I agree that it is exhausting. I'm 2 months into a solo founded startup and the mental fatigue is not what I expected. Reflecting on it now, it certainly makes sense, but I just didn't know that it can be so taxing.
I've told myself that if I make it to a next round of funding I need to find a partner stat.
Two months? Just wait. I'm 9 months in solo, and day-jobbing to pay for the bootstrap. It's incredibly exhausting.
If I could find a co-founder or two, I'd be thrilled. But finding someone really worth their weight hasn't happened yet. And I'm not going to just sit there and ignore this opportunity just because I can't find someone to hold my hand while I'm doing it. I'm going to get it out the door, even if I have to do every little thing myself.
Having a co-founder is great. But not having one is no excuse to not work.
I'd suspect there are a number of people in your shoes and in the shoes of this entire thread.
I read these responses and thought "Hmm I wonder what it is they're doing. Maybe I could help or at least offer some brain power?" then realized clicking usernames revealed dick-all about any one of you.
I had a thought "Why hasn't there been a matchmaking service for entrepreneurs?" A quick Google search gave me the answer: some already exist. You could try one of those. Alternatively you could use HN to help solicit help by using the about section or use posts like this to give some modicum of detail.
When I see nothing in your about section and nothing in these messages that seem to explain the "what" you're trying to accomplish, I have a hard time believing you're really serious about your search.
It's more likely that you have your own system of who you deal with or you're just passively searching, severely. That's all perfectly fine, just not something I would be doing in either of your shoes.
I've seriously offered co-founder positions to two people. One is actively involved, but not as a co-founder. He's my patent/IP lawyer, and an old friend I studied CS with in college. He doesn't want to be fully involved in a startup for a variety of good reasons, but he's willing to take equity for a little private practice work. The other is a former co-worker who would be my easy first choice for CTO. He's considering it, but hasn't decided yet and I'm not rushing him. He has good reasons to hesitate (like baby #5 on the way).
I've also done some "matchmaking" through networking and introductions, but I haven't yet met anyone else I'm willing to trust with it, or whom is ready to go for it (there have been several candidates). So I'm not in a rush to find a co-founder, and not making it my first priority. If it happens, it happens.
I took comments on a post to mean "I'm ready for" when I should've realized a lot of what we do as people is talk ourselves up to something.
I wouldn't consider it to be a poor idea at all. I was primarily trying to offer suggestions to help with passively searching when the need arose but I couldn't get around being specific, realizing it could partially sound mean or negative when that wasn't what I was going for at all.
Some investors say that they back the team, not so much the product. In which case, if you're going to need a partner to fulfill the vision you sell investors, you may want to pick one sooner.
Agreed, same here. Undergraduate in computer engineering, when to work in software development right away. Went back to school and got MSCS. One of the best choices I ever made. I can honestly say it made me a better developer and computer scientist. Although I did notice a good number of students who had never programmed a day in their lives taking the MS program with me. A lot of Biology majors...
How many credible MS programs will even allow this? They don't teach you how to program during a MS degree. They give you a project and you are expected to know how to program in c++/java, scheme, or whatever random language the professor feels like using.
Most of the Bio students were doing degrees in Bioinformatics, which is an offshoot of data mining, which is run by CS department. Most were good with SQL, but that's about it. It worked out for me since I always had a place in group work. I wrote the software, they did the biology. So to be more clear, there were no Bio students in my OS class, just the data mining classes.
He chose to speak his mind, and I believe his opinion was mean-spirited and unnecessary. Sometimes, employers fire people for that, and that's the way the world works. I don't see it as a problem.
