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Poll: Would you be interested in doing a startup with someone from YC news?

4 points by mixmax ↗ HN
There are obviously a lot of intelligent and driven people here, bound together by the interest in startups.

As many of you know it is hard to do a startup on your own, and almost equally hard to find good founding partners that are complimentary to your skills. YC news seems to be a hub for potential founders.

Would you consider doing a startup with someone from YC news? What about doing a startup with someone from another country or continent? Is that even feasible?

10 comments

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mixmax
If you voted for the first one (yes, but have to live close) maybe you should add a comment about where you live.

You might pick up a cofounder ;-)

I'm from Copenhagen.

NSX2
What do you do? I'm in New York, have a technically simple (not discounting the effort into building it or saying it's easy) idea, and have some contacts in the financial world that can put money into something tangible. My shortcomings are that I don't code, and NYC is full of programmers who are either poseurs and keep coming to "I want to start something" Meetups again and again but never seem to "take that first step" or people rushing to try to get a job at Google or Facebook's NYC offices. So, in conclusion, I'd take "long distance" over face-to-face with people who for whatever reason never seem to understand that "3-5 guys working together without corporate direction from the boss" thing that happens in Silicon Valley on a daily basis.

I think goals and attitudes and personality and a willingness to be flexible are much more important then being close enough to someone to smell them and see their acne.

mixmax
I'm the biz and ideas guy, so probably not what you're lookig for :-(

I'm starting to learn how to code, but the intention is not to take on commercial projects, just learning how stuff works. You'll probably (hopefully) be able to find someone more capable in that field than me.

But good luck.

rms
I think it is possible that startups with founders at a distance could work, but it's an additional, huge barrier to success.
mixmax
Agree...

37 signals seem to have done it though, DHH lived in Denmark for a long time before finally moving to the US.

run4yourlives
DHH though worked as a consultant building rails as an in-house tool, while 37S developed web pages.

Not saying it's impossible, but they don't fit the "startup over the internet" analogy.

moog
I think a distributed startup could work. HD video conferencing will be affordable very soon. With a ~20" HD monitor and a little suspension of disbelief, you could converse with a co-worker as if they sat opposite you.
tjr
Given how much free software is developed by volunteers across the planet, communicating almost entirely, if not entirely, over email, I don't see why a "distributed startup" couldn't work in theory.

I worked for about 18 months developing avionics networking software for a big company, and I worked almost entirely by myself in this country; most of my co-workers were in China. Even the people that I did communicate with locally, we usually spoke over email/IM.

As a maintainer for a GNU package, though, it seems that volunteers come and go, and their interest levels vary wildly. I think that the big problem with distributed startups wouldn't be, "can we actually develop a product this way?", but rather, people would feel more free to just up and leave the project, and never be heard from again, if there wasn't more of a social, in-person bond to the company.

This begs the question... could a startup be run as a quasi-volunteer project like GNU? Contributors would likely expect to be paid, either in cash or in equity, if the project is a commercial business venture, so that detail would have to be sorted out somehow or another. But it might be doable.

ropiku
I'd like to start a startup with someone. I'm a very enthusiastic coder who likes challenges and wants to learn new stuff. Communicating only over internet doesn't seem that hard, you have a lot of online tools, from IM to Basecamp.

Perhaps making a startup about finding startup partners ? :P

NSX2
Sent a message to your blog - or just "emailadrian[@]inbox[.]com"