One way to suck less is to raise angel money after you've made some progress, such as demonstrating some technology viability, some market traction, or at least commitments from other people to join you if you get funded.
Definitely. At the end of the day, the best way to get any kind of funding is to make people worry that they're missing the boat heading towards a ton of money. Demonstrating real customers, and everything else that falls under 'traction' and 'momentum' is the way to achieve that.
If I had to do it again, I'd completely forget about the money-raising and spend the three months focused on the product, and worry about everything else much later. That's not a great fit for the Techstars program, though some of the most interesting companies to come out of it have ended up boot-strapping, eg Occipital/Red Laser.
So I hear the single founder thing thrown around a lot, and as I'm currently working on an idea I struggle with the fear of taking on a second founder simply to get around the stigma of being a one-man team. I am a highly technical business man. I can code, I can do strategy, I can read a P&L. Design is the only big gap in skillset and it seems like bringing on a co-founder simply for design work would be over the top. I do wish I could find someone to work with on this project, but I don't know anyone personally that I would consider for the job and I don't know that I want to start a business with a stranger. What to do? Anybody else in Colorado in a similar situation? :)
Do it yourself. You won't find someone else half as good as yourself and will waste too much time and money trying. Once you have traction money will be there if you need it. Of course, you probably won't since your cost structure will be much lower.
Get involved with Techstars and the tech community, there's a lot of events all the time here in Boulder. Boulder/Denver New Tech meetups are probably the best introduction:
I've been thinking I need to move up to Boulder rather than being down South of Denver, but doing so would be counterproductive since I still have another job aside from working on my product. Moving that far north would mean 2 hours a day wasted in commute, so I'll probably just live with only going up that way a few times a month for meetups.
As for the other advice, my thanks to all who responded. In the mean time, I'm going to keep trucking along working on my product and hopefully the right person will present themselves through some of the networking options that have been recommended.
Unfortunately, no one is running the equivalent of the co-founders meetup in Colorado (http://www.meetup.com/Co-Founders-Wanted-Meetup/), but you are welcome to start one if you want to. TechStars would indeed be a great anchor, but you don't have to ask permission to start such a meetup.
hey Clint, i'm also in Colorado, do software and I think I can do enough of the biz/strategy stuff to get by, as well. also, design/UI is my weak area. I know some great designers but they are mostly busy and/or already involved pretty tightly in some startups. I've tried to minimize this as a bottleneck by trying to work on projects that can be effective with simple designs that I can do myself, at least enough to get launched and start iterating and testing market, etc. Great UI & graphic design seems like something you can add later in a makeover, only when and if you nail the other elements needed and it looks like it has legs.
also, the BDNT Meetup is a great way to hook into the startup scene.
There's lots of examples of successful lone founders, but most of the angel investors I met cringed at the thought of putting money into a one-man band. It's possible to overcome that with enough traction, but it is an extra obstacle.
