[HN Gopher] Tell HN: YC will help you find a co-founder
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Tell HN: YC will help you find a co-founder
Hey HN, I'm Kyle Corbitt, and I work on Startup School
(https://www.startupschool.org/), YC's free program to help people
learn how to start a startup. Today we're launching a new major
feature: co-founder matching
(https://www.startupschool.org/cofounder-matching). Interested
founders can create a profile, input their requirements (location,
time commitment, skills, etc) and quickly review screened
candidates. We don't charge for this or take any equity in the
teams formed. Founders face lots of hard problems at the earliest
stages--building an MVP, finding users, finding investors--but
finding a co-founder can be uniquely difficult. Even if you have a
strong network, your friends may not be startup-oriented, and the
ones who are may not be available on the same schedule you are [1].
And if you don't have a strong existing network, the search is even
harder. Of course, you don't _need_ a co-founder to start a
company. Many successful startups have started without one,
including 4 of the top 100 YC companies. YC does fund solo founders
--over 10% of companies in recent batches. But starting a startup
is hard, to put it mildly. For most founders, we recommend finding
someone to work with and share that burden. YC's advice has
historically been to find a co-founder through your existing
network. That's still good advice--co-founder relationships with
someone you've known and worked with for years will have a lower
attrition rate than a relationship with someone you just met on the
internet. (At least one would expect so! We're going to track data
on this.) But for many members of the Startup School community,
that isn't an option. As the internet has increased access to
information about startups, we're seeing lots of new founders who
live outside traditional startup hubs (or college towns) and/or
don't have a deep existing network to plumb. The difficulty new
founders face in finding a co-founder is reflected in the data. Of
over 100,000 active founders in Startup School, 20% say they're
still looking for a co-founder. Of 60,000 aspiring founders who
haven't started a company yet, about a third mention "I haven't
found the right co-founder" as a reason they haven't started
(second only to "I'm not sure what to work on"). Since Startup
School is too large for us to be able to work with founders
individually the way we do in YC's core program, we rely heavily on
software and especially on building systems to help community
members support each other. Building a marketplace to help find a
co-founder felt like a natural next step. We're hoping that a
dedicated marketplace will be more effective than the alternatives
many founders resort to right now, like trawling Twitter and
LinkedIn. Since everyone using the service is actively looking for
a co-founder right now, the hit rate should be higher. We've added
the kinds of filters most relevant to co-founding (time commitment,
location/timezone, division of responsibilities, etc). Finally, we
took inspiration from modern dating apps to make the experience as
seamless as possible and let founders review hundreds of potential
matches quickly. To the extent that finding a co-founder is a
numbers game, we want to make it as easy as possible to review many
profiles quickly. We soft-launched this product to the Startup
School community in January, and so far have facilitated over 9000
initial matches among 4500 founders. Many of those matches have
gone on to work together on trial projects and even form startups.
Two of those startups have made it into the latest YC Core batch
(S21). We're hoping that there will be many more over time! You
can find out more and sign up at
https://www.startupschool.org/cofounder-matching. This is still the
beginning and I expect we'll be learning and changing a lot as we
go, but I'm excited to share this tool with you all. I'd also love
to hear from all of you on what has (or hasn't) worked for finding
a co-founder, since I know many of you have gone though this exact
process! [1] Timing may be one reason why it's easier for
university students to find potential co-founders: everyone
finishes class at the same time, so it's easy to all agree to try a
startup for the summer.
Author : kcorbitt
Score : 241 points
Date : 2021-07-06 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
| yumraj wrote:
| I believe this and other such initiatives are inevitable as in-
| person working and meeting, such as meetups, have taken a back
| seat due to Covid and it has become harder to find cofounders in-
| person. I believe this is a reaction to some trends that YC must
| have started seeing lately.
|
| It'd be interesting to see the long term effect of Covid on
| startup culture, in particular founding of startups and
| subsequently success rate of startups founded by remote-only
| cofounders which may have never met in person.
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| > To date, we've made 9,000 matches across 4,500 founders.
|
| How does the math work out there?
| tonster wrote:
| Presumably, the matches are compatibilities across the entire
| sample size. Meaning 1 founder can have multiple potential
| matches.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| If matches are 1:1, perhaps they are counting each side as a
| match (which seems fair.) So they have 2x4500 matches.
| kcorbitt wrote:
| This stat is referring to initial meetings between accepted
| match requests. Not all (or even most) of those initial
| connections will turn into an actual co-founder relationship,
| and founders can of course connect with multiple potential co-
| founders in parallel.
| l7l wrote:
| If you want to further evaluate the team composition, I developed
| a free tool that asks the thought questions and uncovers the
| topics nobody wants to talk about. https://aligna.team
| loceng wrote:
| Is it structured to list only seeking single or multiple co-
| founders?
|
| I see a technical question ask. May it be worthwhile to also ask
| specifically if someone's UX/UI designer or other design
| experience?
| kcorbitt wrote:
| Right now, it's only built with a single founder looking for
| another single founder in mind. That said, we've seen a number
| of folks hack around this by mentioning in their profile
| introduction that they already have a partial team and are
| looking for a third/fourth co-founder.
|
| We actually do ask about whether you're interested in working
| on design, or interested in finding a designer as part of the
| matching profile. It's in the "Which areas of a startup are you
| willing to take responsibility for?" section.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| What I want from a co-founder is: Smart, good chemistry,
| available. With most people I get 1-2 of these.
|
| Also, we talk a lot about how it's hard to assess the quality of
| technical co-founders, but it's also really hard to assess the
| quality of non-technical co-founders. I'd love to collaborate
| with a non-technical person, but I have no way to determine
| whether a person is good at the skills which I lack. Maybe it's
| my tech chauvinism showing but there seems to be a lot of non-
| technical people who want esssentially a get-rich-quick scheme.
| dpweb wrote:
| Cause many non-technical people have no useful skills. There's
| really only two things to solve, technical and sales. I can
| handle the technical.
|
| Ideas are cheap and most suck (that is, not innovative enough
| to really be something special). I want someone highly skilled
| at the process of taking something small and good, getting
| people to invest, and making it bigger. I can build <whatever
| startup> faster and cheaper and more solid than you could ever
| imagine, but don't have any desire in schmoozing or learning
| the VC game.
| itronitron wrote:
| I might be wrong, and this is a bit of a trope, but I would
| recommend assessing people by whether they can show commitment
| to the things they care about, and whether they care about and
| can commit to the startup. People seeking a get-rich-quick
| scheme may not have a track record of patience in that regard.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| I've been working on a startup for _years_ , like the better part
| of a decade and finding cofounders is like planning where
| lightning will strike; unless you're already in the right place,
| it's almost impossible.
|
| I've tried things like cofounderslab, cold messaging through
| social DMs and working my network but there's such a small cohort
| of people who (1) find value in working at a startup, (2) are
| willing to take equity in the beginning without being paid and
| (3) believe in your idea enough to want to work hard.
|
| I've had to learn how to scale myself into different roles
| (outside of engineering) to keep going, but it really is an
| exercise in testing your limits: mentally, physically,
| emotionally, socially...
|
| I hope this is something that actually _works_.
|
| edit: Just to give more context, I have had people who I trusted
| and who initially signed on to help, but they fell out somewhat
| quickly due to one of the three things I mentioned above. Most
| people don't understand how much work goes into actually making a
| startup happen and flame out pretty quickly...alas...
| diffstrokes wrote:
| I've used starthawk and found good potential matches.
| Oras wrote:
| I'm a solo founder right now and I agree with the limits part
| but at the same time, as you have pointed out, it is similar
| stress or even more to deal with finding and keeping the right
| cofounder.
|
| Unless both (or all) founders are aligned with the same mission
| and vision, it will be an emotional rollercoaster that IMO
| might drag the progress down.
|
| For these reasons I find it more comfortable staying solo
| founder and dealing with all the aspect of running the
| business.
| tibiahurried wrote:
| It's hard to find co-founder or even early employees because
| financially it is not convenient: at least for the 99% of the
| startup. There are the lucky ones who managed to be in the
| right place at the right time, but that's definitely not the
| majority.
|
| If I really wanted to go through the excruciating pain and
| insane work required in a startup I'd rather try to work on my
| own ideas and not for others.
|
| But I prefer FAANG rest and vest!
| whoisbuilding wrote:
| What are you building?
| yumraj wrote:
| My personal experience has been at at all such online/offline
| places most people there are ones with an idea/WIP who are
| looking for folks to join them.
|
| I've rarely met someone who wanted to join other's ideas/WIP.
| Which makes for an interesting dynamics and a very low success
| rate.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| > are willing to take equity in the beginning without being
| paid
|
| I find it difficult to grasp how this is always casually thrown
| like the majority of people could but choosing not to. What's
| the thinking behind this? Would not there be lots of people who
| would love to do this if their basic necessities were somehow
| met?
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| > but there's such a small cohort of people who...(2) are
| willing to take equity in the beginning without being paid...
|
| I wish there was but like I alluded to, the pool who meet
| those three criteria isn't big at all. Minus any external
| funding or being independently wealthy, there's no way to pay
| potential cofounders _and_ continue to bootstrap the business
| (they aren 't free, have operating expenses).
| itronitron wrote:
| Yes, but equity-only is going to favor people with wealth
| which is often associated with connections (to additional
| sources of wealth).
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Maybe what we really need is some cofounder support group so
| that we can help each other cope while testing our own limits.
| If it exists, sign me up!
| kirse wrote:
| _Most people don 't understand how much work goes into actually
| making a startup happen and flame out pretty quickly_
|
| Understandable, this problem has worsened over the past 20
| years as an increasing number of new grads just see computers
| == way to get rich quickly || a good job. Crypto is the worst
| example of this greed-oriented mindset, at least during the
| dotCom boom you generally had to come with a unique idea
| instead of just forking a git repo and rebadging it.
|
| There used to be a greater degree of intrinsic curiosity that
| drove most engineers & startup culture, but FAANG ideology has
| really taken over the bulk of the mind-share around what it
| means to be in tech. Some of this is not bad because it's been
| easier than ever to find quality brick-layers who view it as
| "just a job", but your genuine visionaries who are motivated by
| excitement about tech and great ideas are increasingly lost in
| the noise.
| ck_one wrote:
| "[...]but your genuine visionaries who are motivated by
| excitement about tech and great ideas are increasingly lost
| in the noise."
|
| Do you have a few tips where a mid twenty SWE can find these
| type of people in SF and avoid the people who are mostly in
| it for the money?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Have a great vision. Communicate it well and often. Branch
| out of SF.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| It's not limited to FAANG jobs or even tech companies. I
| volunteer as an advisor to a mentoring group for college
| students. An increasing number of college students are
| graduating without ever having worked a job at all. I spend
| more time than I'd like just mentoring some of these students
| on the basics of an employee/employer relationship and what's
| expected of them in a job, such as following through on
| commitments and communicating with their boss.
|
| That said, a FAANG job in tech is a perfectly acceptable
| career choice. Some internet bubbles like to look down on
| FAANG jobs or write them off as easy (once you pass the tech
| interview) but the reality is that they're generally quite
| challenging and rewarding. Companies aren't throwing huge
| salaries at people because the jobs are relaxing and the work
| is easy enough that anyone can do it well. There's nothing
| wrong with a FAANG job, and being a founder isn't morally
| superior to other career options.
|
| The real problem is when students get average grades at an
| average university, then take an average job at an average
| company, then get disappointed when they're not being paid
| top-1% FAANG salaries like they read about on HN and
| /r/cscareerquestions for the 4 years they were in college.
| Most of the students I work with are realistic, but it's a
| very difficult situation when someone's expectations don't
| match reality.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| I think the total lack of payment is the issue you should be
| addressing. Anyone with enough experience in the industry will
| know exactly how they should be valuing the equity (at little
| to nothing). Even a simple hourly stipend at contractor rates
| on top of a great equity offer is enough to show someone that
| you are serious and willing to respect their time/contribution.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| There's just no way I can pay someone, even a pittance. I'm
| putting in as much as I can just to keep the lights on.
|
| I can show people I've been working on this forever, have a
| full product, business plan and am working toward funding but
| that still does jack-all.
|
| It's unfortunate because I desperately _want_ to pay someone,
| but it 's just not in the cards right now. That's why
| hopefully the idea itself should help instill some confidence
| that if we execute, it could become something cool (and
| profitable).
|
| I get the world doesn't usually work like that though, which
| is why solutions like this might help me find like-minded
| people.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Thank you for the insight, I can totally relate to the
| situation. I had a pretty depressing entrepreneurship low
| which lasted a couple months, where I had to lay off
| everyone and was the only one left grinding, sleeping at
| the office, and putting every dollar into rent/expenses. In
| a Taoist kind of way, you have to know the lows to
| appreciate the highs. Best of luck to you on your business!
| ysavir wrote:
| How far are you from funding? Being transparent and
| detailed with people about funding, and what they can
| expect once funding is achieved, can be helpful in removing
| doubts.
| wpietri wrote:
| In my experience, those three things are almost entirely
| contradictory.
|
| Almost everybody interested in working unpaid on an exciting
| idea is also the kind of person who has exciting ideas. They'll
| usually want to spend their savings on one of those ideas, not
| somebody else's. The times I've signed up to help start
| somebody else's idea for no cash were because I had a long
| relationship with the people involved.
|
| My big tip for people wanting to trade self-made lottery
| tickets for work is to get external confirmation. Investors,
| customer commitment, traction, or at least a compelling
| prototype. This post I wrote in 2012 holds up reasonably well:
| https://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-find-developers-willing-to...
| kcorbitt wrote:
| You're exactly the kind of person we're hoping to help with
| this. I'd love to get your feedback given your experience with
| other venues. If you choose to try YC co-founder matching, feel
| free to send me feedback on what did/didn't work and how we can
| make it better! kyle@ycombinator.com
|
| That goes for anyone else reading this thread as well, of
| course.
| cwkoss wrote:
| "Welcome to the Forum" post is a dead link, goes to a 404.
|
| https://www.startupschool.org/posts/35214
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I'm a nontechnical person and I've always struggled with pairing
| up with the right cofounder. It's quite hard to team up with
| someone who has similar interests and is ready to go full time on
| something when you are from your existing network. I've been
| using the platform for a month or two and have had some great
| matches already; ironically the two people I've been working with
| most closely (working with one another for a few months to see if
| we gel) did end up coming from my network but I still am active
| on the platform and highly recommend it to folks who are
| searching for a cofounder. I was a little hesitant at first
| because I figured best practice was to work with someone you had
| a pre-existing relationship with, otherwise the potential for a
| bad breakup down the line would be higher or accelerators/vc's
| would judge you but candidly, I'm a lot less worried about that
| now given the quality of the matches and that a leader in the
| space like YC is championing this.
| personjerry wrote:
| I've been using this since February-ish.
|
| Talked to maybe 20-30 people through the platform.
|
| Joined one startup as cofounder. Worked together for two months,
| then left. My cofounder was smart, had high EQ, and I enjoyed
| working with them, but we had different visions and parted
| amicably.
|
| My thoughts:
|
| - Early on, there was a smaller pool of people, but they were of
| higher quality. I feel the quality of people has diminished over
| time. YMMV.
|
| - It was interesting just to have talks with the high quality
| people and expand my network. This kinda segued me into
| Lunchclub, but I've since stopped both. Depending on who you are,
| you might get burnt out with these "social" calls after a while.
|
| - As a technical person, I had a lot of business-y people reach
| out, most of which I didn't end up responding to. There's plenty
| of candidates, just like dating on Tinder. I get to choose to
| work with the really nice and productive people that I like.
|
| - BIGGEST PROBLEM: Unfortunately, it suffers the same problem as
| every other cofounder matching program. There's no system or
| formula to really dig deep and see if you're compatible on all
| the levels you need to be. This means it can be a big time and
| energy drain, from the initial meets, to the dating process, to
| even cofounder work.
|
| If you do use this, some tips:
|
| - Being short and sweet with your profile. Burying the fact that
| you're a high school student in 5 paragraphs of text won't make
| it more likely for me to work with you, and I probably won't even
| read it.
|
| - Add a photo. You're going to be working with a human, not a
| robot.
|
| - Your cofounder courting process is something you'll have to
| develop and figure out what you're looking for. Take your time
| and think about it.
| jollybean wrote:
| This is insightful and reasonable.
|
| That said - it might be worth it for young-ish people to also
| not think of a startup as something 'precious' and that you
| don't need to get along super deeply with the others.
|
| It's not your baby, it's just a project.
|
| Comedy and script writers talk about this - they encourage
| getting past the point of working out every little detail
| towards just 'writing'. Work on stuff that works and that other
| participants (aka investors) want to work on and where there is
| momentum.
|
| Certain minimums - yes. Probably shared vision. At the same
| time, no plan lasts contact with the enemy/market so the saying
| goes and it's almost as though the team needs to be able to
| ride storms.
|
| If we think of ourselves as professionals first and not
| makers/artists first ... there might be more room to get along.
| Focus on the market, customers, product, outcomes, get along
| and that's it.
|
| Edit:
|
| Assuming have a room full of actually talented, creative
| conscientious people who have the EI/maturity to 'get along
| well' - shouldn't partnering up be one of the easier things to
| do?
|
| From a certain perspective it's kind of ridiculous that it's so
| hard for people to 'match' (assuming again high levels of
| talent, conscientiousness, EI, professionalism).
|
| The primary issue I'm going to guess is willingness to work on
| a specific project wherein someone already has some vision -
| but one could argue this is a sign of missing professionalism
| on the part of all parties. Not only can visions be adjusted,
| but founders might want to recognize that if their vision isn't
| going to get traction that it might be worth dropping the
| concept entirely and focusing instead on the other participant.
| And irrespective of the other parties willingness to buy into a
| specific vision, they're definitely going to have a lot of
| their own inputs given their backgrounds and it's probably
| worth being malleable at very least.
|
| Marc Andreesen is famous for saying 'it's not about passion
| it's about what you're good at' and that's fundamentally a
| measure of mature professional disposition. Of course you can't
| work on something you really don't want to ... but otherwise
| the ambition should invariably be derived from the opportunity,
| people, markets - so many factors many of which aren't related
| to 'the thing'.
|
| If it's a bunch of musicians at the 'Rock School Academy' I can
| see it being hard to form groups, but I wonder if a group of
| professionals should be able to link up in a better way,
| especially with some guidance and 3rd party / objective mentors
| helping to create critical masses.
| ted0_2021 wrote:
| I've signed up! This is pretty great for people like me who don't
| even have potential co-founders to talk to in real life.
|
| I am technical and I am looking for another _technical_ co-
| founder. Is this pairing unusual? The most talked about pairing
| seems to be non-technical and technical.
| jdcaron wrote:
| I feel like sharing my experience I had with the YC Startup
| School program might be appreciated by some of you. I joined the
| program when it was first announced. It means I followed the
| program and I joined the soft-launched cofounder matching
| platform. I mostly have positive things to say about the startup
| school program, the curriculum is fair to the reality of starting
| a company. It doesn't try to upsell you on doing it. It's also
| covering the most important topics of starting an organization /
| project.
|
| I had a less positive experience with the cofounder matching
| platform. I am trying to be as objective as possible here, the
| odds of matching two "ready" humans to work in harmony on an
| extremely difficult project are extremely low. The numbers are
| brutally honest here with 4500 matches and only two startups
| (.0004%) enrolling for the YC Core batch. Yes, that's three
| zeros. So many fishes but so few working matches. My biggest grip
| against the platform was that barely anybody respect the hard
| requirements. I had very few but one was very important to me,
| the other co-founder had to be also technical. I received a flood
| of non-technical cofounder asking for a match. I felt pretty bad
| about leaving these folks unanswered, so I put the time to create
| a generic and respectful email to explain why I am set to match
| with a technical cofounder only.
|
| It's also mind blowing how many co-founders are already set on
| their ideas already. I consider myself quite flexible by bringing
| 5 potential ideas I would like to work on. I think I am also
| flexible in a way that I am also open to work on somebody else
| idea, as long as I would want it for myself. I matched with so
| many future cofounders that were already in a mindset that their
| project was the thing that they could not see themselves not
| working on it. I might be wrong but from my experience their
| progress as a company was almost nil (landing page with no
| clients). While most of the ideas weren't ground breaking. So,
| prepare yourself to spend a lot of time on figuring out if
| something has any potential or not. It's a bit hard on the morale
| to decline so many humans. I gave my 100% to do it as well as I
| could. Oh, and I won't go too deep either into that subject but a
| lot of co-founders are in for either the fame or the money, not
| really my style either. Money is required down the line but it
| shouldn't be the main target. Once again, prepare yourself to
| decline a lot of people if your profile attracts a lot of
| attention but it doesn't match what you are looking for.
|
| All in all, kudos to the team at YC. What they are doing is
| extremely hard and they did a great job. The complains about
| matchmaking being extremely hard is similar to stating that water
| is wet.
|
| Oh and funky observation. When an organization like YC is
| building their own social network from scratch, it shows that in
| 2021 there is still no trustable social network platform to build
| upon.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _Oh and funky observation. When an organization like YC is
| building their own social network from scratch, it shows that
| in 2021 there is still no trustable social network platform to
| build upon._
|
| No: it shows1 that there's no trustable social network platform
| with a high density of startup founders. The Fediverse is
| plenty trustable, but most people there aren't inclined to
| found a startup.
|
| 1: But it doesn't even show that; all it shows is that YC
| thought they'd benefit from making their own.
| throwaway1556 wrote:
| Having tried to get a project away for 2 months (and failed so
| far)
|
| It seems like there are a lot of potential CEOs out there with
| ideas looking for a CTO to do the heavy lifting -- and the VCs
| are all over them -- met multiple in last few weeks with nothing
| more than an idea
|
| As an engineer, with a vast piece of prototype tech funded myself
| up to this point, and no CEO -- because I don't really want a CEO
| right now, just some additional R&D funding to clean things up to
| start that commercialising process -- but VCs don't appear to
| want to hear that
|
| Ex-meme company founder CEOs good, heavy tech R&D without that
| bad
|
| You have to wonder how much deep tech is out there looking for
| home right now -- that can't get an investor audience without
| complying with the narrow criteria VCs are putting in place --
| 90%+ won't even talk to you if you've not been personally
| referred
| ABCLAW wrote:
| I don't really think it's a case of CEOs good, R&D bad.
|
| I think it's more of a case of CEOs not taking no for an answer
| for mission critical funding. I've been on the chain for many
| VC connections, and in the room for maybe twenty pitches. In
| almost all cases a slightly neuroatypical CEO has carpet bombed
| sources of funding with genuine letters requesting meetings.
| The process often takes 6-8 months from initial contact to
| follow-ups, to actually getting a reply, to setting an in-
| person meeting, then discussing next-steps, referrals, etc.
|
| VCs aren't an API; they're VERY busy people. Make sure they
| know you're committed.
| notahacker wrote:
| A corollary of this and the OP's argument is that business-
| oriented CEOs with an idea that needs building have a lot
| more free time to carpet bomb prospective funders than
| engineers already building a product that needs _more_
| engineers to deal with the demand that 's there.
|
| The idea that being too busy with product or customers to
| jump the hurdles they set could be a _bad_ thing for funding
| doesn 't reflect well on VCs (I'm the first person to argue
| the importance of knowing how to hunt for business is often
| underrated by engineers, but not every business needs
| networking oriented business developer types, and those that
| do are still better if they can dedicate more time hunting
| for intros to customers and less hunting for intros to
| investors)
| brainless wrote:
| That's a very nice way of putting it. I agree that VCs aren't
| an API. But I think there are builders and there are
| hustlers. We have a system which is looking to fund hustlers,
| even if they have zero clue of how to build. And most
| importantly, most hustlers want to build software products.
| Yet the builders of those products struggle to find minimum
| fund to go full time. It's like either you have a great deck
| and thousand emails or nothing.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >It's like either you have a great deck and thousand emails
| or nothing.
|
| Pretty much. If you can't make the deck yourself, hire a
| third party to mock one up for you after you've put the
| content together; let them do the spacing, font,
| background, design work. Then the emails are on you; set a
| timer for follow-ups, make a spreadsheet regarding
| appointments.
|
| You're still a builder, but you're gonna be building human
| connections for a bit. If you reframe things in that way,
| it's less jarring.
| brainless wrote:
| You mean just like the CEO candidate has to find a
| freelance to get the tech done if they can't find a
| technical co-founder. Valid point.
| throwaway1556 wrote:
| An interesting exercise would be for just one fund to not
| care about deck spacing, font and background ... or
| whether they have a CEO ... or if founders are ex-FB ...
|
| A fund that just backs raw R&D ... with no referrals or
| exit history ... only evals the tech on merit
|
| The few pure R&D funds that do that, to my knowledge, are
| restricted to university spin-outs right now
|
| As things stand today -- the individuals (I know) most
| capabable of building awesome engineering are the least
| likely to get through the current VC obstacle courses --
| who are all looking for the same needle in the same
| haystack
| yaseer wrote:
| >A fund that just backs raw R&D ... with no referrals or
| exit history ... only evals the tech on merit
|
| Define 'merit'.
|
| From the perspective of an investor, merit is commercial
| potential. Small traction in a large market shows
| commercial potential.
|
| 'Raw R&D' without commercial potential is definitely the
| domain of universities, not VCs.
| issa wrote:
| I think this is true in a lot of industries. I was in the
| music industry and I quickly learned that it is about
| hustle and hype more than quality players or songs. In
| larger companies it is the people who play the "office
| politics game" that get ahead more than people with skills
| or good ideas. Such is life.
| brainless wrote:
| Welcome to the Deck side.
| smashah wrote:
| True.
|
| I've been burnt a few times by bad CEOs/co-founders. Where I
| did my part (to build out the product) but they screwed up
| theirs.
|
| Next time a non-technical founder pitches me to come on board
| and do all the actual work then I'll be requiring the a
| majority stake.
|
| Looking forward to CEO-as-a-service or as part of an investment
| deal. At the end of the day, CTO-as-a-service does exist and
| technical work does get outsourced to dev shops using investor
| money, why not outsource/delegate the remaining non-technical
| founder work?
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| This matches my experience exactly. I was offered multiple CTO
| positions in my late teens - and I took one, but I was woefully
| under qualified and it caused a degree of burnout I still
| haven't fully recovered from a decade later.
|
| Steering people early in their careers into underpaid
| overworked founder positions at poorly led companies can
| sometimes be hugely destructive.
|
| To the people at YC leading this initiative - have you ever
| matched a CEO with zero management experience to a newer
| engineer, and have you ever matched a CTO with zero
| professional engineering experience to a newer CEO?
| mNovak wrote:
| Definitely have experienced the struggle of trying to get
| anyone to pay attention to a hard (not moonshot, just hard)
| tech pitch. If you're very patient, the military will pay, but
| it's a long road and more paperwork than tech.
| sidlls wrote:
| _It seems like there are a lot of potential CEOs out there with
| ideas looking for a CTO to do the heavy lifting -- and the VCs
| are all over them -- met multiple in last few weeks with
| nothing more than an idea_
|
| And they want to treat them like poorly paid employees (which,
| often, they are poorly compensated). People see high
| compensation for FAANG types and think engineers are respected.
| Let me tell you, having been in management, nothing is further
| from the truth. ICs are still ICs, a lower social class, and
| thought of as such. Any "respect" is simply a temporary
| condition of the labor market: they're placated and their egos
| tolerated until something less expensive comes along.
| codegeek wrote:
| I hope this allows people who are solo founders and established
| but looking for a partner who can become a co-founder. I have
| grown my bootstrapped SAAS for almost 7 years and really need
| good Sales/Marketing partners/co-founders to take it to next
| level. I am willing to offer Pay with equity but not sure where
| to go.
| shawndrost wrote:
| I have a tip on finding a cofounder. I've been looking for the
| last 12 months and I tried a lot of things, but the thing that
| worked best is this:
|
| Post a job ad.
|
| That's it. My ad sounded like a normal job in every way, with a
| title like "Director of X". A couple of specific notes: 1) the
| first line said "cofounder" in it somewhere, and 2) it specified
| "part-time to full-time, heavy on equity compensation" somewhere
| else.
|
| The result: Lots of inappropriate candidates applied. But also,
| my 2 job posts resulted in three extremely excellent team
| members: a equity-only cofounder, a mostly-equity cofounder/early
| hire, and an amazing advisor. I have been working with these
| folks for months and they are very solid.
|
| I also recommend my vetting process: just like a job. That is, I
| did a phone screen, a multi-hour interview, a little take-home,
| and I winnowed down the candidates at each stage. With the chosen
| few, I kicked off a "let's do this" conversation. My pitch was,
| "I know it's ridiculous, but let's get business married, we'll
| set up an offsite and start working together full-time... and, if
| we really need to, we'll get an annulment". That's what vesting
| is for!
|
| Hope that helps :)
| tatsuhirosatou wrote:
| Great idea! Where did you post the ad?
| shawndrost wrote:
| Linkedin and Indeed, which let you post for free :D
| TenJack wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what kind of product are you working on (B2B,
| consumer, hardware, etc)?
| shawndrost wrote:
| Climate tech / hard tech. https://www.phoenixhydrogen.com/
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Just a heads up, the site is a little funky on mobile. It
| works _well enough_ but i'm finding it's loading kind of
| slowly and your big image at the top is not formatting
| properly and cutting off the words (building green
| hydrogen's). I'm also just seeing a bunch of white space
| between "our vision" and the "learn about green hydrogen"
| button.
|
| Brave on iOS.
|
| Now that I've said that, this looks really interesting!
| Good luck with your work, thank you for sharing your
| experience about finding cofounders.
| kcorbitt wrote:
| Interesting -- for the equity-only co-founder you're working
| with, were they explicitly looking for a co-founder position
| before you approached them or were they looking for a normal
| job and changed their mind as a result of seeing your ad?
| shawndrost wrote:
| They had been working on a very similar startup for ~6mo on
| their own steam, looking for cofounders. Not interested in a
| job.
| kcorbitt wrote:
| Do you know how they found your ad on a job board in that
| case? Were they explicitly looking for co-founder
| positions?
| shawndrost wrote:
| I haven't asked my cofounder that question, but I did
| hear from the advisor I mentioned that she was just
| searching linkedin for a term that's relevant to her, to
| stay current with the industry.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| I can only afford to pay people through equity and have thought
| about doing something similar but didn't want to misrepresent
| the position and waste anyone's time (time is precious on both
| ends).
| shawndrost wrote:
| I encourage you to try anyway. Just correctly represent the
| position.
|
| The point of my advice is this: there is already a well-
| understood mechanism to find work associates. It's job ads. I
| have found, through empirical research, that you can find
| cofounders there too. You can apply that in your
| circumstances.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I don't think a job that doesn't pay counts as a job. Those
| ads always came off as deceptive to me.... as if they were
| looking for free work.
| mmastrac wrote:
| The "who's looking for a co-founder" thread today was pretty
| great as an alternative. I hope that tradition continues.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27748680
| whoisbuilding wrote:
| I didn't know that YC would launch this today, but I will
| continue to post these as a complementary option every month. I
| will mention YC's Startup School CF mechanism in the
| description moving forward.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I hope the mod team will support it. I thought it was
| gimmicky before looking at the thread; it seems like a big
| success and lots of people got value out of it. Well done.
|
| Maybe it could link to YC's founder search thing too?
| verdverm wrote:
| YC did not launch this today, it has been around in some form
| for quite a while, since YC-SUS 2 iirc. It seems like a
| launch in the sense of "always be launching" they teach you
| about as part of SUS
| transitivebs wrote:
| https://transitivebullsh.it/a-guide-to-finding-awesome-co-fo...
| nikodunk wrote:
| wow! this is really excellent.
| bloniac wrote:
| I tried to sign up for this as a technical co founder and it was
| long winded and painful to "apply".
|
| I don't know why I had to "apply" to offer to be a technical
| cofounder.
|
| After all this they "rejected" me. How can you be rejected from
| offering to be a technical cofounder?
|
| What a waste of time.
|
| I don't recommend startup school as a way to find a cofounder
| especially if you're technical.
| kcorbitt wrote:
| Hey bloniac, sorry you had a negative experience. We only
| "reject" candidates if they're using the platform for something
| other than finding a co-founder (eg. selling their consulting
| services), or if the profile is incomplete to the point that
| someone reading it couldn't evaluate the fit. If you email me
| with your YC username, I'd be happy to take a look and give
| advice on how to improve your profile. We definitely allow and
| encourage users to ping us post-rejection if they've improved
| their profile so we can give it a second look.
| bloniac wrote:
| The "who's looking for a cofounder" thread works a lot better
| for me.
|
| I don't want to share all my details, I want to see who's
| looking for a technical cofounder then I'll apply with my
| details.
| jce763548 wrote:
| I've been on the platform since March, I've done five cofounder
| trials, and I can say I've met some really interesting and
| talented folks through it.
|
| The challenges I've seen have mostly to do with the motivations
| of the cofounders and the process that everyone (including
| myself) tends to follow in the beginning.
|
| I wrote about my experiences here:
| https://johnchildseddy.medium.com/why-a-day-zero-start-is-im...
| [deleted]
| launchiterate wrote:
| Find someone your values match with and hopefully you have a good
| history with.
| dheera wrote:
| I'm very curious what the success rate of startups are of people
| who meet via platforms like this, in comparison to co-founders
| who have worked together before and have a history of knowing
| each other.
|
| This is a rather interesting shift, since in the past YC
| themselves advocated against co-founding with someone you don't
| know well.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| If it gets substantially easier to build a startup over the
| next five to ten years, in terms of the amount of hours it
| takes to get an MVP into production, then it stands to reason
| that the hit rate from platforms like this is going to
| increase. If you think that Moore's Law is going to more or
| less holds throughout the decade, I think it's a prescient bet.
| dheera wrote:
| "Easier to build a startup" may also correlate inversely with
| startup success, as that lowers the barrier to entry and
| increases the competition vastly.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Maybe. In practice though being difficult-to-clone is
| already rarely a moat for software startups; even if it's
| true, usually a sufficiently funded competitor can at least
| fake having working technology for long enough to steal
| market share.
|
| I'd bet money that the bigger factor here is going to be
| the fact that there are a lot of "big if true" ideas, where
| the current difficulty of implementing them prevents them
| from getting implemented, because it's hard to go out and
| raise money for something when no one has strong conviction
| that it's possible to build or that there will be market
| demand. But once they get sufficiently easy to build, then
| suddenly it becomes rational to go out and try them.
|
| Whereas currently, I have lots of ideas that would yield
| fuck you money if they worked, but it's too disruptive to
| have to clear my calendar for six months to go out and
| execute on any one of them.
| NickNaraghi wrote:
| This is incredibly exciting!
|
| However, as someone who has been asked my many founders for help
| finding a co-founder, there are some yellow flags going off for
| me.
|
| Beyond trial projects, how does this initiative seek to build
| trust and values-alignment between new co-founder matches?
| kcorbitt wrote:
| I think there will inevitably be a long "dating" period with a
| new co-founder who you're working with for the first time, and
| a fairly high attrition rate with these relationships,
| concentrated in the early days.
|
| In practice though, I do believe that if you work with someone
| for several months on a serious trial project you should be
| able to build a fair amount of confidence in the relationship's
| potential. I'd definitely still recommend talking through what
| a co-founder breakup would look like and signing documents that
| include a vesting cliff before actually starting something real
| together though. (That advice applies no matter how you met
| your co-founder.)
| [deleted]
| jasfi wrote:
| You're right, it's a very difficult problem. Having co-founders
| at all is risky. If you've never worked with them before, the
| risk is quite high, I would say. Trial projects are the only
| way to build some type of trust.
| _448 wrote:
| What I miss is the good old days of IRC. There the meeting of
| like-minded folks use to happen gradually. People use to come to
| know who is who and what their capabilities are. And that built
| friendships. People discussed projects, problems they are facing
| with the project, ideas etc. That magic is missing in most of the
| co-founder dating platforms.
| Lyn_layerci wrote:
| YC founder here from S20 here.
|
| The co-founder search is difficult if you have nothing
| interesting to say and if you aren't prepared to make the jump.
|
| After my personal journey for 2 startups, (both venture backed
| and non-venture backed), I find it's important to: 1. have at
| least 2 years of personal savings ready 2. know what things
| you're exceptional at doing and what things you really suck at 3.
| be ready to bare all in terms of personal/biz life goals and
| transparency with your co-founder 4. proactively go to places
| where you and your co-founder would both enjoy doing (hackathons,
| startup events, conferences, online forums about startups, etc.)
| 5. have a "trial" period, where you make things together or work
| on the startup together with set milestones in mind 6. be ready
| to challenge a co-founder's ideas, be weary of people who agree
| with you 100% of the time 7. Not everyone has to be the
| "visionary" founder, some people are looking to join an existing
| idea and that's equally as important
| satya71 wrote:
| Hmm. YC went from you must grow up with your cofounder or you'll
| fail to we'll match with random one?
|
| Edit: I actually think this is the right move. One hast to find
| people outside one's immediate network. Otherwise there would
| only be very few founders.
| dang wrote:
| > YC went from you must grow up with your cofounder or you'll
| fail to we'll match with random one?
|
| That's at least a pleasingly symmetrical strawman - equally
| distorted at both ends!
| VeRCEFluMtESTi wrote:
| no, that's correct - YC used to be adamant that you needed a
| cofounder and has flipped that on its head
| dang wrote:
| edouard-harris has made the important factual correction
| here. I was just observing how...let's say "non-factual"
| the first sentence was, at both ends of the stick. Did you
| not notice how you had to reword it in order to defend it?
| edouard-harris wrote:
| YC has always tended to _encourage_ finding a cofounder,
| but they 've been funding solo teams since at least Dropbox
| in S07.
|
| Given that multi-founder teams still represent 90% of the
| startups they fund, I could understand calling this a
| moderate shift. But "flipped on its head" feels like an
| exaggeration.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The pandemic forced them to do the "scaling up" everybody was
| asking them to do.
|
| Trouble finding conspirators is a definite bottleneck to
| scaling!
| avmich wrote:
| The page at https://www.startupschool.org/cofounder-matching
| doesn't work for me - whatever I enter in "Location" field fails
| the check at saving.
|
| Can you look into it?
| soheil wrote:
| Interesting that this is something that only just now YC is
| tackling.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Like Tinder, but for Silicon Valley?
| atatatat wrote:
| Too fitting.
| cweill wrote:
| One of the big names in Sillicon Valley (maybe Garry Tan?) that
| you need three things in a cofounder:
|
| 1. Intelligence 2. Work ethic 3. High Integrity
|
| While the first two can easily be judged, the last one is
| extremely tough to identify, and generally requires some incident
| in the company to reveal the integrities of the co-founders. Any
| suggestions how to identify high integrity early on?
| gfodor wrote:
| One lesson I learned is that integrity itself isn't objective,
| at all. Everyone thinks they have high integrity, and it's easy
| to rationalize another person's actions as stemming from
| integrity if they are acting in your interests. When it comes
| down to it, as you state, you can't really grok a person until
| you are in a crisis. Similarly, it's hard to grok your _own_
| beliefs about what makes for integrity until such a crisis.
|
| For example, a company usually has a mission. At the same time,
| up to a point a CEO has a duty to his/her employees' well
| being. In a crisis, these may be in conflict. And in a crisis
| it can be very hard to tell if a decision cutting one way or
| the other is stemming from expediency, a conflict of interest,
| on-the-job evolution of a person's values, or an underlying
| consistent principled view that is now manifesting in action.
| (The last of which is what one would arguably point at as the
| person demonstrating integrity.)
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