Sure, I think family can provide some of that motivation/sounding board (My wife is bored to death of me talking to her about Mibbit, but she listens, nods, mak

Sure, I think family can provide some of that motivation/sounding board (My wife is bored to death of me talking to her about Mibbit, but she listens, nods, makes comments :) Sometimes it seems helpful just to say ideas out loud). I think though that the 'encouraged you to work' can quickly be fulfilled by your users once things take off. There's nothing more motivating than users emailing with feature requests, or telling you something is broken. For me, the biggest irritation not having a co-founder has been the ups and downs. When I think "this thing sucks! It's stupid it's all wrong it's broken rubbish I should stop it now", there's no other co-founders to balance that out. I'd agree with the 2x more productive being possible. Also very cool if you start to get competitive with each other - "Bet I can get this new feature done by end of the day" etc