Co-founder dating

Targeted at aspiring entrepreneurs

I recently chanced upon a post in some random startup forum, God do we have thousands of them these days. A guy from the most reputed engineering school in India posted that he had just graduated and was looking for people to explore business opportunities with. And there were 25 other people who had commented giving their email addresses (and in some cases, phone numbers), asking if they could be his co-founder. Mind you, from the looks of the post, it didn’t seem like he had any clue on what he was trying to pursue. So essentially, there were n-people (strangers), n-ideas and basically a lot of n-oise and n-onsense.

Finding a co-founder is hands down the most important thing to do when you are starting up.

When you are getting married, your fiance is kind of the most critical parameter in the equation, right? Well, this is close.

I started up with a bunch of friends and the initial team eventually fell out leaving only me at the helm of my startup. Thankfully, I have been handling stress well so far. I have raised a round of investment, built a version of the product, hired a few guys and we’re rolling.

So, I believe I’m in a good position to tell you why picking a good co-founder is something you should really be spending time on.

Picking an incompatible co-founder will take the idea nowhere. In the off-chance that the idea does go somewhere, the founders probably won’t enjoy the ride.

Startups are very complex. You have n-things to focus on at any given moment. There’s Product Development, Customer Acquisition, Hiring, Infrastructure Development, Operations, Raising Capital.

To put things in perspective, the founding team should hypothesize what features will work, find people who would use them, get people who can build it for them, provide them with the necessary technology, get money from investors to pay them and also to keep the lights on, in the office. Phew, that’s a lot of work.

The only thing that will keep you sane is trusting that your co-founders are taking care of one part while you’re busy focussing on the other. The level of trust needs to be very high. And you simply cannot trust some stranger. If you do, maybe you’re not cut out for this. Sorry to sound harsh, but it’s true.

So what do you do. Find a friend whose skill set complements yours. Good at talking to people, but bad at writing code? Pick a friend (not stranger; I cannot emphasize this enough) who’s good at writing code. Bonus points if he is good at talking to people too! But don’t make your startup founding team look like a crowdfunding campaign. Two is cool, three is great but four is a crowd.

Dave McClure says the ideal founding team should possess three people: a hacker, a hipster and a hustler.

Hackers build. Hipsters design. Hustlers sell.

Look at Apple. Woz was an electronics genius. Jobs, on the other hand, didn’t know much (definitely not as much as Woz did) about engineering but his notions for tech products were artistic and he is one of the best salesmen history has ever witnessed. Period.

Facebook. Zuckerberg was a brilliant hacker and a fairly good hipster (plus he was mentored by Steve Jobs. EOD). Sean Parker was the hustler who knew what made investors tick.

Take a great company, and you will find people with skill sets that complement each other’s. Now you could be a marvel and be great at all three but even then, you should go ahead and delegate one part to someone else.

Because a startup workload is too much to be taken by just one person. That’s one of the reasons why Y-Combinator doesn’t (generally) fund single founder startups. The notable exception being Dropbox.

But then, Drew Houston is Drew Houston.

If you’re serious about starting up, go out now, scout for talent in your 1st degree connections. Worst case, go for 2nd degree connections. Nothing beyond that. If I ever were to become an angel investor, the first question I’d ask the team is probably “So how long have you guys known each other?”.

That says a lot about the startup. Because if they have known each other long time, it means they are probably good friends. Good friends fight, but immediately move on. Something startup co-founders should do all the time.