by abeaclark on 1/3/22, 2:46 PM with 85 comments
by lysecret on 1/3/22, 3:50 PM
OK. I don't deny these people exists, and admittedly, I have a B2B point of view.
But early, cold B2B sales is hell and i have deep admiration for anyone doing it well.
By far the biggest risk of early stage startups is to build something great, that nobody wants. And in my experience the risk of that increases by a good amount with 2 technical founders.
I say this as a technical person as well (as i guess 99.999% of people here are)
by dblooman on 1/3/22, 4:31 PM
One takeaway I found from my experience, using a combination of linkedin and ycombinator co-founder match is just how many non-technical think you are going to be an employee. One meeting was basically 10 minutes of me pitching my idea, then 20 minutes of them asking if I was interested in contract work on an idea that was a year in with no progress. One guy was even like, "look, i need a coder, I can pay you x", not a great way to end a co-founder date.
by DoreenMichele on 1/3/22, 4:17 PM
89% Male (Clearly a problem!)
As a guess, women are uncomfortable with cofounder dating because too many of them have been burned by men trying to turn it into actual dating.
I don't know how to solve such problems but I feel like that is a big hitch for women in business: How to keep it all business and not have it turn into some issue because some guy thinks you are hot.
by andrew_ on 1/3/22, 5:27 PM
Unfortunately, we did not proceed. See, I have a family to provide for. I'm in my 40s. I'm not looking for or to build the next unicorn. What I'm looking for is the opportunity to build a consistent, stable, and yes evolving product that produces reliable baseline revenue, targeting reasonable growth. The founder wanted to work immediately towards unicorn status, with cofounders taking in a salary that was approximately half of what my current income stream provided. She is in her early 30s without dependents. For her, this is a reasonable risk that provides a good lifestyle. For me, that was an unthinkable risk to the detriment of my family, including young children in day care. She also wanted to build out a small engineering team paying roughly 60% of market rate - in this hiring environment. What that would mean was a team of inexperience or heading offshore, both of which were non-starters for me.
All in all, I think she got some really bad advice from her SV peers. Her idea could have easily generated 100k MRR with a moderate amount of effort. I couldn't even put a number on the immense value of the data she would have been amassing as a side-effect of her idea. Our personalities were a match, we had the same philosophies and ideology was similar enough as to not provide room for conflict. We both thought the idea had incredible merit.
At the end of the day, it was a generational divide that proved too large to overcome.
by jacquesm on 1/3/22, 3:48 PM
by dasil003 on 1/3/22, 4:25 PM
While it’s true technical people have a higher floor and can’t get by on bullshit, many strong technical people are terrible founders for a variety of reasons.
However building a successful startup requires a certain kind of hustle and resourcefulness that is not limited to technical folks. We shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water due to all the “idea guy” wannabes flooding the space. Someone who can sell, someone who can hustle, someone with strong charisma and story-telling skills—these are incredibly valuable traits that can form an amazing complement to a technical founder that wants to focus on building.
by BayAreaEscapee on 1/3/22, 3:40 PM
That would be the most painful part of all this for me. If I were forming a startup, I don't think I would consider pairing with someone non-technical. My personal idea of hell is having a bunch of marketing people spew buzzwords while I write and debug all the code.
by mitko on 1/3/22, 4:20 PM
Furthermore, the best fit might be someone who is not on the cofounder market, that way I might be able to recruit them first.
Interesting approach by OP. As a technical founder I am similarly taking the approach of meeting as many people as I can and sharing, building in public, being helpful, but not with the frame of cofounder dating. If we really vibe with someone, then we can take it further. Meanwhile I make progress on my idea that I find meaningful.
Good luck on your journey, Abe!
by gyulai on 1/3/22, 6:31 PM
Made me think of https://dilbert.com/strip/2015-09-11
The vast majority of the engineer/non-engineer speed dates that I remember from the Cambridge University entrepreneurship scene were basically versions of this.
The other type was "A: Hi, nice to meet you! I have a great idea for a startup. Would you like to join me in implementing my idea?" "B: No! Because I have a better idea for a startup. Would you like to forget about your idea and instead join me in implementing my idea?" "A: No thanks, I still like my idea."
by Voloskaya on 1/3/22, 3:46 PM
by long_time_gone on 1/3/22, 4:38 PM
by avmich on 1/4/22, 6:20 AM
by supernova87a on 1/3/22, 6:20 PM
What places / sites / channels of info are good to visit or tune into to get in touch with the startup world? Or just to find out what's new and interesting? I would have no idea how to even get 3 co-founder contacts from the article's description.
I don't have a lot of personal contacts to do this (I suppose this is similar to someone who doesn't live in the Bay Area but wants to work there some day), so would be glad to hear any advice!
by m_herrlich on 1/3/22, 4:21 PM
by vmception on 1/3/22, 3:41 PM
We should cut them out and relegate these marketers to a contract role, and exclusively pursue business models where customers don’t derive confidence from a CEO sales guy. Mainly because they waste our time, they can’t even judge the character of people in their network assuming they even have a network, and take way too much equity in a conversation that would be better off avoided.