[lux]

This hit home on my current project, since we're two founders but I'm the solo coder. My partner has some basic coding experience, enough to know what I'm talking about, but he's bringing more of the domain knowledge to the table. He's also producing the help and marketing material, and usability testing as well.

But what we found is that having that different perspective in things like the user interface design has helped tremendously. It's resulted in us thinking through the interface in a way I know neither of us would've done as well on our own, and has definitely helped make this project my best work to date.

Really what I've learned is that knowing your strengths/limitations and finding a partner that complements them is critical, but it's also freeing. I can see why YC says they don't like solo startups. I've tried that before, and got pretty far (10k+ users), but while it is too much work for one person, I'm also seeing now how much better it could have been with the right partner's perspective.