https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10218445
Finding a co-founder is close to number 1 on the list of things a founder has to do, because the number 1 mistake that kills startups is being a single founder. Therefore learning from other people's search in finding a co-founder would be learning what to look for yourself.
I can easily imagine finding a co-founder to be a startup idea itself if done right.
Find a problem and start solving it. Then tell everyone about it. A co-founder will come. In fact, they will come because they are interested in the problem you are solving. Don't assume that two people who like sitting around together can actually come up with a viable, marketable idea and then become successful startup founders.
Also, Paul Graham is speaking from an investment portfolio perspective when he is speaking of the #1 failure point being not having a co-founder. He says, "Have you noticed how few successful startups were founded by just one person?" The thing you should be worrying about is "Have you noticed how few successful startups there are? Why is that?" Answer the second question first, and you will come to find it has very little to do with co-founders.
"In reality, having a marketable and economically viable idea is the key to founding a successful business."
That's not 100% true. I mean, it is important, but it's not the one and only key. There's more to it than that. Here's a list of marketable and economically viable ideas that won't lead most people reading this comment have a successful business out of them. http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html People are more important than ideas.
I'm sorry my posts came off as my passion is not wanting to work in a large company. I don't work in a large company. My passion is to change the world, after becoming ramen profitable. If I had to pick between a business that makes lots of money but isn't fullfilling or a business that makes less money but has a shot at changing the world, I'd pick the latter. I don't know if this answers your question.
You are right that people who like sitting around together may be unable to come up with a viable, marketable idea and then become successful startup founders. It's not easy to generate ideas. It's hard to be a startup founder.
But you also may be presumptuous if you think I haven't found a problem or started solving it. And I may be presumptuous if I think you haven't found a problem or starting solving it too. I want to listen to other people's ideas. Valuable ideas can be risky or frightening enough that you don't even know you have them. Bouncing ideas with someone else can help them surface.
If I had to make one assumption, it'd be that people who like sitting around together, and like each other, and are exceptional, are more likely to come up with a viable, marketable idea and then become successful startup founders than people who don't like each other and aren't exceptional. If this "success" quality can be put into words better, similar to being formidable, I'm open to a definition.
One problem with people coming because they are interested in a problem you are solving is that they also leave when the solution doesn't work. People who stick together are more likely to stick with a solution longer. They are also more likely to be open to changing the idea.
I saw this problem with people who weren't friends first. They wouldn't be in sync. They would refuse to switch ideas.
This may be a very simplistic reasoning, but if you go from a single founder to two, you potentially double your growth rate. Or you at least double your productivity. Because now there are two people working to make some big tech breakthrough and get that initial toehold of users, assuming they can work together.
It seems to me growth rate is more important than equity. With growth rate you can get rich enough to not have to work again. With double the equity but no growth you don't.
Recently got some attention on reddit. It was fun to do, and Clojure worked quite well under traffic.
It's a hobby project. I currently publish 3 new articles per day.
Some example docs:
still a side project, using Python PyKE as the rules engine is anyone is familiar with that??, and socket.io, node and mongodb for the "real-time" stuff.
I've been building Space Invaders in C++ for almost a year now. It's been an excuse to learn things like building an entity-component system, messing with fonts, creating spritesheets, etc, and currently i've taken a week-long tangent into vectors and collision detection. It's more of a journey vs. destination kind of thing, otherwise it could have been "done" a long time ago.
I decided to wrap most of my Github projects into a small, threaded PHP forum, which is currently a HN clone because I can't be arsed to care about style right now. I've got lots of little things like related links generation and thread folding and sorting working. It will probably never actually see the light of day.
Since I just graduated from technical school, I have to find actual work so that's taking up a lot of time too.
I had some challenges with the course at the started, but refocused my efforts in making sure I was creating a product that a beginning developer could work through and then feel confident to build their own apps. Once the quality content was in place, reviews, revenue, and engagement soared.
Revenue is up over the last two months, and I plan to write a blog post in the next few weeks regarding that topic. In addition, I plan to also release a new course covering React Native in the next week.
[1]: https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy
[2]: http://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick
[3]: http://mindcrime.github.io
Used the opportunity to get better acquainted with ansible, finally no more manual configurations.
On the hardware side, I did my first breadboard to perfboard transplant[2]. It's a basic circuit, the layout is not so great, the soldering is messy, but it's mine.
2D Split-Screen Capture the Flag. One player assumes role of Firewall, robotic-security guard, other assumes role of the androgynous Cracker. Cracker has to break into the corporate system and take down the mainframe to start the cyber-revolution, while Firewall has to catch them before they do so and escape. We have some fantastic Darude-esque electronic music and a cartoony art style.
A screenshot utility that is more powerful than the free Greenshot, yet less expensive than the over the top SnagIt. (Free unlimited trial, $5 to buy, Donating 10% to my favorite charity).
Its got a lot of great features, and a lot more in the works. (I've now started building a light-weight editor... Learning the 'Command pattern' for Undo/Redo'ing)
It will also provide some graphs along with insights/advice, for example, suggesting possible aliases to save time. Looking to get it out in the next week or two, would love to hear if you guys would be interested in something like this!
- kiosk app for employee survey
- groupon inspired app for niche market
- airbnb for dogs (thinking)
- building next version of niche appstore that i launched a year ago http://appsjhola.com
Fixing bugs on customer's website.
Looking to transition to a full time job in cool startup in San Francisco. contractor / agency dev to => startup hacker (suggestions ?)
trying to finish reading Crossing The Chasm
The coolest thing about it is IDE autocompletion of db fields. Other cool stuff is UML generation for Mongo/RDBS, and a storage abstraction for s3, ftp, etc so switching providers is just a config change.
Little command-line framework for Ruby in a similar vein as Thor or Boson or Rake, but with some ergonomic and structural differences that I think are improvements (but then again, I'm probably wrong :) ).
Machine Learning via Ng's course.
Modeling for Discreet Optimization using MiniZinc with Stuckey.
Devops via Managing Remote Teams on Edx Edge.
Org Babel.
Construction industry economics and processes.
Who could be a cofounder.
CQRS, event sourcing, testing, actors.
Sheds.
Tiny Houses.Working on a startup demo using React Native (still learning Node+React and native mobile).
Basically, you upload your chat history and we show some nice visualizations (no, we do not store your chat).
I've also just launched www.immersiveauthority.com - an Immersive Tech / VR site. Whatever I learn I transcribe on the site.
Launching on 21st September