Under No Circumstances Should You Decide To Go It Alone

I don't get it. All this doctrine seems to make finding a partner a pre-requisite to working on your idea. This seems to be the same 'bad advice' from the dot.com boom that asked for a business plan that predicted the next 5 years with growth expectations. It's garbage!<p>If you've got an idea, then go work on the damn idea! If you happen to have a co-founder that believes in the same vision, then good for you; otherwise, keep forging ahead and focus on what needs to be done. You may encounter that in order to be effective, you need another person to do 'X" because you literally cannot do 'X' effectively; but don't confuse that with a need to find a co-founder.

Maybe multiple founders are necessary when you're spending lots of cash on a founding team, but I don't think they're necessary when you're bootstrapping.<p>The main argument being made is that founders share pressure. But how much of this pressure is self-inflicted by the need to support a large team or chase aggressive growth strategies that will justify getting funding? So much pressure disappears once you start making money, and if going alone means you've avoided the need to define compensation schemes then you can breathe easily.<p>I can see why larger teams are more attractive to investors. But I don't think this is good advice to younger technically-minded founders who can do the heavy lifting in creating products themselves and often just lack confidence in themselves or their markets to figure out the rest.

"go it alone by bruce judson" -- free online book<p><a href="http://www.brucejudson.com/frombook.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.brucejudson.com/frombook.html</a>

I coined the following inversion to highlight the inherently manipulative use of the no-I-in-team saw:<p>There may be no 'I' in 'team,' but you can't spell 'team' without 'me.'<p>Am I the only one who sees the no-I-in-team chestnut as obviously manipulative?<p>Not to mention, there was a great article about solo entrepreneurs on HN a while ago that, I think, is something of an existence counter-proof of this article.

So, what's the remedy for people who find themselves in the situation of being the "strong personality" in the lot?<p>After reading about people's successes here, I've taken it to heart that a team of founders is a better way to go than a single founder; but whenever I try to get a group of people together it ends up feeling like I've taken on employees instead of co-founders. By that, I mean that things only seem to get done if I personally push for them to happen. I'm not interested in having founding employees, if I'm going to go the route of having co-founders then I'd like everyone to have equal input and as equal contribution as we can manage.<p>However, it doesn't seem to be as easy as just saying "we're all in this together as founders, let's get on with it" (I've tried this tact and it just hasn't worked).<p>I guess the distilled question is: how do you find co-founders that are as driven as you are?<p>And as a follow-on, how important is geographic relativity to your co-founders? Being in a non-startup hub, it makes it a little tough to find groups of people out and interested in working on startups (versus going out to find interesting jobs).

I want to point out that the author spends more time in this article talking about the problems associated with having multiple founders than he does the benefits.<p>All of the benefits he outlined were individual: motivation, skills, connections, perspective. All of these things are required to some degree in any startup, but individual experiences may vary.<p>Bottom line: If you have a need, fill it. If not, don't force it.

When I argued ideas with my brother, it forced me to think them through.

The primary issue I am working through at the moment going solo with my web app is that there is just so much work.<p>(The load would be easier to handle if I didn't have a full time consulting gig.)<p>The good thing is that I get to learn something about everything.

Speaking from experience, being a sole founder is boring and lonely. It's hard enough getting a company off the ground; why not share some of the load?