| I recently saw a post on Hacker News, where somebody created a [find-a-cofounder] spreadsheet. ... Literally 99% of the rows read something like this: "I am a business guy/entrepreneur/mba/professional; I am looking for a technical cofounder;" No. It's "literally" around 20% to 30%. The rest were tech people looking for business types or other tech people. Here's the spreadsheet:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgCvDTyBjHdOdDFfMENq... You were lazy (you didn't even bother to google that spreadsheet and look) and spoke in platitudes/over-generalizations and reiterated conventional wisdom. Shame on you. The truth is not only different but much more interesting. Everyone knows that it's easy to have an idea. No, it's not. So many of those entries are people who are technical but looking for a good idea to work on. "Business types are a dime a dozen." Not so. A good business development person will rock your project. How many great, but dead, sites are out there? Plenty. Picking the right cofounder is important. Fuck that nonsense. You're mouthing the words someone else gave you. If you have an organic cofounder -- great; go for it. I'm not against having cofounders. But if you think for one moment that a project needs more than one founder, and you have to pick one for the project to succeed, you simply don't know what you're talking about. |
Not that I agree with you completely. But I think it is important to not take an influential person (like pg)'s words for granted without your own critical thinking and some healthy doubts.
Like PG said, a lot of startup fails because they're single founders (without emotional support and other reasons). However,If you pick a co-founder just because PG or other VCs/bloggers said so, a lot of times, your co-founder will be the source of your failure.
Every person's situation/problem is different and all roads lead to Rome. I am kind of disappointed that PG developed a "formula" and believes that everyone should fit into that formula. If you don't, you're out of the game.
A good hacker finds his ways to make the system works for him by breaking the rules (or by finding the hidden rules that seems to defy the written rules).
You ready to break PG's rules?