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I tried a co-founder. He had a lot to offer. But too soon he wanted to do no work and be a bitch on the team. So, I had to break off with him. "Co-founder d
by graycat 12y ago
I tried a co-founder. He had a lot to offer.
But too soon he wanted to do no work and
be a bitch on the team. So, I had to break
off with him. "Co-founder disputes"? Yup,
they are likely.
The result is, I've just had to do more of the
work, say, serially instead of in parallel.
That's not all bad: (1) I understand more of
the work, really all of it, because I did all
of it (the co-founder and I broke off before
he contributed anything). (2) I saved time and
effort coordinating with a co-founder.
Sure, a VC might say, "That your candidate
co-founder didn't do much suggests that he
was not really impressed with the project.
In that case, neither am I."
But there's another explanation: Often some people
just don't want to get along.
To get someone to work reasonably hard, one
approach is to have a big, successful company,
pay enough to support a wife and family, and
have the wife with two young kids and with
one more in the oven. Two guys in a garage
don't meet this criterion.
I'm plenty motivated; he wasn't. My view is,
for as much as he had to bring, still he had
some serious flaws in his character.
So, find another co-founder? Not so easy.
Easier just to do the work! For a co-founder,
some of the usual recommendations are to select
someone with good paper qualifications and have
known and worked well with for years. Okay,
my list of such people is exhausted. So,
net, I'm a solo founder.
Again, the US, border to border, from crossroads,
villages, and towns up to the largest cities, is
just awash with solo founders of successful Main Street
sole proprietorships. So, for a business where
the initial work is just typing code into
a computer to be used as a Web server,
being a solo founder seems fully promising to me,
even if VCs don't like it.