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Rather than dismissing my cofounder as terrible, I encourage you to consider the possibility that advice like yours, which we followed in cofounding the company

Rather than dismissing my cofounder as terrible, I encourage you to consider the possibility that advice like yours, which we followed in cofounding the company, set him up for failure. Having specialization early on was a mistake. It was a difficult situation, and it wasn't entirely his fault that there was, for long stretches of time, little for him to do. A startup cycle goes something like this: initial theory -> MVP -> validation of theory using MVP -> iterating to product-market fit -> scale Even in that highly oversimplified flow, there are a lot of shifts from "product mode" to "development mode". Most of these steps must happen sequentially. If only half of the team is fully engaged in any given step, you get a lot of slack. There's a joke that first startups should hire a bunch of developers to build the product. Then they should fire the developers and hire a bunch of salespeople to sell the product. Which begs the question - why not just hire developers who can sell, and avoid paying all that unemployment? Larger organizations can get away with having specialists onboard. Smaller organizations (2-3 people) can't afford this luxury. Your advice would hold for a later stage startup, but it is unreasonable advice for an early stage startup.

jason_tko 12y ago
It seems as though you're coming at this with a very different world view and set of experiences than me, which is fine. Maybe we can learn something from each other. To give two sentences of background, I've been running businesses for 13 years, and running a startup for 4 years. The first business I built by myself from nothing, and the second I built alongside my technical co-founder. Firstly I'm concerned that you seem to think that I'm suggesting finding a 'specialist' business co-founder. Being a co-founder is the exact opposite of specialisation. If you're a co-founder period, you do ANYTHING it takes to move things forward, no exceptions, ifs, ands or buts. Also, without meaning to be picky, I believed you identified your co-founder as terrible. Someone who, as you described, believes that doing 'thought experiments' and trying to get twitter followers is the appropriate thing that a business co-founder should be doing in an early stage startup, is objectively a terrible business co-founder. If your business co-founder is doing his job properly, there should never be any slack. Exactly the same as a technical co-founder. Companies, especially early stage companies, can and must be doing product mode and develop mode simultaneously. I've never heard that joke, but as you grow your company and get more customers on board, who have more requirements, it's pretty important to have both salespeople and developers working in tandem to build out a company. I agree with you that larger organisations can afford having specialists and smaller organisations cannot.
- michaelq 12y ago
  How did you build the product that your first business sold without a technical person onboard? You coded it yourself. Thus, you have technical skills. 9 years later, when you were looking for a cofounder, you decided to go with a technical cofounder. You can talk all you want, but at the end of the day, you chose to bring on a second technical cofounder (the first being yourself) over the business cofounder that you are recommending the OP seek out. N.b. by technical cofounder, I don't necessarily mean someone with a PhD in Computer Vision. I mean someone who can productively write API integrations and use whatever tools are needed (e.g. Rails, Meteor, Xcode) to build the product.
  - jason_tko 12y ago
    Again, I think you're mischaracterising me a little bit. I can't code. I'm not a technical co-founder. My first business was not a software business, it was an IT infrastructure business. In my first business, I discovered a need in the Japanese market for a good invoicing/document management software. It came about through me building a crappy invoice management system, and showing it to other Japanese business owners. It was a little scary to work seriously on this, since there were no competitors, hence possibly no market. However, I went out and did the following: a) Designed and had built a crappy version of the software that was functional, but not elegant or scalable. b) Talked with nearly a hundred potential users of this software to find out how they're currently solving this problem, and to try to get a sense of the market and the potential demand. c) Found a group of people who were very interested in buying this software. So by the time I found my co-founder, I had already invested hundreds of hours, and tens of thousands of dollars. However, I had a working prototype, many potential customers, and a good feel of the market. It was a LOT of work. When people dismiss business co-founders as not doing a lot of work, or not doing meaningful work, it's both very irritating and also leads me to believe they've never worked with a 'real' business co-founder.
    - chiBT 12y ago
      Jason sounds like you have been where I am now. When you found your co-founders, after all that work, how did you split the equity? I'm a business founder looking for co-founders and I want to be fair but fair to myself as well.

jason_tko 12y ago

It seems as though you're coming at this with a very different world view and set of experiences than me, which is fine. Maybe we can learn something from each other. To give two sentences of background, I've been running businesses for 13 years, and running a startup for 4 years. The first business I built by myself from nothing, and the second I built alongside my technical co-founder. Firstly I'm concerned that you seem to think that I'm suggesting finding a 'specialist' business co-founder. Being a co-founder is the exact opposite of specialisation. If you're a co-founder period, you do ANYTHING it takes to move things forward, no exceptions, ifs, ands or buts. Also, without meaning to be picky, I believed you identified your co-founder as terrible. Someone who, as you described, believes that doing 'thought experiments' and trying to get twitter followers is the appropriate thing that a business co-founder should be doing in an early stage startup, is objectively a terrible business co-founder. If your business co-founder is doing his job properly, there should never be any slack. Exactly the same as a technical co-founder. Companies, especially early stage companies, can and must be doing product mode and develop mode simultaneously. I've never heard that joke, but as you grow your company and get more customers on board, who have more requirements, it's pretty important to have both salespeople and developers working in tandem to build out a company. I agree with you that larger organisations can afford having specialists and smaller organisations cannot.

michaelq 12y ago
How did you build the product that your first business sold without a technical person onboard? You coded it yourself. Thus, you have technical skills. 9 years later, when you were looking for a cofounder, you decided to go with a technical cofounder. You can talk all you want, but at the end of the day, you chose to bring on a second technical cofounder (the first being yourself) over the business cofounder that you are recommending the OP seek out. N.b. by technical cofounder, I don't necessarily mean someone with a PhD in Computer Vision. I mean someone who can productively write API integrations and use whatever tools are needed (e.g. Rails, Meteor, Xcode) to build the product.
- jason_tko 12y ago
  Again, I think you're mischaracterising me a little bit. I can't code. I'm not a technical co-founder. My first business was not a software business, it was an IT infrastructure business. In my first business, I discovered a need in the Japanese market for a good invoicing/document management software. It came about through me building a crappy invoice management system, and showing it to other Japanese business owners. It was a little scary to work seriously on this, since there were no competitors, hence possibly no market. However, I went out and did the following: a) Designed and had built a crappy version of the software that was functional, but not elegant or scalable. b) Talked with nearly a hundred potential users of this software to find out how they're currently solving this problem, and to try to get a sense of the market and the potential demand. c) Found a group of people who were very interested in buying this software. So by the time I found my co-founder, I had already invested hundreds of hours, and tens of thousands of dollars. However, I had a working prototype, many potential customers, and a good feel of the market. It was a LOT of work. When people dismiss business co-founders as not doing a lot of work, or not doing meaningful work, it's both very irritating and also leads me to believe they've never worked with a 'real' business co-founder.
  - chiBT 12y ago
    Jason sounds like you have been where I am now. When you found your co-founders, after all that work, how did you split the equity? I'm a business founder looking for co-founders and I want to be fair but fair to myself as well.