My Co-Founder Was a Perfectionist, and It Ruined My Startup
Uber-talented people make crappy business partners
My first co-founder used to describe everything I produced as “half-assed.” He thought I was sloppy and had too much of a tendency for cutting corners. The code I wrote for our software was never clean enough. The marketing emails I drafted were never compelling enough. My fundraising pitches were never crisp enough. And so on. Naturally, when our company eventually failed, guess who he blamed it on.
Me…
I was the problem because I wasn’t a talented enough person. And, for a while, I thought he was right. I told myself if only I’d been able to do better work, my startup would have been successful. But, with the help of nearly two decade’s worth of hindsight, I finally understand I wasn’t the problem. He was the problem, and it killed our startup.
The problem with incredible talent
While the death of a startup you’ve never heard of from almost 20 years ago surely doesn’t concern you, the cause of that startup’s death should. Specifically, my startup failed because I did exactly what I thought every startup founder should do when choosing people to work with and searched for the most talented human being I could possibly align myself with…
