Matt Maroon: Advice for Would-Be Y Combinator Founders

You mention the necessity to have 2-3 cofounders, as does Paul in his "why to not not start a startup." In a 2-person startup, do you think both people need to be software developers? I'm an interaction designer, and so although I do the HTML and CSS, my real contribution to the team is my focus on the personas, the design, and the user experience, while my partner focuses on the implementation. So far, things have been moving along at a nice clip, but I'd like to hear your take on this issue. (Note I didn't use the term 'hackers' because although I don't code, I would consider myself someone who works to "design beautiful software.")

I'll add one more... Don't get stressed in the interview if they criticize your idea! They may seem a bit negative towards you but its their job to take a critical angle.<p>In other words, be cool and dont take stabs at your idea personal. Chances are, the comments they're making turn out true anyway so heed the advice.

"For instance Zenter, which is obviously much more suited for integration with an online office suite like Google's than as a standalone business"<p>If there's no potential for a business based around presentations, somebody'd better get on the horn with WebEx and let them know. (Then again, they're probably still too busy counting the $3.2bn from their Cisco acquisition to notice.) PowerPoint is huge in medium/large companies, and the tools available for delivering PPT presentations remotely still suck. And aside from providing awesome presentation design functionality, Zenter would've absolutely given WebEx a run for its money on the presentation delivery side.

Regarding the number of founders, YouOS springs to mind as a 4-person team. I thought I read PG say he funded a few individual founders this last round?

Thanks for the advice Matt. (Better late than never)

congrats on the wedding!