

Under No Circumstances Should You Decide To Go It Alone - BrandonWatson
http://www.thefailingpoint.com/2009/08/buildingateam/decide-to-go-it-alone/

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Tawheed
I don't get it. All this doctrine seems to make finding a partner a pre-
requisite to working on your idea. This seems to be the same 'bad advice' from
the dot.com boom that asked for a business plan that predicted the next 5
years with growth expectations. It's garbage!

If you've got an idea, then go work on the damn idea! If you happen to have a
co-founder that believes in the same vision, then good for you; otherwise,
keep forging ahead and focus on what needs to be done. You may encounter that
in order to be effective, you need another person to do 'X" because you
literally cannot do 'X' effectively; but don't confuse that with a need to
find a co-founder.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Who said the point of a partner is to help you find an idea? The point of the
partner is to force you to explain your idea with enough clarity and detail
that you realize how much it sucks. Then you look for a slightly different
idea. ;)

No question, you can work on your idea without a partner. That's the
_problem_. You'll risk spending dozens or hundreds of hours on your pet
project before showing it to anyone with the incentive and the social position
to tell you that it won't work. Your friends won't do that. They like you.
They don't want to hurt your feelings.

Worse, when you _do_ find out that your idea doesn't work, you might become
despondent. Too despondent to notice that all you need is a few tiny tweaks
and suddenly things will be fixed. But there's nobody to help you find those
tweaks, because nobody else understands the project. Your friends and loved
ones don't get it. It's just you, alone with your problem. By the time you get
ahold of yourself and get sober enough to realize that your project is
salvageable, days or weeks might have gone by.

You can try to be objective about your own work. But be warned: Not only is it
likely to be less effective, but it's torture. It's the source of the
emotional roller coaster that entrepreneurs so often complain about -- the one
where you're euphoric one minute and despondent the next.

~~~
Tawheed
The problem I hear you describing is "I'm not sure if I can make a sound
business out of this product idea." And your solution of "get a partner" seems
rather flawed to me. I think it's just an excuse that a bunch of people have
made up because it's _easy_ to find another guy that you can sell your vision
to and get him to get on board.

Whereas, what you are really looking for in a great "partner" is really a
"customer" that is willing to pay!

Because think about it, if your real problem is the question of whether you
can create a real business, then wouldn't finding that first customer that is
literally willing to pay you for your idea (monetarily or through time and
advice) a much better avenue?

On top of that, there is also that assumption that your partner will have the
necessary skills to somehow solve you "do I have enough of a business"
problem; which isn't a guarantee either! Technically, you're both going to be
dumb shits.

At the end of it, I think failures and co-relation to # of founders is
completely wrong. It all comes down to whether you have the discipline to
think about operating a business, and the ability to a) understand your
weaknesses and b) find leverage in compensating for it.

------
trevelyan
Maybe multiple founders are necessary when you're spending lots of cash on a
founding team, but I don't think they're necessary when you're bootstrapping.

The main argument being made is that founders share pressure. But how much of
this pressure is self-inflicted by the need to support a large team or chase
aggressive growth strategies that will justify getting funding? So much
pressure disappears once you start making money, and if going alone means
you've avoided the need to define compensation schemes then you can breathe
easily.

I can see why larger teams are more attractive to investors. But I don't think
this is good advice to younger technically-minded founders who can do the
heavy lifting in creating products themselves and often just lack confidence
in themselves or their markets to figure out the rest.

------
hs
"go it alone by bruce judson" -- free online book

<http://www.brucejudson.com/frombook.html>

------
mkn
I coined the following inversion to highlight the inherently manipulative use
of the no-I-in-team saw:

There may be no 'I' in 'team,' but you can't spell 'team' without 'me.'

Am I the only one who sees the no-I-in-team chestnut as obviously
manipulative?

Not to mention, there was a great article about solo entrepreneurs on HN a
while ago that, I think, is something of an existence counter-proof of this
article.

~~~
sharpn
Or "there's no 'i' in 'team', but there is in 'winner'".

------
icey
So, what's the remedy for people who find themselves in the situation of being
the "strong personality" in the lot?

After reading about people's successes here, I've taken it to heart that a
team of founders is a better way to go than a single founder; but whenever I
try to get a group of people together it ends up feeling like I've taken on
employees instead of co-founders. By that, I mean that things only seem to get
done if I personally push for them to happen. I'm not interested in having
founding employees, if I'm going to go the route of having co-founders then
I'd like everyone to have equal input and as equal contribution as we can
manage.

However, it doesn't seem to be as easy as just saying "we're all in this
together as founders, let's get on with it" (I've tried this tact and it just
hasn't worked).

I guess the distilled question is: how do you find co-founders that are as
driven as you are?

And as a follow-on, how important is geographic relativity to your co-
founders? Being in a non-startup hub, it makes it a little tough to find
groups of people out and interested in working on startups (versus going out
to find interesting jobs).

~~~
BrandonWatson
Great questions. I think finding co-founders is about finding people who share
your same passions, ideals, etc. Getting into a founder relationship is not
unlike a marriage, except that you will probably be spending more time with
the founder than your spouse. If finding a spouse is challenging, finding
founders is more so.

The upside of our current era is that finding like minded souls is made much
easier, even if you aren't living in a startup hub. However, from my
experience living in Houston for a while, it's hard for non-founder types to
understand why you would want to start your own thing. The startup hubs have
more people who embrace this possiblity of failure.

I have met many an intersting potential founder at events like the bar camps,
startup weekends, etc. It's not going to happen over night for sure.

Working with a remote team can be challenging, but with Skype etc, it's much
easier than it used to be. However, when you are slogging out the long nights,
having proximity to your team matters, especially your co-founders. It's not a
deal breaker, but it will help.

------
hooande
I want to point out that the author spends more time in this article talking
about the problems associated with having multiple founders than he does the
benefits.

All of the benefits he outlined were individual: motivation, skills,
connections, perspective. All of these things are required to some degree in
any startup, but individual experiences may vary.

Bottom line: If you have a need, fill it. If not, don't force it.

~~~
BrandonWatson
Motivations, skills and connections can be multiplied with multiple founders.
If you are the rare person who has each of those items in spades, that's
great. However, I would still argue that having additional people in the group
lessens the individual burden, assists in getting to the right answer for
solving problems, and keeping things moving forward when things are hard.

------
AndrewWarner
When I argued ideas with my brother, it forced me to think them through.

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alanthonyc
The primary issue I am working through at the moment going solo with my web
app is that there is just so much work.

(The load would be easier to handle if I didn't have a full time consulting
gig.)

The good thing is that I get to learn something about everything.

~~~
BrandonWatson
When we launched IMSafer, we had 3 technical guys. One focused on UI, one
focused on client code (we had a client download), and one guy on backend/DB
work. Each of the three guys knew enough to cover/help on other parts, but
having that separation helped them be extremely productive.

------
jzachary
Speaking from experience, being a sole founder is boring and lonely. It's hard
enough getting a company off the ground; why not share some of the load?

~~~
jerryji
Until this someone who shares your load is found, it's only a hypothesis that
could be rejected.

