The first words he uses to illustrate cofounders you shouldn't bring in are "grey hair". If I could recruit anyone in the world as a cofounder, a lot of the top contenders would have gray hair.
> The first words he uses to illustrate cofounders you shouldn't bring in are "grey hair".
Not so fast. The actual description was "They all had grey hair and so-so backgrounds. Over the course of an hour, I learned one of the three was a relative who, after hearing about the idea, pushed himself onto the team as 'the business guy' and then promptly brought in a couple of former co-workers as co-founders. "
And he favored people with no background over people with "so-so backgrounds." If you haven't been out in the world, its easy to have a spotless background.
I'm curious what other experienced people think about this article. I've been working as a consultant for about 5 years now and recently started working on a startup, so while I like working with a constant team (as opposed to a different client each project) and large projects (website, marketing, services, etc) I don't have the experience in starting a company and thinking long term about teams.
Besides not dismissing "grey beards" (which I don't tend to do, most that I've worked with have a lot of experience and resources to bring to the table, while most 20 somethings have lot of energy and usually a deep understanding of a small area of expertise.) is there anything else I should take away from this article with a grain of salt?
I think you might have missed out on the part about so-so backgrounds. When you're young and just starting out not having much background or experience is to be expected. That's not the case once you've been around for a long time.
The biggest mismatches that I can think of involve co-founders with completely different expectations of what the company will do, different financial backgrounds and different energy levels.
As soon as you're 'not in this boat together' you're in trouble.
Other than that I certainly wouldn't let age be a problem either way or rule out people with a serious commitment to family or other dependents.
As for firing co-founders, that is not as easy as he makes it seem, I think that if you get to the point where you need to 'fire a co-founder' and they don't leave by themselves that you are probably better off starting over.
I was telling a guy I sometimes do contract work for about one of my projects and he asked if I was interested in bringing him on as a cofounder (which I need) to take care of the UI/UX stuff and balance out my development load (which I also desperately need). I told him I'd think about it, but I'm honestly very hesitant to take on a cofounder at this point. My main hesitation with him is that he lives in another country and I worry about all of the complications involved with that (although I heard it worked out well for 37Signals). Another issue I have is that my project is still kind of my baby, and I hate to hand even a part of it over to anyone else just yet. I guess I need to do more networking before I make any decisions. It's lonely working alone, but it's scary trusting other people. Perhaps that means I haven't met anyone that I trust enough to work with as a cofounder.
If you want a founder, pick someone you already know and trust. The next best thing is to hire someone, and down the road promote them to effective founder status.
WordPress is just about entirely a distributed company, with employees all over the world... It doesn't work for everyone, but clearly works for 37s and WP.
On the other front, it sounds like you care more about your control/ego than you do about the success of your product/company. That's a bad sign, I think. Success is elusive enough. Note: I'm not saying you should take the guy on as a co-founder. But your reasons SHOULD be "I don't know him well enough and he's far away" (both surmountable)... Not, "I can't share my PRECIOUS!" :-)
Yeah, I guess it sounds like I have a control problem, but I'd like to think it's a combination of the two; I don't want to share my PRECIOUS with someone who I don't know or trust well enough.
That totally makes sense- don't blame you. There are vesting plans and cliffs for that. i.e. you could say, "you're a provisional owner for 6 months and after than you vest n% per month to a maximum of x%". That way you can date before you marry and there is a provision for punting him any time in the process (or him wanting to quit).
To me, the core of this article is always make sure you have the right team for what you're trying to achieve.
Allowing 'hanger-on' people who have installed themselves into positions within the company, displays a clear lack of leadership and the ability to make and carry out difficult decisions.
If you don't know the kind of people you need in your team, recognise this as a weakness, and seek help. Then be prepared to follow the advice you get.
I like the read but.....
I would have liked the author to be more specific about the qualities as a cofounder. A well rounded person compared to
a so-so person is still too vague for me. And as a VC and the reason to not invest in my start-up was due to co-founders I
would like him to say so, not make a vague excuse as he said he did per the article.
