
Stop Looking for a Cofounder - johnwheeler
https://medium.com/@johnwheeler/stop-looking-for-a-cofounder-ad6e8f972776#.5aqqvjeci
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codingdave
It is a false assumption that pg's advice universally applies to all business.
His advice is specific to startups, as defined by the SV crowd, which means
extreme growth, intending to take on investors. If that path is not
specifically in your plans, a lot of the advice coming out of VC/YC mouths
should be taken with a grain of salt.

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jrbapna
Many great companies can be started in 2016 as a solo founder. Not every
company needs to be the next Google to be massively successful and rewarding.

Look at the Forbes 400 list. There are literally hundreds of solo founders who
are the wealthiest people in the world.

Always remember, no cofounder is better than the wrong cofounder.

For those who want to understand execution, I highly recommend reading The 10x
Rule by Grant Cardone

~~~
wtf_is_frp
I am interested in your review.

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mehrdada
The majority of "no single founder" advice I have heard are from investors,
and that obviously includes PG as well. It is important to realize that
investors have many incentives to fund companies with more than one founder.
Not all of those incentives necessarily align with the incentives of the
primary founder.

Being a single founder has some obvious disadvantages, but considering how
many times "cofounder disputes" is cited as one of the most common reasons
startups die, often by the same set of people with the above advice, I can't
help but wonder if the benefit of derisking that particular concern by being a
single founder is underappreciated.

~~~
mathattack
Interesting point. Is this an issue of governance? To an investor, it's
important to not have a single point of failure at the head of a company. If
there are 2 founders and one loses interest or gets hit by a bus, the company
survives. (Or to be more Machiavellian, if one is unreasonable, they can oust
them without losing the company) If there is 1 founder, the power dynamics are
different, because they have a much stronger hold on leadership and
information. And more key-man risk.

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jkarneges
I'm a solo founder. When I started my current company, I first developed a
prototype then tried looking for a co-founder shortly after. There weren't
many options within my personal network (few risk takers or people with
savings to burn). I expanded my search to those I didn't know, which meant
going through essentially an interview process with potential candidates, but
I couldn't find a match. I even had people do reversals and pitch me their
ideas.

My feeling is that this kind of co-founder matchmaking is just plain hard.
First, like they say it's similar to getting married. You really need to trust
the person, which is why your personal network is the best source if you can
pull it off (see PG talk about college buddies). Second, many people
interested in entrepreneurship probably have their own ideas already.

I think non-technical founders have the best chance at recruiting technical
founders than the other way around. The technical role is more straightforward
(write code for the idea that the non-technical founder came up with), and
potential technical recruits may be more wealthy on average.

If you're a technical founder, I'd say recruiting a "biz" person is a lot
harder. Fortunately, you can just do everything on your own anyway (not that
it'll be easy though!).

~~~
sciclaw
Can you point to anything about PG and college buddies? I'm not seeing much on
the subject.

~~~
jkarneges
Here he mentions staying in contact with college friends for use as future co-
founders:
[http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html](http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html)

Here he mentions founders knowing each other since elementary school:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html)

I believe I've also seen him on video saying that the best cofounders are old
friends. I've always had this impression that he doesn't believe in "founder
dating" or quick matches like that.

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moron4hire
I've had people approach me to be their cofounder on their projects, and I
have almost always said no, because A) I have my own projects I'm interested
in working on, and B) I didn't think _they_ brought any useful skills to the
table.

When you're teaming up with a cofounder, you're not just getting a free
employee. You're getting a business partner, and that person needs to be
someone who complements your skills. But too often, I see MBA types who are
"looking for technical cofounder for lots of equity" to mean "need a code-
monkey who I will boss around for free."

Even more distressing is the fact that so many young programmers will go along
with it.

If we're going to be cofounders--and let's just assume for a minute that I
have the technical part covered--then that means I expect you to be able to
prove that you know how to perform the tasks of marketing and sales. I can
show you several past projects I've worked on. What can you show me?

And you need to be putting in just as much effort on your job as I'm putting
in on mine. And no, you are not waiting for me to finish the product. That's
not how marketing works. You need to start _now_.

Nobody has managed to do that yet--and there have been several suitors--thus I
haven't taken on a cofounder.

~~~
jjeaff
That is my experience as a technical cofounder. If your partners don't have
the marketing or sales chops, you will live in a constant world of blame where
they are waiting on you to complete the product. If only you could figure out
how to do that last big feature, we could sell it... This customer says they
will buy if it can do this...

I think this is a very common refrain in small startups. If the business side
can't sell it, it must be that the product isn't good enough yet.

~~~
ddebernardy
> I think this is a very common refrain in small startups. If the business
> side can't sell it, it must be that the product isn't good enough yet.

Correct, but fwiw, and speaking as a techie/marketer/sales I've more often
than not seen this happen when the techie founder is not involved in the sales
process at all, so methinks the blame is largely shared between the founders -
you can't just blame the sales if whoever might be able to say "hey this is
_super_ complex, are you sure you need it _now_?" is not around during the
discussion.

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overcast
It's good to have someone there to push you, and vice versa. But definitely
don't putz around wasting time looking, when you could be spending that time
building. Bringing your idea to the light, getting critique from peers and
users, is much more valuable starting out. If I waited to work with someone
for every idea I had, I'd never get anything done. Worry about all that other
business related nonsense when something actually gets traction.

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jamesroseman
I think these are all really good points, but I was sad to see it didn't
address one of the largest reasons my side-business is going to stay side-
business until I find someone I can envision really starting with -- you need
someone to lift you up.

I sit in the school of thought that says you need a co-founder to disagree
with you with a passion you won't find idly perusing Reddit, but you raise a
few good points. One thing you don't address is the overwhelming feelings of
"I can't do this" or "I shouldn't do this". Those are the points where you
need someone you trust to be on your team, because it's likely these moments
of despair won't sync between the two of you.

~~~
johnwheeler
You're right - it's addressed at the bottom too

"The last part of the quote above, that you need colleagues to cheer you up
when things go wrong, hits home for me. When I started developing eBay
software, PayPal’s recurring payment system had a bug that was skimping my
payouts more and more each month. It took me three months to get them to fix
it, and although they ended up reimbursing me, it was stressful watching my
revenues erode while my user count increased. In addition to crises, it’s also
hard just staying motivated sometimes. The best way to cope is to maintain low
expectations and stay busy working on things you can control."

For the emotional aspects of business, you DO need people. I posted this on HN
because of the incredible stimulation I get around the discussion from all
you.

~~~
jamesroseman
Sorry about that, I thought I had done a thorough read and obviously hadn't.

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milge
3 LLCs, a trademark, a patent application, and 10 years later and I've learned
so much more of solo founder success has to do with pure dumb luck. I've since
given up. For every success story like in the article, there are 10 failures.

~~~
moron4hire
For every success story, period, there are 10 failures. Even if you find a
cofounder, you're still likely to fail.

I think the point of the article is just an admonition to not _ensure_ failure
by settling on a _bad_ cofounder under the idea that any is better than none.

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OhHeyItsE
> However, I created ebay feedback software by myself that’s kept me self-
> employed for the last four years

Commendable. But this seems to be what investors often call a "lifestyle
business". Not the kind of thing that needs a team to grow.

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minimaxir
The reason people look for cofounders (and why firms requires multiple
cofounders for investment) is not a skill/productivity issue.

It's a _risk adversity_ issue, as if something happens to a single cofounder,
the startup is 100% dead.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _It 's a risk adversity issue, as if something happens to a single
> cofounder, the startup is 100% dead._

I think a keyperson insurance policy would be much simpler to arrange, though
only _maybe_ less costly.

~~~
danieltillett
Try getting key-person insurance for a solo startup. A cofounder is cheap by
comparison.

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scandox
Happened to sit next to a billionaire at dinner once. He asked me what I did.
I said I ran a small business. He asked did I have a partner. I said I did. He
said: "Get rid of them".

Suffice to say I am not a billionaire.

~~~
sportanova
Ha my dad says the same thing, though he's not a billionaire. Says they're
always more trouble than they're worth

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danieltillett
The rule is pretty simple if you are bootstrapping. A cofounder makes your
life easier now at the expense of making it harder in the future - the
ultimate technical debt.

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lowglow
This is my advice: If a cofounder sounds right for you, you're probably doing
the right thing by looking. I've tried several startups without a co-founder
and I can tell you that having a partner helps immensely. Having someone in
the trenches living for the same cause brings a spirit that's hard to conjure
by one's self.

Sometimes it's easy, and sometimes it is difficult. The co-founder I'm working
on Baqqer with happened because I posted in a FB group looking for a
designer/front-end person that could share in some of the work. I had recently
sold everything and moved in to my van to conserve my burn rate while I was
building out of TechShop. My co-founder told me one of the reasons he joined
up was because he found it inspirational that someone would go to such lengths
to live for what they wanted to build. We get along as friends first and I
think that's the most important trait required for early stage co-founders.

If you're looking for a co-founder I'd suggest just being open and honest with
what you're building, tell your story, grow your community, build something
people want. You also might have some luck over with the Baqqer community with
the rest of us. [https://baqqer.com/](https://baqqer.com/)

[edit] I'd also like to point out that I was building while I was looking, so
I had something to show that demonstrated my desire to keep moving forward and
demonstrated progress on the idea. This is a good place to be. I'd say don't
show up empty handed when trying to find a co-founder.

~~~
johnwheeler
hey, we have the same logo

[https://feedbackboost.com/](https://feedbackboost.com/)

font-awesome FTW!

~~~
lowglow
Hahah yeah, it started out as a placeholder. We're re-thinking the logo and
considering something that demonstrates the utility of a community that works
together to produce something. There's a trello card and everything! :P

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Mz
You make some good points, but I think the piece could be a lot better if it
weren't framed as a rebuttal to pg's article.

I know that it is far easier to come up with something to say at all when you
have something to respond to and I know how tempting it is to latch onto a
prominent figure and disagree with their famous ideas. But it is
psychologically an uphill battle. It undermines your actual message by
reinforcing the assumption that multiple founders is the status quo and you
need to battle against it to go solo. That idea just feels exhausting to
contemplate.

If you plan to write more on this subject, I would be interested in hearing a
great deal more about specific success stories and the insider perspective in
terms of process and how your day goes.

Edit: Inspired by this piece, I wrote my own blog post.
[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/06/working-
is-l...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/06/working-is-
lonely.html)
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11912395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11912395))

It in no way references this piece. It took me a really long time to figure
out how to write something inspired by something I had read without making it
a rebuttal or direct response to the thing I had read. So, as noted above, I
am totally sympathetic to why that happens. And, to reiterate what I said
above: I would sincerely be interested in seeing more info about what working
alone is all about.

Thanks.

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bobsil1
Cofounder helps because you have blind spots, there's a lot of work to do, and
they can split startup costs. But, be very sure to understand what drives
them, and what their threshold is for bailing.

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ikeboy
Anyone have more information on that PayPal bug?

