I've been involved with three startups, and met all three co-founders under radically different situations. The first startup was a game studio, Blazing Griffin

I've been involved with three startups, and met all three co-founders under radically different situations. The first startup was a game studio, Blazing Griffin (http://blazinggriffin.com http://blazinggriffin.com) -- I was doing hobbyist iOS game dev as a creative outlet during my PhD, and demoed one of my prototypes to a guy who I ended up starting the studio with at a regular gamedev drinkup (https://twitter.com/GameDevEd https://twitter.com/GameDevEd). We eventually parted ways (difference of vision), but I wouldn't say we were unsuccessful as a co-founding team, since the company is still doing great and we parted under good terms. The second was a mini-publishing house (a very strange and very different business...), which I co-founded with a group of university friends. We had a couple of common interests, and all had ideas for different projects that could overlap. These were folks I originally met socially, mostly through a dance class we all took, but we've had a great time working together and shipped some pretty excellent things. It may be because we were friends first and co-founders later, but our working relationship has been consistently really great. The third startup is different again. It's not launched yet, but I'm building it with a three-person team of folks I put together from my day job. We're all a little disillusioned with corporate work, and realised over a couple conversations that we we had the technical and business development chops to put together something really awesome, if only it was something that we had real ownership of. Hey presto, a team of founders was formed and off we went in search of ideas (our current prototype is a no-nonsense classified listings site for apps; read about it at http://blog.theappclassifieds.com http://blog.theappclassifieds.com). I'm not sure what the takeaway from all of this might be, other than to just consistently surround yourself with smart people. Find a place where people are smarted than you and interested in building the same kinds of things, and get going.