4 ms·

Ugh. Link-bait title. This is just as useful: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1566568 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1566568

cperciva 16y ago
It wasn't deliberate link-bait. I use the term "zero-equity co-founder" because it makes the point that these provide something which (until recently) you would need to bring in a co-founder for.
- erikstarck 16y ago
  But the same can be said for _any_ component in your business that was made outside your office walls. Your operating system. Your compiler. Your office chair. This is in fact how an open and free economy works. You always build on the work of others.
  - cperciva 16y ago
    Yes, if you ignore the "(until recently)" part. I'm not trying to be exceptionally profound here; just to point out that the giants on whose shoulders we stand are growing taller by the day.
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    Those components offer only the most marginal of value to the specific work at hand, though. They have application to 99% of startups. Conversely, we see here two very specific components that make success orders of magnitude more easy. This isn't trivial and it's an important part of the overall realities of launching a startup in 2010. Tasks that would have required another person five years ago can be satisfied by services or frameworks today. Instead of spending money on a server lease, maybe requiring investment when you can convince someone, you start small on Heroku/EC2/App Engine free, tonight. Instead of finding someone who's awesome at databases, you get free ORM with your MVC framework of choice. These things aren't trivial. And the current situation is new and dramatic in just how complete the tools are. They let ever-smaller teams do ever-larger things with smaller and smaller investment. Seeing these as zero-equity co-founders can be cast in a gimmicky light but it's also a pretty economical means of description.
- btmorex 16y ago
  ... except that AWS and libarchive didn't actually found your company with you. To be honest, the title of the post intrigued me and the actual article was a let down because it was completely different from my expectation.
  - cperciva 16y ago
    If you look around the startup scene, you'll find lots of "co-founders" who aren't literal co-founders. Usually they're just early hires; I decided to be metaphorical in a different direction. Personally I think "was around from the beginning and did a lot of the work" is a better claim to co-founder status than "was hired early in the startup's life and was given lots of stock".
danilocampos 16y ago
The fact that it's intriguing doesn't necessarily make it link bait-y. My curiosity was engaged and the unique frame of the message increased the complexity of how I think of the single founder issue. I also have renewed appreciation for the heavy lifting I won't have to do thanks to existing libraries, frameworks and services. Good marketing, yes, but the content was virtuous on top of that.

cperciva 16y ago

It wasn't deliberate link-bait. I use the term "zero-equity co-founder" because it makes the point that these provide something which (until recently) you would need to bring in a co-founder for.

erikstarck 16y ago
But the same can be said for _any_ component in your business that was made outside your office walls. Your operating system. Your compiler. Your office chair. This is in fact how an open and free economy works. You always build on the work of others.
- cperciva 16y ago
  Yes, if you ignore the "(until recently)" part. I'm not trying to be exceptionally profound here; just to point out that the giants on whose shoulders we stand are growing taller by the day.
- danilocampos 16y ago
  Those components offer only the most marginal of value to the specific work at hand, though. They have application to 99% of startups. Conversely, we see here two very specific components that make success orders of magnitude more easy. This isn't trivial and it's an important part of the overall realities of launching a startup in 2010. Tasks that would have required another person five years ago can be satisfied by services or frameworks today. Instead of spending money on a server lease, maybe requiring investment when you can convince someone, you start small on Heroku/EC2/App Engine free, tonight. Instead of finding someone who's awesome at databases, you get free ORM with your MVC framework of choice. These things aren't trivial. And the current situation is new and dramatic in just how complete the tools are. They let ever-smaller teams do ever-larger things with smaller and smaller investment. Seeing these as zero-equity co-founders can be cast in a gimmicky light but it's also a pretty economical means of description.
btmorex 16y ago
... except that AWS and libarchive didn't actually found your company with you. To be honest, the title of the post intrigued me and the actual article was a let down because it was completely different from my expectation.
- cperciva 16y ago
  If you look around the startup scene, you'll find lots of "co-founders" who aren't literal co-founders. Usually they're just early hires; I decided to be metaphorical in a different direction. Personally I think "was around from the beginning and did a lot of the work" is a better claim to co-founder status than "was hired early in the startup's life and was given lots of stock".

danilocampos 16y ago

The fact that it's intriguing doesn't necessarily make it link bait-y. My curiosity was engaged and the unique frame of the message increased the complexity of how I think of the single founder issue. I also have renewed appreciation for the heavy lifting I won't have to do thanks to existing libraries, frameworks and services. Good marketing, yes, but the content was virtuous on top of that.