Should a tech co-founder value the business co-founder or the idea more?
Hi friends!
I've just left Entrepreneur First, which is a talent investor matching you and other co-founders to build a startup. I joined the program as a tech co-founder and got requests from 3 different experienced business co-founders to work together. All three had extensive experience and network so that they may easily raise $100-300k of dollars for pre-seed funding. Each has quite an interesting problem that they want to solve, but in the spaces that I neither know about nor feel excited. I rejected all using Hell Yeah or No approach.
Now I keep exploring opportunities around the topic I love (SaaS around creativity and productivity) but under financial pressure. I don't regret but I'm not 100% sure I did it right, because I feel I could just focus on the product and learn along the way on these ideas. Would appreciate sharing your thoughts about this?
P/s: I'm open to co-founding opportunities. If any of you guys are looking for one, feel free to drop a comment here.
Hi @phuctm97! You definitely have to be passionate about the idea and love who you're working with to find the real winning combo. But it won't happen overnight and sometimes saying yes when you're not 100% sure (i.e. about the idea, team, etc.) will help you learn exactly what you want in co-founders. You almost learn more from what you don't want than what you do want. At least in my experience.
With that, I left Stripe after ~5 years and am starting a bartering platform if you're interested in chatting more. Looking for a tech co-founder but open to all levels of involvement based on interest. Feel free to email me danika at barterbetter dot co.
Best of luck!
It has to be some combo... but in startup you basically marry your co-founders and you might pivot and work on something totally unrelated to the original idea at some point. So I'd say it's highly into the co-founder side.
But for you to be a good match, you need to know yourself well and not put yourself where you won't perform well. Some people need more connection to the idea than others. If the idea is your primary motivation, than it's personally important to you. Some just like to be the crafts people, love the craft and/or challenge and/or tech or basically anything other in the world.
So don't feel bad if you feel you are one way and not like others, that's usually a good thing, for one you know yourself more and for the other your more unique and interesting. You might have a longer looking for match period, but maybe that just what you personally need and it shouldn't be considered wrong.
Thanks for the advice, mate! That's actually super helpful! I feel much better now haha. Yeah, do agree that it's more about the co-founder. I guess the cases I was in were was more about the idea, it's like if the idea turnt out not working, we wouldn't be willing to pivot and keep working together.
that again goes back to you two and your relationship ^^
at it's extreme, due probably more related to reality than we want to admit, the question should be more in the line of, would I like to spend the next 20 years with this guy trying on 10 different business, starting with this one ^^
The problem is this might be too heavy for us to process.
Maybe it should be more of would working for 3-5 years on this with him and failing the project, put me in a better spot for the next round to make a successful one.
I don't really think I have this mentality optimised yet and with something to back it up.
Some saying goes it's not about what I'm getting, but what I'm becoming.
many think it's a one swing thing, cause these are the magic stories we get/listen to based on survival bias.
Plenty more stories about "overnight success X years in the making", the "in the making" part is what one should seek. What is the path that leads up to. Assuming there is a common one that leads. Every attempt should get you closer, and you should be willing to keep swinging.
Howdy @phuctm97 we have a bit in common that I find compelling. I'm a former fullstack dev now leading a team of product owners/scrum masters fulltime but my main passion is in creating/entrepreneurship. So far I've hit my goals with my small experiments (youtube 100k+ views across 8 videos, 25k subs to my content on instagram, newsletter, etc.). I've built the MVP of a react/node product around improving productivity through creative experiences and have done initial market testing with positive reactions and validated lessons learned. Think miro.com in terms of its spirit (but not a direct/indirect clone/competitor). If you think this could be a hell yeah let's connect and chat some more.
I've never heard of the "hell yes / no" approach - but I love it! I need more of that in my life. Here's what I'm saying "hell yes" to these days:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/help-firefighters-first-responders-looking-for-technical-co-founder-for-a-proven-concept-flutter-git-preferred-ed53b6ab37
If our project is of interest to you, please reach out! Best of luck!
Hey, I totally agree with it being more about the connection with the co-founder and then the idea. Obviously, if the idea makes no sense then it's just not going to work out. What's your email? Let's get on call and discuss this project I'm working on. I have another full stack cofounder on it, and we have a few people working on a contract basis. We're in the middle of building out a very interesting MVP, and we even just got accepted into an incubator / accelerator in Chicago.
Let's connect.