

The Co-Founder Mythology - Mark Suster - amitvjtimub
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2522

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xal
The situation he describes is a lot more common then you guys probably think.

Amazing things happen in a great partnership, but it's as rare as breakaway
success companies, and probably highly correlated.

Get the founder vesting, also forget about 50%/50% it's the dumbest way to
start the company.

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zackattack
why is 50/50 the dumbest way to start a company?

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xal
because it pretends that 2 people of exactly the same value to the company.
What are the odds of that?

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KleinmanB
Hah! 50/50 of a new company is ZERO. If you are negotiating your "future
value" (aggressively) with the person you are partnering with (and betting
that they will pour their blood into to build the initial value), you probably
have the wrong priorities to begin with.

Just taking the risk, starting at zero and pushing through the early phases is
HUGELY valuable. That's why VCs don't start companies

(This advice changes a bit for well known, serial founders)

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krschultz
That is looking at it from a valuation standpoint, from my perspective 51/49
is much better than 50/50. When push comes to shove, and you are 50/50, you
are at a stalemate.

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michaelfairley
If push comes to shove in a 2 person company, the company is already dead,
regardless of the equity split.

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gregpilling
I agree and would add that even in a 20 person company it is better (much
better) to get agreement rather than trying to make a decision stick because
you have 51% ownership. I have done that in the past, and it is amazing how
long people can hold onto their dislike of your decision and try to 'get back'
at you later. Forcing your will because you have majority is not good for
anything. Companies need to have a clear leader, and leadership does not come
from a 2% difference. This is from my previous company of 20 people where I
had majority interest.

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petenixey
Co-founding is often spoken of as if it's a binary state as Mark points out,
it's not. A cofounder who's not 50% committed is a more expensive and less use
than a 100% committed first employee. First employees take salary though which
takes investment and investors require co-founders.

It's a shame that the data on this is going to become more and more sparse
over the next few years as investors locks in on multiple co-founders and
single founders become more and more rare.

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moge
Couldn't agree more. Stated this in a previous comment but I would much rather
a salary taking (and potentially equity holding) first employee than a co-
founder just for the sake of having a co-founder.

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bretthellman
From my experience you don't need 'cofounders' as much as you need
capabilities like design, engineerings, marketing, the optimist, the
networking machine, etc... Some people have only one of these skills and need
to make up for the others with employees or cofounders. Others have more than
1 skill and can push a product farther along.

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moge
So I am a single-founder. For me, and it is worth nothing that I have a sum
total of 28 users on my site, it is not that I feel that I need a co-founder
or even a partner. What I need is a collaborator!

Everyone, everyone, everyone says to me 'oh, your a single-founder. When are
you going to get a co-founder?' I feel like a handmaiden sometimes.

All I really want, desperately need, is a collaborator, a mentor, a sounding
board. If that person is co-founder so be it. Funding should be dependent on
team and 'team' is not always a 'founder'.

...sorry I know that was slightly outside the scope of the topic, /rantoff.

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gscott
I think your product relies on mass adoption. Rather then trying the shotgun
approach (try to sign up millions of people so you have enough people to 'hang
with'" a facebook app where a person can schedule a number of events they are
going to that others can join in on then tie that data back to your main site.

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moge
Thanks for the feedback! Second time someone has mentioned doing a FB app. I
had not considered that previously. I can see how doing that would give us a
deep reach. Tying the data back to the site is also interesting. Thanks again
for the feedback!

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DanielKehoe
He says, "I'm not telling you don't do it... [but if you have a cofounder]
make sure you have founder vesting."

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joakin
I just saw the entire talk, and its very interesting from start to end.

I would recommend it to anyone that feels the 'entepreneurial tickles'.

Also, in my opinion, the lean startup and fail fast chapters give really good
advice.

Thanks for posting this

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8ren
aside: odd he didn't mention Hewlett and Packard, Woz and Jobs, Gates and
Allen, Warnock and Geschke (Adobe), the intel founders, oracle founders. Most
(not all) seem to fall into tech vs. biz roles, with overlapping abilities.

I would have thought the most important benefit of co-founders is someone to
bounce-n-build ideas. But the dual tech/biz roles really suggest it's based
either on abilities for different tasks; or on modularizing the complexity of
dealing with those different tasks.

As an example of the latter: I've recently experienced of this as a one-
founder in that when negotiating a large and complex contract, I simply don't
have any of that extra spark of intelligence/gumption/whatever left over to
overcome the complex technical obstacles that regularly come up.

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comatose_kid
Why editorialize a submission title?

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esun
What editorial? Co-founder mythology is the title of the clip.

Are you referring to the part about singles watching the video? It's a
recommendation. Doesn't favour either side of the debate.

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gojomo
"Single founders need to see this" is unwanted editorializing, especially the
emotional-heightening 'need' word.

The mere fact that it's been submitted (or upvoted) is a recommendation to
view. If it has special relevance for single founders, that can be included
matter-of-factly: "The Co-Founder Mythology - a defense of single founders".

(And to further quibble: it's not self-confident single founders who 'need' to
see this -- they already know cofounder risks! It's those who are biased
against single-founder startups.)

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zackattack
hey matt mireles, why isn't speakertext powering this site?

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MediaSquirrel
Working on it, bro.

