[marssaxman]

> just building it for themselves and retaining 100% equity

I tried that once, and once was enough. It's not very rewarding to own 100% equity in a failed startup, especially when it failed because you were too focused on building the product to also build the business around it.

[ciguy]

Fair enough but wouldn't it make sense to find a co-founder vs getting paid a relatively small amount to build someone else's thing?

[marssaxman]

If I had an idea for a business I wanted to create badly enough to go through all the stress, effort, and risk of starting a company, then yes: it would make more sense to find a co-founder.

In practice, I find business matters generally tedious, and I prefer to think about money as little as possible, so I would rather be an early employee than a founder. The reduced equity does not matter, because startup equity is generally worthless anyway.