He says to choose somebody you know , over someone you don't know.
- In my position , Need a person with AI/Data/ML experience though friends are not aligned with these and specifically with a competitive advantage ... Do I build MVP with friend and get the Data guy after ,,, Or intuitively trust another founder and build with him ?!?
@luke7755 Yes I think choosing someone you know is practically almost only way to go for the reason he mentioned.
Artificial co-founder with no-history works better if your journey never went to severe downturn + if you'll never have any strong disagreement with partner.
I think, if you don't have much history with partner, it rather works better if it looks much more like founder & early-employee relationships (if they can pull it out like that)
@patorianus Actually that puts it into an interesting perspective fs. Every great chef can handle 100 orders , until the smoke starts to fill up the kitchen and some start to flop
@luke7755 Yes lol. The funny thing is that there must be some co-founderships that worked because there's no strong disagreement or severe downturn (at least long enough that they can handle dispute by the first incident)
@patorianus Maybe it’s cuz I’m right out of college but it seems all the people I know who are founder material skills wise and work for interesting companies are highly risk averse and lack the entrepreneurial mindset. Rather sit at corporate cushy jobs.
Finding a cofounder is already hard but finding a cofounder willing to work for a hard tech startup at this age seems impossible. Probably gonna end up going solo after all
@pal1322 Though there are certainly many great people who's willing to adventure into early startup as an early employees. Usually those people are reducing the size of their employers throughout their careers. I think YC can solve some solo-founders' problems by carefully selecting solo-founders who's looking for early team members. YC is, whether they accept or not, kinda credit rating agency. Those potential early team members, whether early employee or co-founder, are more ok to join if it is YC backed (or backed by prestigious VCs of course), while they are more averse to just solo-founder (a.k.a. an unemployed hobo).
@luke7755 Oh well, I have about 3 years of work experience, none at a company that does ML. I’m spinning up an ML startup (not calling it AI), maybe cause I went to a low ranked state school I literally don’t have any friends who I deem good enough to be a cofounder or anyone in my network. I only have one friend who recently joined Apple with a huge pay fits the description but he has no interest in the startup.
I might get rejected by YC for not having a cofounder but it’s not the end of the world. If the problem I’m solving has a big scope, the money will follow
