This is basic stuff for anyone here. I'm sure you get asked for startup advice all the time. Here is something you can send to people who ask you for help. It will get them started thinking...and come back with more focused questions.
Dodge is wallowing in waste, and from that 'context' what he is saying sounds okay.
But the truth is different:
First, the most important thing to have in business is good luck. Since we can do little or nothing to control that, let's set it aside in favor of things we can control.
Second is the 'idea'. If lots of other people can have the idea and execute it, then the business promises to have too much competition. Indeed, there may be established competitors now difficult to start against. So, setting luck aside, the 'idea' has to be one very few people can understand and execute.
So, entrepreneur Joe has such an idea. Then Joe is about one in one million. Now how will Joe do on Dodge's points?
Will Joe be able to get others 'excited' about his idea that only Joe understands? If they are as well qualified as Joe in Joe's specialty, maybe, but we already know that Joe is one in a million. So, initially, likely Joe will have to proceed alone.
Will Joe be able to get VCs excited about his idea? Not a chance! In information technology, one could count on one hand all the venture partners in the country able to evaluate an idea from a guy as rare as Joe.
So, continuing with Dodge's points, suppose Joe gets users, customers, revenue, earnings, all growing rapidly, that is, gets 'traction'. Then what? Sure, then Joe will be able to attract 'co-founders' and 'investors'. But then the question will be, "Just why would Joe want to do that?".
That is, with Dodge's criteria, for a good project like Joe's, by the time co-founders and investors are interested, Joe will no longer need them.
This is an old story that goes back to the Mother Goose story 'The Little Red Hen': She found a seed. From others she got only laughs. She attracted no co-founders or investors. She plowed, planted, cultivated, harvested, threshed, and ground the seed to make flour. She built a bakery. She mixed the flour to make bread dough. She let the dough rise and baked it into fresh, fragrant loaves of bread. Now she had customers, revenue, and earnings. Also now, and ONLY now, did she have co-founders and investors but needed neither of them.
But aren't co-founders and investors nearly always needed? Let's see: Let's start in the East in the US and take a survey of businesses, move to the west, and end up on the West Coast. Our survey will be in villages, towns, and cities. We will see some millions of businesses in auto repair, auto body repair, Web site design, grass mowing, roofing, kitchen remodeling, HVAC, dentistry, pizza carry-out, 'Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives', commercial and residential rental property, big truck-little truck businesses, etc. A huge fraction of these businesses are Sub-chapter S sole proprietorships and have no co-founders or investors. And at all the larger bodies of water, a huge fraction of the yachts are owned by such people.
The advantage of Joe? With a one in a million good idea in information technology, with the advantages of Moore's law, the Internet, and infrastructure software and the ability to execute that idea successfully, Joe just has some advantages over the guy with pizza shops, etc. Heck, a good commercial lawn mower now costs much more than a good server computer. It costs much more to start a carry-out pizza shop than a Web site serving 100 ads a second.
Joe is the guy to pay attention to. Dodge's advice is not for Joe and is for people not able to be Joe. To heck with Dodge.
