vision for your contribution
to this world.

~~~
tckb
My vision "Awethu" a non-profit startup is to use technology to help people
from developing nations (such as mine) to solve their real-world problems,
which in either case be expensive. i.e, create a "affordable" solution. And,
it's been difficult for me to find co-founders who are as motivated as I am
AND be seeking less or no profit out of it.

------
qtheninja
If I were you. I'd go and apply and start searching immediately for another
team mate.

Ask yourself. What's the worse that can happen?

I have no xp with y combinator or all of its criteria but a lot of people view
one founder as a weakness (this can also bleed over with angel investors too
from what I hear). Fortunately you have the tech side. If you want another
founder then start searching. If you want a business side person it shouldn't
be too hard.

I personally have started as a single cofounder and raised money by the users.
Its not nearly as fun but it's doable. If you believe in it i wouldn't let
anyone stop me.

My 2 cents.

~~~
tckb
I've already started searching for other co-founder ( friends & Co.). I agree,
raising money from the Users as a single co-founder can be a daunting task and
even more for a Non-profit startup like mine. Henceforth, YC!

