Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

There's a mental hack I would use in situations like these. Essentially, stop looking for a "cofounder" and start looking for a "collaborator."

Right now you don't have a business, per se. You have a concept. It's an interesting concept, but it doesn't need a cofounder just yet. Turn the concept into a project. Work on any bits and pieces of the project that you can. Go to meetups, bring your idea to a hackathon, and maybe do a Show HN when you've got something tangible. (Something tangible could even be a really interesting blog post about the topic.) All the while, look for collaborators to help out.

The "collaborator" mindset frees you of the mental bottleneck of having to have a cofounder before making progress. It also allows you to work with, and to vet people instead of having a shotgun wedding to the first would-be cofounder you think you get along with.

PG once wrote that a sign of a good team is one that's worked together and knows each other. You can't push a magic button and add five or six years of shared history to any cofounder you meet. But you can get some work experience with collaborators before cofounding a business with one of them. You're looking for someone you can click with over the next five or more years; it's worth a few extra months of scramble in the beginning to find someone great.



I also use the "turn it into a project" mental hack. Use your engineering mentality to "break it down" and do one step at a time.

Don't shirk the "who can I sell it to for how much" question, though. That's the common fear/concern of technical guys.


I suspect the majority of people who see their startups as a "business" before they see them as a "project" tend to fail, or at least not be very successful.


Understood, this route seems the easiest as it lets me get my feet wet slowly.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: