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Comment by thinkbohemian | Hacker News Reader

Interesting, i'm a technical sole founder who is very capable of doing EVERYTHING, though i would be much more efficient if i could compartmentalize. I'm constantly on the lookout for my "otherhalf" but can't quite find any non-technicals that seem up-to-snuff any tips on what to look for in a non-technical co-founder?

Nobody in the world has Bill’s exact skill set, and looking back on it, that skill set is exactly what we needed

What skill set should I look for?

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Single founder here who thinks the emphasis on co-founders on HN is overrated. Investors may see it as a credentialing and stabilizing mechanism, but once risk is taken out of the picture and a product has revenue it only makes sense to bring someone else on board if they'll more than cover their costs and a co-founder is the most expensive hire there is at that point.

When is risk taken out of the picture, though? A lot of successful startups have near-death experiences well into their trajectory. Paypal and YouTube famously did.

You wrote somewhere that getting to ramen profitability is like hitting a binary switch. For me that was the most accurate thing you've written about the psychology of starting a company. It was the pyschological point where my business stopped being speculative and became something I could see supporting myself.

I don't have experience with big startups like Paypal or Youtube, but I'd imagine that if multi-founder teams were really a statistically significant determinant of success, there would be more active investment in (revenue-earning) single-founder businesses. The fact that investors seem to shy away from them suggests otherwise though.

So I'm not intending to be critical of your own or YC's activities. I just don't think it makes sense to convince people they need a co-founder just for the sake of having one. And especially not if they've already got some traction and revenue.

I think it depends on your skillset, too. Some of us have a hard time sharing control. Personally, this is one of the reasons I've always wanted to run my own company. I mean, It's possible, with the right person, that it'd turn out okay, (I'm looking at you, Chris.) but in general, not having the ability to say "Uh, no, it's my company, we're doing it my way." is something I'm loathe to give up.

Now, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing; For as long as I've been running my company, I've had excellent people helping me. If you can hire smart, you can get talent cheap. And let's be honest; no other sane person would have stuck with me for the four years I took bringing prgmr.com into profitability. If I had taken on a co-founder rather than just paying people, the company would have died a long time ago.

However, I think that investors might be on to something when they filter me out; I mean, I would have the exact same problems with investors as I'd have with co-founders. (this is causing some problems now that my bottleneck is capital rather than marketing or anything else.)

You should promote your business more on HN, Luke. I just visited it through your sig and am in your market. Currently pay for two virtual servers at MT. One doesn't get much use except as a backup server and I'm paying considerably more for it than what you charge.

Back on point, I don't mean to claim investors are irrational. I just don't think the reflexive "get-a-cofounder" drumbeat that is amplified here is really useful. If it were that easy and such an important determiner of success, I'd expect more investors to back single-founder projects instead of shying away from them. It would be a no-brainer to try and grow projects with revenue and traction.

But it doesn't happen. Which suggests to me that finding a good cofounder is a difficult enough problem that telling someone to do it is not useful advice. Or no more useful than just telling them to get customers. That is what seems to help me more than anything.

eh, right now I've got more customers than I can handle, (see capital problem above) I'm re-entrenching and focusing on my original (and most profitable) market, the hobbiest crowd, (and developers who know *NIX well enough to handle a low-ram instance) so hopefully that will iron out the capital bottlenecks for me, and get me some more hardware so I can start selling larger domains, too.

But yeah, I agree, finding a good co-founder is very difficult, even before you start hitting the co-founder problems that aren't problems when you have employees.

I was once preparing to be the ultimate non-technical cofounder. Then disaster struck my life, and then I learned to program. In any case, here was the skill set I wanted:

- Has tried a startup before and failed because he didn't have enough tech talent (check)

- Exposed to I.P. law at Stanford Law School (as undergrad)

- Experience cold-calling alumni for donations (for selling) (check)

- Studied economics (check), game theory

- Deep knowledge of fundraising process

- Design, typography, statistics, etc.

To quote PG "What people wished they'd paid more attention to when choosing cofounders was character and commitment, not ability." I have also found this to be true.

So, if you have the technical things covered, I would just concentrate on someone who is completely dedicated to do whatever it takes to be successful. And someone that you trust!

How business savvy are you? As a single founder, you might be better off with a hybrid co-founder who can code and do business stuff too.

Like sales - the ability to sell is probably the most important non-technical skill for a startup founder. Startups need to sell all the time - to customers, partners, investors, journalists, etc. It doesn't hurt to have 2+ founders who can sell.

This is how my co-founder and I operate. We both code and we both swap business duties. It works VERY well when bootstrapping, as one person dipping out for a week for school/work/family time doesn't bring the operation to a halt.

Additionally, having two founders familiar in tech and business allows you to become very productive when one needs work over the other. The ability to tag-team and push out work is fantastic, because there is often a lull in one or the other.

I read this comment and was nodding along thinking this sounded exactly why I'm happy with my bootstrapped project, then looked at the username and realized you are my co-founder, doh =)

Just a few qualities:

You want someone with passion. They should have a skin thick enough that they don't take rejection to heart, but thin enough that 'hear' those who would offer them constructive feedback. They need to be able to concisely articulate your vision to customers of all applicable types (investors, retail, industry), and deduce your next course of action (pivot) from many disparate and incomplete data points.

As for skills, these should complement your own such that the whole is significantly greater than the sum of its parts, and that the whole is just about right for the task at hand. Sorry to be so wishy-washy, but it really is one of those case by case things.

I think it is important to find a cofounder who you truly respect. besides a few specific skills, the skill set is almost irrelevant since you learn so much on the fly

Co-founders skill sets should be complementary not similar. Essentially, one partner should have a deep understanding of the customer and the other should be able to add value ie. a salesman and an engineer.

that sure sounds like good advice, until you start thinking... how does someone without a sales skillset evaluate a salesman? how does someone without a technical background evaluate an Engineer?

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