How well did you know the cofounder beforehand? This is very much part of my frustration. I put my pseudo-resume on CFL and got blasted with dozens of requests

How well did you know the cofounder beforehand? This is very much part of my frustration. I put my pseudo-resume on CFL and got blasted with dozens of requests, so many that I had to put assholish "don't contact me unless" prerequisites on my profile. But here's the thing I've realized (and maybe you did, more painfully): I know not to get involved with a stranger or even an acquaintance that I haven't known for years. Finding someone who can produce at an obsessive, passionate level like you (hopefully) will is extremely difficult and riddled with risk. Heck, just finding someone who is a net positive is hard enough. If you co-found with a non-bestie, not only are you taking all that risk on yourself, but investors are going to look the other way. They know it better than anyone: startup teams are like marriages. It can get ugly really, really quickly, completely obliterating the business in the process. I have an unhealthy envy of some cofounding teams that just were, no work involved at all. It's like they took the undisputed hardest part of starting a company and just sidestepped it. Digital Ocean is a team of brothers, for example. Many big startups were formed out of happenstance high school or college buddies. But guess what? When you grow up in a tiny town in flyover country where entrepreneurship is unheard of, those people don't exist. I did go to a top-10 university, but it wasn't particularly entrepreneurial like Stanford or Berkeley. Everyone I knew there is now a banker, lawyer, doctor, etc. My only engineering buddy from college has been at Microsoft for 12 years and has two kids, and even still, I've made several unsuccessful runs at him (and others). I'm allowing myself to be a little whinier than I would under a real account, so sorry if it sounds ultra-negative. Meh, in for a penny... Dear God I hate the concept of marriage. It has stolen all my friends and all my potential co-founders. I secretly celebrate divorce.