

"You Need a Co-Founder, Not an Engineering Bitch..." - MediaSquirrel
http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/02/startup-lessons-for-the-protofounder.html

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nostrademons
Caveat on the "hire college students":

You need at least _someone_ on the engineering team that's experienced and has
seen all the ways that large systems can go terribly, horribly wrong. Ideally
that'll be one of the founders, because you'll have a tough time convincing
someone experienced to join otherwise. But occasionally someone loves the
product idea enough to commit.

Otherwise, a team of inexperienced college students is very likely to build a
large system that goes terribly, horribly wrong. They know enough to write
code, but not enough to _avoid writing code_ , and certainly not enough to
know when to trade off the quick hack for the elegant system.

I know because I was once that undergrad making a mess of things. I'm lucky;
I've been able to work with some people who are very, very accomplished. But
the time I spent floundering around on my own in college could probably have
been easily avoided had I been working with someone who's been there and done
that.

~~~
arethuza
"inexperienced college students is very likely to build a large system that
goes terribly, horribly wrong"

Maybe you should hire them when it is their third system? First one goes
horribly wrong because of lack of engineering, second goes horribly wrong
because of over-engineering (the well known second-system syndrome) and by the
third they should be ready to go.

~~~
andrewcooke
ah yes, the mythical inexperienced college student working on their third
system...

~~~
hga
I'm sure there are _some_ out there. You'll probably have to pay them a bit
more, but if you can find any of them....

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ciscoriordan
I like the juxtaposition of "You need a Co-Founder, not an Engineering Bitch"
and "Recruit college kids. They're young, hungry and don't need of a living
wage."

~~~
MediaSquirrel
The point is that college kids have a lower built-in cost structure to their
lives, making them ideal workers in a poorly capitalized startup. But
regardless of who you hire, treat people well. It's not about money, it's
about being honest and respectful and acting with integrity. Good people may
work for shit wages, but they won't work for shit people who pay them shit
wages.

Life is just too short. Create a company culture that has some moral
character.

~~~
earl
Oh hey, I didn't realize the blogger is you -- you should put a link on your
profile or make it obvious.

But cheers for treating people with respect. I wish more people ran their
lives that way.

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MediaSquirrel
I hope people find this useful.

~~~
DaniFong
Hey, this is a really good post! Also your startup is really cool.

If you want to improve conversions, make sure the speaker text homepage says
something really specific about what you do.

Something like

"With SpeakerText, clicking on a transcript zips you to the right time in a
YouTube video!"

It wasn't obvious that this was what you did when I looked at it.

~~~
MediaSquirrel
Yep. Our site kind of sucks right now. We def need to improve it.

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fnid2
It's a disservice to the article to retitle the post from the author's
original. This is the best advice: "Tenacity is impressive."

Just keep at it and keep doing stuff and eventually, you'll be on your own
with money coming in and that's what matters. Creating work is hard. Doing
work is easy. Your job as an entrepreneur is to create enough work that you
can pay yourself and others.

If you've never started a company and you're earning $60k a year, it's not
hard to forget that someone is taking $60k out of their pocket and giving it
to you which means someone else is too and as an individual on your own, it's
hard to convince people to give you $60k a year for stuff you do.

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chris123
Interesting comp structure ("iPhone Payment Plan").

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MediaSquirrel
Hmm. Why didn't this make it into the HN Twitter feed??

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ubu
YC sounds alot like the c-founder type you describe. it doesn't look that way
with all the hype but think about it... ( like a good engineer) would google
founders have fallen for YC's offer?

~~~
smanek
Yeah, except YC takes ~5% while the annoying business c-founder type take
~80%. And I'd argue YC even provides considerably more value than most
'business' co-founders.

~~~
ubu
it's not about the % YC or any venture capital. it's about your judgment of
what's added to your startups value. of all the startups applying, being
select etc a few become hits. the question is how much of it was do to the
founders and the work they put in, how much with the idea and how much with
SPECIFIC things that YC brings in. Not the hype. Also can it be brought in
otherwise and would it have become a sucess without YC. I would ask the same
thing about veture capital. sure it feels good when someone hands you lots of
$$$$ and say here work on your idea but I wouldn't take it if it's not going
to be usefull or need. if you think about its kind of ironic because YC
understands this and so gives only few dollars to start. it realy isn't needed
at that stage but then neither is YC.

by the way if I had even 1% of google I'd be so rich :)

~~~
dpritchett
From pg: "Financially, a startup is like a pass/fail course. The way to get
rich from a startup is to maximize the company's chances of succeeding, not to
maximize the amount of stock you retain. So if you can trade stock for
something that improves your odds, it's probably a smart move." [1]

If your startup succeeds, you've got more time and money to start another one
and either retain more stock or raise the value of the stock you keep next
time around.

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html>

~~~
lsc
I think the important part here is to not take on things that will make you
/less/ likely to succeed. Giving ownership to the wrong people will kill the
company faster than anything else. Hell, even just taking on debit can change
a company from one where you can learn from your mistakes to a failure after
you make your first big mistake.

(now, YC is probably the right people to give ownership to for some types of
companies; I imagine if your revenue model is to sell the company to some
silicon valley VC, the increased access to people wanting to buy is probably
worth the 5%. It's probably a bad idea, though, for other sorts; It probably
would not have helped my company much. (well, at least my company would have
become something entirely different from what it is.)

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vaksel
seems like you just merged the apocalypse startup posts into 1 big one.

~~~
MediaSquirrel
Not exactly. I did merge them, but then added some more stuff and did some
editing.

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torpor
I was a co-founder for a major ISP in the 90's, but got treated like the
Engineering-Bitch instead of as an equal, so I left .. within a year, the guy
I started the company with was worth millions, and I was still churning
through startup after startup .. okay, I escaped with my own integrity intact
(avoided having to deal with a later Federal investigation into the investors
of the company) but there is a lesson to be learned: If you're a tech guy,
always get the ducks in a row when you have to do business with an
entrepreneur whose primary purpose is to make themselves rich at the expense
of others ..

~~~
FreeRadical
Can you clarify what you mean by 'get the ducks in a row' please? It's not a
term I'm familiar with.

~~~
csbrooks
I can't answer to what the parent post specifically means here by it, but it
just means "get everything in order". Pay attention to the details, plan for
different possibilities, think through what might happen. That sort of thing.

