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Ask HN: Need advice: Single founder and Early stage chances with YC?

3 points by tckb ↗ HN
Earlier today I asked fellow hackers about their take on my app. But, just in the matter of hours my situation changed dramatically.

We were a team of two founders, me being the developer and the other cofounder, a marketing/sales girl. Ours/mine is a crowdsourced based non-profit startup in its early stages of development.

Due some reasons, she quit on the startup and I am now the only founder left in the company, I'm really determined to go ahead and apply for YC. I have been working relentlessly to get to a shape.

I was wondering if this happened to anyone before and if yes- how did you manage to compensate the loss(may be for a good reason).

PS: For the curious, here is my original ask hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9267658

7 comments

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loumf
I have absolutely no experience with YC applications and know almost nothing about the teams that got in.

Given that -- my take:

You are worried about all the wrong things.

Instead, you should worry about whether you are making something people want and effectively communicating that you are doing that. All this other stuff is sapping your energy to accomplishing the one thing YC says over and over again that means the most to them. The second thing is relentlessness -- if you are relentless, these are very minor setbacks, and not worth your attention right now.

tckb
Past the demotivation, PG lists "single founder" as [one of]the top mistake that kills a startup.

"it's a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn't talk any of his friends into starting the company with him. that's pretty alarming"[1]

"Ideally you want between two and four founders. It would be hard to start with just one. One person would find the moral weight of starting a company hard to bear."[2]

There could be other reasons why a founder chose to be single. In my case, my other friends who were interested in joining as co-founders but, I chose not[include/work them] because they didn't had the same values as I imagine one should. for me, this is more important than their respective abilities.

[1] The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups [2] How to start a startup

qtheninja
its doable. Not enjoyable.

You go to "war" with the army you have not the army you want. if you want to get a new founder on board then start looking but I wouldnt delay today because of it.

If you are having second doubts. Then reevaluate. Ask why she left and get More feedback from others.

People will start joining when you least need them ( when you start becoming successful ). So I'd advance only if this is your vision for your contribution to this world.

tckb
My vision "Awethu" a non-profit startup is to use technology to help people from developing nations (such as mine) to solve their real-world problems, which in either case be expensive. i.e, create a "affordable" solution. And, it's been difficult for me to find co-founders who are as motivated as I am AND be seeking less or no profit out of it.
loumf
Not having a cofounder is a sign that you are not making something people want.

The solution is to make something people want and get better at communicating that this is true.

qtheninja
If I were you. I'd go and apply and start searching immediately for another team mate.

Ask yourself. What's the worse that can happen?

I have no xp with y combinator or all of its criteria but a lot of people view one founder as a weakness (this can also bleed over with angel investors too from what I hear). Fortunately you have the tech side. If you want another founder then start searching. If you want a business side person it shouldn't be too hard.

I personally have started as a single cofounder and raised money by the users. Its not nearly as fun but it's doable. If you believe in it i wouldn't let anyone stop me.

My 2 cents.

tckb
I've already started searching for other co-founder ( friends & Co.). I agree, raising money from the Users as a single co-founder can be a daunting task and even more for a Non-profit startup like mine. Henceforth, YC!