Notes From a Conversation With Y Combinator’s Paul Graham
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I talked afterward to a guy who wanted to apply to YC, but didn't have a cofounder. I suggested he just apply 6 months later, and spend the intervening time finding a good cofounder. He didn't want to hear it. For some reason founders seem to think that the set of potential cofounders is a given they can't change. But surely if you made finding a cofounder your main priority and worked at it like a job for 6 months, you could find people.
My assumption has been that the best co-founder is one you have some history with so you know that you're compatible for the long term.
Is it realistic to expect that you can find a person and accurately make that assessment in six months? Particularly if it's from a different mindset (e.g. sales/bizdev cf. tech) and/or location. Are there any successful examples from YC?
FWIW my concept is embedded hardware-based, in a toy/education market, I have technical experience and am looking for someone with financial, business development, marketing and sales experience & knowledge.
It's more important to have a good cofounder than to have one with particular skills. So if I were you I'd simply try to find someone you work well with, whether he/she's a business person or not. Two hackers can figure out how to do sales eventually, as long as they don't give up.
Finding nice cofounder for me could potentially take much longer than 1 year for me if it requires building a network. At the same time I feel I'm ready, and I'm in the moment right now (this isn't even my first startup). I've moved forward irregardless of a cofounder and have even taken this semester from school off. Waiting could mean losing the ability to work on this idea and the idea is very dear to me. Plus I can't wait--that's how excited I am. I only took school off because I knew the startup would win if they got in a fight.
I'm not sure what to do if not having a cofounder makes me immensely unattractive to fund, because I'd have to go back to school in the summer or I lose health insurance. Conflicts will probably arise then, and it would prevent me from spending the time I want with my startup.
On the other hand, I guessed wrong twice. YMMV.
I do not want to be the stereotypical stubborn child who won't listen (that would be like trying to shoot my way into YC); I completely agree with your reasoning why having a co-founder is best, and I highly respect your analytical skills, but I would like to respectfully assert that you're missing the point. My write up below is not an attempt to get you to agree with me, but to merely understand my reasoning (and perhaps readers here can tell me if I am off-course).
My end goal is not to have a "YC" notch in my belt (I don't need a resume stuffer). My end goal is a successful startup that will make $ by creating so much value for everybody (the founders, the investors, the customers) - I want to absolutely maximize the value pie for everybody. And having a co-founder will increase my odds of success.
I am not a parent, but here is a generalized statement based on statistics: "Divorce rates in the US is some of the highest in the world, and statistically, children with parents still married fare much better than single parents." This assertion is true, when your sample size of married people is global, and when your sample size is all children who grew up with single and divorced parents in this country or world.
The point that I am trying to make is that being a good parent is a choice to the individual. If I was a single parent (fyi, I view my startup as my baby), I will either take my son to soccer practice, or not. I will either spend time reading books at night to her. Or not. I will take the good in with the bad - or I can throw my hands up and say "I'm too busy for this crap, here's a baby-sitter instead".
That was all I was saying.
I believe in the benefits of a co-founder, but my search has been distracting me from my #1 goal of running my startup; and a co-founder is just means to an end. Just as YC is just means to an end (yes, I plan on applying - which I know I may not get in, but I still plan on succeeding with or without YC - because if my startup fails simply because I didn't get into YC, then I have a bigger problem).
Note that this is different from saying "1 in 3 women will have breast cancer" (or whatever the actual number is). Because a perfectly health-conscious woman can get cancer due to pure bad luck. The difference is, being a good parent who will do anything for his child, is an individual entrepreneur's choice. He will either do it, or go watch tv. It's much tougher to say "Damnit, I'm not going to get cancer" (if I'm already a health nut)
The other thing I want to mention is your investor bias. An entrepreneur has an only-child, an investor as a portfolio of children. So investors can say, X% of startups die from Y. Therefore I can completely understand when you say, "therefore, I will not bother reviewing with startups with Y". It is logical - you are optimizing your portfolio's success. I understand that statistically there are less single founders like Bezos and Patzer, and there's more cofounders like Woz-Jobs, Hewlett-Packard. Statistically that is true and unrefutable.
But using Chaos Theory as an analogy, I speak for any single co-founders applying, I hope you will not write us off as "goners", and that you really look inside of that one person who is trying his hardest and pulling the weight of 2 co-founders today on top of his day job and current responsibilities, before pulling the trigger "you're fired" trigger, Donald Trump style.
All said, as an investor, your goal is to optimize your portfolio. My goal is to do anything humanly possible within my means to increase the odds of success, and definitely remove any obstacle, one after another that will keep me from success. And on this one co-founder point, we may disagree on the tactics but the fact is that we do have a common end goal. I respect your choice, and I still very much respect you and want to be in YC. I just hope you understand why I cannot completely agree for the reasons mentioned above.
Consider the converse: If I thought that getting into YC wouldn't "move the needle" in helping me get to success, I wouldn't be writing this comment and 3/3/10 would mean nothing to me ;) However - that would also imply that I am indifferent to you, and Jessica, who I first met in person at the Anybots party before the day of the 1st SUS. That is not true, you guys rock, and are people I look up to. So I do care about the people behind YC and I'm not a 1-dimensional robot. You have to admit, it feels good to be benevolent (isn't that YC is built on?) - and I too, wish I could be benevolent in return.
I am still continuing my search for a co-founder, while minimizing the distraction as much as I can. It's tough.
Transactional: e.g. used car salesman. The sales guy promises you the world to convince you to hand over a boatload of cash, even if he knows the car is crap. Why? Because after the paperwork is inked and the money is safely in his bank account, he's done with you and moving on to the next guy. Nevermind if the car breaks on the 31st day - just 1 day past the warranty date. Because all the effort is on that single transaction. He could care less about why you actually need a car.
Relationship-based: e.g. System integrators, consulting firms. e.g. They sell you a firewall / router / set up your internal network, but it is in their best interest not to screw you over because your lifetime value to them as a customer is greater than the immediate gain (e.g. marking up the hardware or charging ridiculous installation fees). Plus, they want your respect and need credibility so that next time when you need something else, you will go to them first. E.g. Maybe aside from an email solution for your SMB, you now need, a simple internal collaboration tool installed. Granted there are also sleazy relationship-based sales people, but the difference is that it is not as transactional as a used car salesman.
The reason why I mentioned that is because I'm not trying to be the jerk who says "gimme all your goodies now now now" and then conveniently forget how I got there when I get there.
At the risk of aiming for too lofty of a loooong-term goal - just as Mark Zuckerberg said "these are my people" at the last YC SUS, I <3 startup entrepeneurs and I too, wish that I could one day be in a position to be like Paul Graham. To start a startup that helps other startups. But I realize that in order to do that I need to succeed at my own startup first.
pg started YC to help the small guy, and I feel that I should stand up for the even smaller guy amongst the other small guys, since single founders get easily drowned out by the majority of non-single startups.
Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.
YC is great if the timing is right and if you can get into it. At the same time, if someone were to tell me, "go spend 6 months finding a co-founder and working on something together, and then we'll talk", I would nod politely, and then proceed to spend the next 6 months building my project. Those are 6 months that you could use to get off the ground, if you're really motivated. You could launch in 6 months if your project doesn't require a large initial outlay of resources. And if your project is awesome enough, then it will attract people interested in your project, and it will gain momentum.
With 2 months, I can do so much in terms of not just product development but also customer development - because let's face it, the bulk of startups YC invests in are not technology risks, they are market risks.
Granted, I am optimistic - but imho 6 months is enough time for me get off the ground and raise a seed round outside of YC (but I do prefer to get into YC, just a preference).
That is the plan. I'm not waiting, I believe in making my own luck. I'm not saying I can predict the future, I'm just saying I know what I can do to influence the outcome, and I'm going to try my best. More people need to make their own luck.
Thanks Rob!
I have a number of friends that are startup founders both solo and with cofounders. The solo founders are just very likely to burn out easily because nobody else is there who understands their situation and can support them.
I applied to YC as a single founder last session and didn't get in. I don't plan on applying for YC in the future unless I find a cofounder.
That doesn't mean I'm not pursuing my goal. I will continue to work on founding a startup but as long as I'm a single founder, I will not be taking the YC route.
Just do your thing, and let other people realize how right your choice was for your situation.
None of these stated benefits are things you can just copy, so it's not clear what the griping is about.
This model is based entirely on reputation and there is no way in which opening a competing institution makes things worse for applicants. People will apply to multiple programs and select the one they consider highest value. Institutions will compete with each other to attract the best applicants.
Schools sell education plus connections plus guidance plus a diploma; the diploma is the most tangible thing they sell, so if you just sell the diploma you can cut your costs significantly. YC invests reputation and guidance and connections and money; someone who buys the same stake in exchange for nothing but money is obviously reducing the value--and valuation--of the company they buy into.
It's the entrepreneur's decision, and there are some good seed funding programs out there (Techstars has some great portfolio companies). But in many cases, the other programs are using seed companies' generally good reputation (thanks to YC) to make less valuable investments in the same group of companies.
Though as a matter of fact, many of them do copy chunks of our site.
By way of comparison, do you fault Burger King and Wendy's for taking McDonald's idea?
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/02/technology/kopy_kat_kids.biz...
Whereas if the idea is significantly transformed, it starts to be a new idea. If someone started a YC-style operation for funding films, I'd think that was cool. In fact I've suggested it to several people.
If I visit SF and go to a great a great Hawaiian-Italian fusion restaurant (I random example), I don't think the proprietor would blame me of plagiarism if I started a Hawaiian-Italian joint in Boston.
Further, I see important differences between YC and competing accelerators. YC doesn't provide office space; TechStars and DreamIt do. I'm not sure which approach is better, but I do think it's a non-trivial difference.
You're right that office space is a distinction. It's not an innovation though. The incubators of the late 90s all did that. It was a novel move for YC to consciously discard it. So it's hard to say whether including office space was a deliberate change or a transcription error. Honestly, I'd guess the latter. The naive impulse when starting some kind of incubator is always to envision it as a space, rather than a set of relationships between people.
But I'm still having trouble understanding how your gripe with the other accelerators is legitimate....
In founding YC you came up with a wonderful, innovative model for birthing startups. Kudos for that. You invented a whole new paradigm of investment; that's f-ing cool. But whenever an entrepreneur comes up with an brilliant new way to do business, other entrepreneurs follow. I struggle to think of an instance where a company created a new industry and other folks didn't join. And I don't begrudge the followers; they are part of a dynamic that is central to the innovative beast that is American capitalism.
Perhaps other entrepreneurs follow because a single company can rarely support an entire industry. Perhaps they follow because they think they can do things subtly (or radically) different to improve the model. I'm not sure the reason is terribly important. The point is, inventing an industry niche does not give you a monopoly right on that niche ad infinitum.
The internet space is full of examples. Aliweb was (arguably) the first commercial search engine. I remember trying it back in 1994. At the time, it seemed damn cool. Then, soon after, I heard about a new search engine called Lycos, so I tried that. It was similar to Aliweb--I thought I slightly preferred the Lycos results, but I wasn't sure. Lycos begot Altavista; Altavista begot Dogpile; Dogpile begot Google. Each new search engine was doubtlessly dependent on its predecessors. And each new search engine had no obvious new innovation--changes were subtle, usually hidden under the hood.
I don't buy the argument that entrepreneurs should be frowned upon for entering a new industry without a radical new twist. Begrudging folks who are making subtle changes to your model seems petty. YC will, for the foreseeable future, have the name brand and network to attract better talent than all other accelerators. That--not a universal monopoly--is a proper reward for being the first mover.
I think your responses in this thread do indicate that, to some extent, you think they have unfairly stolen the YC model and their existence is unjust.