|
You deserve kudos for your efforts so far. Every failure will breed some type of insight. The statement, "I believe that my previous two ventures failed mainly because of the founding team (which I’m included in)." - may be true, but could probably just as easily be said of solo founders. Especially after reading your list of deficiencies in the founding team members, they may be the same short-comings as the person staring at a solo founder in the mirror! It is sometimes harder (or impossible) to find that rare person who can wear all hats. My major concern about being a solo founder would be the possible loss of productivity- how much more a team can accomplish over one person, and collaboration. Also, and this may seem horrible, but if we crash and burn, we can do it faster as a team, and pivot or move-on without the time equity that one person will have invested. To answer the questions you posed at the end of your article, my two cents is that I have found it impossible to succeed at scale without an agile team (one mans opinion).
I hate to preach process and organization, but if a team follows the resources available to start-ups, such as business model generation, etc. You can identify holes in the team, or where someone needs assistance.
This leads to the second part of your question and the most important attributes to look for in a co-founder. They should already have expertise, but the two attributes that I would look for are Objectivity- nothing ruins like the inability to be flexible, and Leadership- in the sense that leaders tend to be people of action, they bring people along, and they celebrate success wildly. Not that you cannot achieve success alone, but it is definitely a lot tougher to celebrate alone. |