5 ms·
Don't work with a co-founder. Ycombinator, Fred Wilson, and others in the investor community will frown, but if you can swing it as a solo founder (and many peo
by ilamont 9y ago
Don't work with a co-founder. Ycombinator, Fred Wilson, and others in the investor community will frown, but if you can swing it as a solo founder (and many people do) you are avoiding the Russian roulette that comes with pairing up with someone else.
- mooreds 9y agoThere are very real costs to not having a cofounder though. Founding is hard, I have no idea how solo founders handle the work and the emotional swings.
- ilamont 9y agoAgreed, but I found the emotional swings to be much harder with a cofounder than as a solo founder. As for the work aspect - either way is hard, the challenge as a solo founder is making the right partnerships and outsourcing where your skills are weak.
- wolco 9y agoWhy not have three or ten co founders? All could bring value in different ways:
- mooreds 9y agoHaha, I assume this was reductio ad absurdum. It's hard enough to make decisions and to align 2-4 co-founders, I can't imagine trying to make any kind of strategic (read, hard) decision with 10.
- wolco 9y agoYou would do what larger groups do and vote. Like a defacto board.
- mooreds 9y agoAh. Any group I've been a part of that was larger than 4 people wasn't making real decisions by vote. Instead, a smaller number of folks (1-3) would actually drive the decisions. Sometimes membership of that group rotated, but more often than not it was the same folks, with other occasionally dropping in to offer input, but not driving the decision in any meaningful manner. Perhaps I'm a cynic, but I believe that's how things operate--unless lines can be very clearly drawn (which is hard in a startup) a large number of decision makers will lead to no decisions.
- logicallee 9y agoSome people need a cofounder to help them decide what to do: they literally can't build consensus with a rubber duck. (Work by themselves.)