Ask HN: The Importance of a co-founder

Neither.

You need a good co-founder as a rule of thumb. You need to prove that at least one other person believes in your crazy idea and is willing to work with you.

If you have had a few cofounder false-starts you should look very closely at the root cause for that situation.

The co-founder is incredibly important. They provide a sanity check, and hopefully some ability to divide work up evenly.

Where are you located?

Don't get a co-founder just for the sake of your YC application. In fact, it might hurt you chances of getting accepted if you don't have the right person. From what I have seen in the YC application you need sell not only your idea but also your team. There have been cases where single person team have been accepted, e.g., Dropbox.

You should keep looking for a co-founder irrespective of all this. You should be able to sell your idea to someone smart and intelligent until then you really don't know how good the idea is.

You definitely need a co-founder. You can do without one, but it's nuts. A co-founder is good to bounce ideas off of, take care of tasks so you can focus on your needs, and fill out your weaknesses.

If you are already the techie, then you don't need another techie founder necessarily. You probably need the business strategy/marketing person to help you work with early customers to fill out the product and generate revenues.

No doubt a co-founder is incredibly important if you're applying to YC, if just for the reason that PG says so. However, I started my company without a co-founder and we're doing fine. If you want to start a company, you shouldn't let anyone tell you that you don't have the necessary prerequisites.

I've had successful exits founding companies in all three ways (solo, with one co-founder, and with two co-founders) and from my experience having two co-founders has been the best experience. One co-founder means you get a bigger slice of the pie, but also means that there's no mediator if the two of you can't agree. And take it from me, there will be many times when you don't agree. That's why I prefer two co-founders, because when two people take a side they're often able to convince the third member.

It's not too late to find the right co-founder before the application deadline, and it's worth working hard to find one:

Your YC application will be strengthened not just by having a co-founder but by the process of seeking one out. The triumphs and struggles you experience will be significantly richer when you share them with someone else. No matter how broad your expertise in the technical, business, and marketing aspects of building a startup, there will be areas where a co-founder can supply strengths you don't have.

Keep looking!

I just finished the Techstars program as a sole founder, and it's _extremely_ tough to both deal with the demands of an incubator program (mentor meetings, talks, pitch practice and investors) and make progress on the product too.

I don't know enough about your situation to give you meaningful advice, but bear in mind you'll be making a big time commitment as a lone founder in an incubator.

You should mention what sort of project you're working on, and you should include contact information in your profile.

I am in an almost identical situation, also out of LA.

I am wondering where people would recommend looking for a co-founder if you are in an area where the startup community is hard to find.

Some feel that having a mediocre co-founder is better than having no co-founder at all, which I wouldn't agree with at all.

Let me say that I think that having a co-founder is great, so if you can find someone who:

1) Has passion for the idea and concept and is willing to share in the risk. 2) Is a hard worker and someone who can bring talent to the table. 3) Is someone you get along with but can have fruitful discussions and respectful disagreements with.

Then I would encourage you to bring that person on as a co-founder. But I would not settle for anyone who lacked any of the above traits because you're worried about not having a co-founder.

So, in summary, co-founders are great if you can find one, but certainly not essential to startup success.

Reading dhouston (founder of DropBox) application - http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html, i think it's okay to continue working solo rather than settle for less than ideal when you apply for YC.

From my personal experience, i also recommend the same. It's like having a relationship. Great relationship > solo > lousy relationship. You spend much more energy and stress with less-than-ideal cofounder compare with going solo.

People are social animals, and go crazy when left alone. There are two ways not to go crazy:

1. Have a cofounder or two

2. Talk with customers all the time

Either is fine to preserve sanity, but beyond that one gives you more muscle power and the other gives you better direction. Your pick.

Solo is fine. You don't need a co-founder. Yes in many cases a good co-founder will help your company succeed.. but in many other cases a bad co-founder will most certainly help it fail.

If you haven't already identified one then you can forget about it. The question is moot. You don't want one anyway. That's obvious. What you want is someone who will work for you at a discount, a coder who likes the product and the tech you're using and likes to get his/her hands dirty. A lot of people are just happy to have good work and some input into what they think will be a good product.. that would free you up to focus more on the marketing business side of things which is just as if not more important than that product itself.

You really have TWO options here:

# Bring on a co-founder that is an obvious fit

# Have a plan that identifies what your own weaknesses are and how you plan to mitigate them.

From the sound of this thread, there is no obvious co-founder that you know of right now, so going with the latter is far more respectable and smart IMHO, and is something I would bet the YC panel would appreciate a lot more given your current time frame.

Ehh, I know this thread's kind of dead but I just found it. I'm in LA, shoot me an email.