

Get a co-founder - calebgilbert
http://sacstarts.com/2010/01/30/get-co-founder

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fjabre
_Freelancers or outside firms can’t possibly deliver what you want because
they don’t actually care about the product or the outcome_

Actually that's not true. A lot of freelancers I know are very proud of and
attached to the projects they work on.

Might be true for some others, like some of the overseas firms you'll find on
elance who crank out insane amounts of code, but for individual freelancers my
experience has been that they care a great deal about what they work on.

~~~
akalsey
Certainly with any generality, there's exceptions. But if you are a guy with
an idea and don't have the ability to build it, you're unlikely to be
satisfied with the outcome of hiring a freelancer.

Freelancers are not employees. They're not attached to the business on a full
time basis, and while they may get excited by the business and be happy to be
working with the entrepreneur, in the end they are mercenaries.

Further, when the project is over and they walk away, the knowledge behind
your product and technology walks away with them. This is true of employees as
well to some extent, but at least with employees there's an expectation that
they will be involved for a long term. For them it's not just another
contract.

Contractors can be used to augment your development staff, but should never be
your entire development staff.

Sure, you CAN have a success with a product built by freelancers (Digg is an
example of this) but it is very, very rare.

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inklesspen
He suggests to give only 30% to the guy who's going to build the entire
product? Sounds cheap.

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chrischen
Wouldn't it be awkward to use the dating analogy if the two founders were of
the opposite sex, or homosexual? It feels as if people assume startups are for
guys looking for other guys, and this way of thinking further discourages
girls from getting into the game. So I dunno, good idea to stop using dating
analogies?

~~~
akalsey
A business partnership is a relationship. It's certainly not a romantic
relationship, but it can be just as intense and emotional as a romantic
relationship.

No one is suggesting that potential business partners take each other out to
the movies. But it's a good idea that they spend a lot of time together and
get to know each other well before jumping into a partnership together.

That's why the analogy works. You don't meet someone at a party and marry them
the next day. You shouldn't meet someone at an event and make them your co-
founder immediately either.

~~~
chrischen
I know it works, but I'm saying isn't it a bit awkward to use on a guy and a
girl if they aren't dating?

~~~
akalsey
No one is saying the two people ARE dating and marrying. They're saying the
process of finding a co-founder is LIKE dating and marrying.

That's what an analogy is. "a⋅nal⋅o⋅gy - a similarity between like features of
two things, on which a comparison may be based"

~~~
chrischen
And the awkwardness comes in because not everyone is keyed in to the analogy.
It can be easily misconstrued as the two people are dating. For two guys
however it's less awkward because people naturally seek another explanation
for the term dating first. But for some people they could jump to the romantic
term for dating, and knowing this is why it can be seen as awkward even to
just some people.

