"I got an email from Paul Graham saying basically that being a single founder put me at a disadvantage, because two founders can talk each other out of bad ideas, but I appeared too stubborn."
Fortune 500's biggest company is a single-founder company. Most Fortune 500 companies were founded by a single person. Don't let detractors tell you single-founder companies don't work.
If you look at the wikipedia page for Sam Walton, the founding looks a little more nuanced:
"Walton went on to open more Ben Franklin Stores with the help of his brother, father-in-law, and brother-in-law."
Sam Walton's autobiography mentions that his father-in-law provided the initial capital (that was about it), and his brother played an insignificant role (like buying things from suppliers). His brother, who was younger, was more of a helper while Walton built his first store (a Ben Franklin store that he later sold and started Walmart on his own based largely on his Ben Franklin stores).
> I got an email from Paul Graham saying basically that being a single founder put me at a disadvantage, because two founders can talk each other out of bad ideas, but I appeared too stubborn. I’m not entirely sure what this means, as I was under the impression, from reading his essays, that Paul was against single founders because they might give up too easily, so a founder who sticks to his idea would be desirable.
Having worked both solo and with partners, I will never again run a business solo for an extended period of time. If the business is already profitable, I'll hire a competent GM-level person to help run it. If it isn't profitable enough to do that, then I'm going to spend a majority of my time recruiting someone for whom the company will be greater than the sum of its parts.
Having someone to talk to is huge. If they pick out a single one of your blindspots or bad points, that could make the business 20% more successful. Really, there's a long list of things that can go wrong in business. Tweaking and refining at any stage could easily give a 1%, 2%, 5% edge. Those stack up really fast.
Solo isn't so good. Partners are good. If profitable, you can hire some talented to take that role. If not profitable, I'd strongly encourage you to get over your... well, I was about to call it delusions of grandeur, but that isn't fair to say. For me, in the past I've fallen in love with my ideas, thought they were worth more than they were, and thought the execution would come fairly easily. I was delusional. Maybe you're not, but if you don't have money coming in and an obvious winner on your hands, you might rethink what the business is worth and go recruit someone. Have some sort of vesting or buyout provisions if it doesn't work and go get a cofounder.
I was the biggest pro-solo guy in the world previously, but I was mistaken. You got a high fever? Tough shit, it's just you running the business, make it work anyways. You ripped the cartilage in your knee and can't walk? Tough shit, hobble over the taxi stand, get a taxi to the bank, and limp/drag yourself in to do your business.
Having a team is good. If profitable, hire a GM-type, that'd work. If not strongly think about recruiting a cofounder.
I interviewed as a single founder as well. They spent the entire interview trying to directly match my idea to existing markets. I probably appeared stubborn as I tried to explain how my idea was different.
How could I appear other than stubborn?
If they had said, OK I think we understand your idea but your market doesn't seem big enough (or something to that effect), maybe things would have turned out differently than 11 minutes of what seemed to me like "we don't get it," when they probably did and didn't believe in it.
Well, in any case, I got some good feedback and I still appreciate the opportunity to discuss my company with them.
Hindsight may be 20-20, but I still have to fend off the regret for not redirecting the conversation.
As a word of advice to future single founders, they are going to aggressively push you the entire time. Be prepared to concede to them at some point even if they don't "get it." Otherwise, you will appear stubborn.
Okay, another lesson I learned the hard way. People tend to like their own opinion more than your opinion. If they say you might be wrong, they usually want you to say, "Wow, that's a really, really fascinating point you bring up. I'm going to strongly think about that." Maybe not YCombinator, but like 99.99% of the rest of the world.
> As a word of advice to future single founders, they are going to aggressively push you the entire time. Be prepared to concede to them at some point even if they don't "get it." Otherwise, you will appear stubborn.
People need that. And y'know, you might be wrong. Or not. If you have a great reply, then maybe say, "You know, that's a fantastic point, I spend a lot of time thinking about that myself. Can I show you the numbers I ran on that?" Then show them, and say, "I still think about it. Do you think these numbers look good to go, or would it be worth considering more? What would you do about that concern, in my shoes?"
I'm going to keep the details vague here, but I remember one time I was selling something. The client wanted something else, that was stupider than my idea. But I was swallowed my pride and did it their way. Y'know why? Because I wanted their money more than they want my expertise. Oh, it was still a good deal for everyone. But they demanded it a certain way, and okay, you've got the money, you win, let's do it your way.
You wanted someone's money. Okay, they win, let's do it your way. Well, not that wishy-washy. But "I'll strongly consider that" (and then do! maybe even follow up on that point later with a few page brief/plan/strategy or something) is good. If you've already got the answers, stress how you think the other side is brilliant to bring that up, and you think about it and worry about constantly. Nobody wants to give money to someone that makes them feel stupid.
I don't know. Maybe this doesn't apply to YCombinator, they seem like the top 1% of intelligent and savvy people. But the other 99% of the world, definitely.
Edit: Once you've got a proven track record for doing massively amazing things, you can maybe just tell people how it's going to be and insist you're right. But that comes much later. If you seem like a commodity at all, you pretty much have to do it the way the people who have the money want it. When they bring up a concern, they really don't want it dismissed by some kid as not a big deal. Even if you're right (which you might not be).
> I was under the impression, from reading his essays, that Paul was against single founders because they might give up too easily, so a founder who sticks to his idea would be desirable.
My understanding of Paul's argument has been that most initial ideas are bad and that a successful startup requires changing course until your idea matches a marketable need. This suggests an important distinction between stubbornness - refusing to change direction - and persistence - refusing to give up.
Caveat: I don't know the author and have no idea whether he is stubborn, persistent, or anything else.
That mostly refers to startups that haven't yet launched and don't know if their idea will get any customers, as far as I understand. historious already has quite a few paying users, so I believe I'm right to be stubborn in thinking people want this enough to pay for it (because they have).
This makes you a non player in valuation game. By having a revenue you cannot over project and hence cannot get a valuation to provide a worthy exit to ycombinator.
That's an interesting thought, but it'd be sad if they actually think that way. Actual success counts less than imagined one, because you can't inflate the numbers as much?
> I would love to read a blog post on hiring a GM-type. How? Whom? When? Why? How much? What responsibilities?
The best guy I know at this is a mentor of mine who runs one of the most profitable architectural/construction firms in the Middle East. He looks for people who can get things done on their own without too much guidance, always pays over-market rates for pay but makes the bulk of compensation based on net profit, and he primarily recruits people from bars where expats hang out. First thing he does when he reaches a new city is go to an English or Irish pub where the expats hang out, and gets lots of info there. He does lots of recruiting at bars, asking around for who knows who that'd be good at something. I'll ask him more next time I see him, and shoot you an email if I get something interesting and write it up.
Most of the people I've worked with I met and got to know beforehand... if possible, if you're a consumer-facing business, it would help to start building out a community around your business before looking to hire. Someone like 37Signals get much more enthusiastic and higher quality candidates than some random shop.
Beyond that, unfortunately, I haven't been in that position too often! Or rather, I was too stubborn to let go of the reigns when I was. If you have specific questions though, email me about your scenario and what you're doing. Maybe I can share some insights or introduce you to someone who could help.
Recruiting from bars? I would expect that if the rates are good, he gets a lot of referrals. And aren't there business networks and agencies he can tap?
+1. Sure I am wondering about historio.us vs Instapaper but congrats on the interview! +1 on the design + Like the feature 'search any word appearing on the page'. Really cool URL.
Just a 2cts idea: would be great if you could historify automatically all the URLs I tweet or retweet. Later on could do the same with Facebook, also with HN and all the links I have upvoted. So that on my Historio.us I can search the slide of the Internet that matters to me.
Thanks for the packrati link did not know. Yes was thinking of Greplin, but in your case: a Greplin "Library" only for content I read or found interesting, excluding what was written by me (without my comments, post I wrote etc).
Oh, right. Hmm, maybe packratius has plans to expand there, they complement historious very well for now so there are no plans to do that ourselves. It's definitely something to watch out for, though.
Why don't you bookmark and cache ALL visited pages. And keep caches for, say, 30 days if space is a problem. I'm very likely to want to search/revisit something I visited 2 weeks ago. This would provide a set-it-and-forget-it approach to bookmarking.
> I got an email from Paul Graham saying basically that being a single founder put me at a disadvantage, because two founders can talk each other out of bad ideas, but I appeared too stubborn.
This applies equally for being talked out of good ideas.
And if your idea is good to start with, then there would be no point in changing it until you've pursued it long enough to see where it leads.
The thing to remember about YC is that it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, let's say that Cal State Chico (not a top school) somehow convinced all the top students to attend next year. Pretty soon, it would start to be known as a top school. And let's say Stanford only got applications from the bottom 5%... you see where this is going.
Paul Graham's evangelizing means that, regardless of the utility of Y Combinator, if he convinces the top start-up prospects to join the program, it will make the program look good. They are looking for people who would be successful even without them.
Y Combinator could be minorly helpful and they would go on to success; it could be a wash, and they could go on to success; it could be a slight negative, and the strongest candidates would mostly still go onto success.
People could also FEEL that it's an incredible experience, even if this isn't objectively the case. Many people join various kinds of self-help or self-empowerment groups and enjoy the events and believe in them strongly, even if there is demonstrable practical harm.
Y Combinator could also have a net negative effect on the startup landscape, because NOT getting in can be so disappointing that it can lead people to give up (I wrote that before your post, but the link expired; I reloaded, and made this a reply instead of top-level comment); in other cases, they've found people who applied and got in, who considered getting in to be the accomplishment. Paul's viewpoints have been increasingly dominating the national conversation on startups the last few years, so the hypothetical indictments are meant to address its success as propaganda. Obviously if it really WERE the best approach, criticizing it for being too successful in its results would be disingenuous.
There's also a huge emphasis on getting funded being an accomplishment, which is a big distraction from the real priority for a business, which is making something that makes a profit. (A nice big funding round also means now you need an even BIGGER exit. This can actually reduce your chances for personal success. Xobni couldn't sell to Microsoft for $20 million because it wouldn't have been a big enough ROI for its investors. Perhaps they really thought they could be a billion dollar company and didn't want to sell anyway, but you see the point.)
Paul's talk about angels and super-angels and valuations focused on the main point being "the percent chance that the start-up is Google," if I recall correctly.
To me it looks like Y Combinator has the wrong model for that. The resources and timeframe favor much smaller ideas. According to the unofficial YClist.com, the top exit was 280 North at $20 million, which means not only have they not had another Google, they haven't yet had another ViaWeb.
It would be interesting to find a list of angels and their investments for the last 5 years and see which ones had bigger deals than that. I'm guessing a lot. So, that covers instincts and judgment, at least so far.
As for changing your idea, there are market segments that have been goldmines which I have yet to see a single YC company delve into. Thus, I'm not so sure on the advice portion.
There is a pretty big generation gap with the hot web properties and I don't know if any of the YC principals really grok it.
If PG reads this I expect to be told I'm wrong on every point except perhaps for a token concession for decorum. It's hard to talk people out of bad ideas when they're stubborn ;)
@Chesser: you should post this on a blog and submit as a link; I'd be very interested to see the debate that could go into some of the points you're making here.
Bravo for being contrarian, btw. It's quite refreshing to see some criticism for the YC model, good as I think it is.
Also, a counter point: it's pretty clear that regardless of startup quality, YC does provide tangible benefits to any and all startups that get accepted into its program. Demo day provides instant access to a bunch of high-profile investors, pg has the benefit of 10 years+ of startup pattern recognition, and YC companies get instant attention/Techcrunch coverage.
Plus, while it's difficult to quantify the amount of help YC gives startups vs startups being good outside of the program - we have to remember that YC isn't a school. And so the metric for quality of an investor is really their ability to see which startups are good, and which are not - which YC does, admirably.
1) YC has one company with very high potential of a billion dollar exit in Dropbox. An IPO in a few years isn't out of the question either. They also have at least a half dozen that are likely to be as big or bigger than Viaweb:
2) Google took seed funding early and then raised VC. That is the model YC uses.
2) I'm not criticizing the idea of funding, I'm saying the amount is small. Google got either $100k total or $100k each from David Cheriton and Andy Bechtolsheim, depending on which article you read. Presumably they had their living arrangements already covered, so it could all go to the company and not to rent.
Even though computing resources are cheaper now, the bar is much higher, so if your project needs a cluster or significant bandwidth it's still expensive in relative terms.
1) A lot of things have the "potential" to work out, but you can only count the ones that actually do.
Besides, even a billion-dollar exit isn't "The Next Google". By Paul's own binary metric, that's still a failure. Let's say they owned 6% but that got diluted to 1/4th from follow-on rounds; their cut would be 15 million before taxes. They (Y Combinator) took $2 million in 2009 and then $8.25 million in 2010 from investors including Sequoia, so it's either going to be divvied up a dozen ways or has to pay back the $10.25 million first or whatever the terms are. Or maybe that's only for 2009 and 2010 startups, so it only has to be split between the 4 partners they had at the time (of funding Dropbox).
It's a win for the founder, but there are other wins that this model can miss.
You're no different now than you were before you were rejected. The things that made you want to succeed are still there. Your skills are still there and your drive is still there.
Oh, sure, but it's as if someone told me "what you're doing now isn't going to work, so we don't want to work with you on it". It makes me think that maybe I need to be doing something else, but all the thousands of users who use and love the service count more than six people who talked to me about it for ten minutes.
Djangy got an interview and then after several days, a rejection letter. We're too similar to Heroku.
You know what? I'm not really that upset. They made a good decision from their point of view. But we have 200+ beta users, lots of positive feedback, and have a good product.
We don't need YC to tell us that. So just keep on truckin. Get users, iterate, and make YC regret rejecting you :-)
No way. It actually had very little to do with Heroku. We wanted to be involved in the network (I already know several folks from recent YC batches), to contribute, to tap the collective wisdom of the YC alumni, and the connections to publicity outlets.
Like I said, it had very little to do with Heroku and the money. We have a product with users and we wanted some help and to contribute.
I would like to post here to thank you all for your amazing support, you are a fantastic group of people. I hope everyone who didn't get accepted to this batch can see this, I know it will help their morale, as it has greatly helped me.
It's not clear from the article, but I hope you had the chance to spend a bit of time in California, looking around, seeing some of the sites, and so on. It'd be a pity to go all that way and not have a look around!
Also: it looks like you live in a part of the world that is particularly nice and beautiful in its own way. You ought to do something to encourage visiting hackers to stop by so as to have some people to chat with once in a while.
Καλημέρα ,
Κατ΄αρχάς συγχαρητήρια που έφτασες μέχρι την συνεντευξη! Η γνώμη μου ειναι οτι δεν θα πρέπει να απογοητευτείς αλλά να το δεις σαν ευκαιρία για ένα νέο ξεκίνημα.
http://www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/the-power-of-no-1.746628
George.
I see this is the Greek corner of the comments section, so I should also congratulate Stavros for going through the experience, and hopefully it altered his perception in ways that will help him in the future. Stavro, my offer still stands, if you're ever back in London, drop me a line and I'll buy you a beer.
"I was under the impression, from reading his essays, that Paul was against single founders because they might give up too easily, so a founder who sticks to his idea would be desirable."
I see. However, when your users like your service so much that they volunteer their time building browser extensions and integrating it into their services, I don't think it's "too stubborn" to follow through...
EDIT: I realise that's not the point you were making, I am just commenting with my thoughts on the matter.
No comment on this specific scenario. I don't know you, and what do I know anyway? But it's so hard to distinguish 'determination' from 'stubbornness' that I've decided those labels are useless. No matter which you are, people will call you stubborn until you succeed.
I have friends who suggested it, but I was kind of set on YC for the experience and advice they can offer, I'll see what my options are, though, thank you.
Yeah, too bad the application deadline for Techstars NY was closed couple of hours ago. I suggested Openfund because it's also based in Greece, but it's Pan European.
It's true we don't fund single founder startups but we're still interested to see exceptional applications even if it's just one person behind them. You can still get past the first stages of our screening process provided you have an appropriate idea and adequate experience. However, to successfully complete the entire process you need to have found a co-founder by the time this period (~1.5 months) ends. This is not the best case scenario but for exceptional ideas we're willing to consider it.
Being invited is a strong sign that you/your idea have merit. But instead of having to deal with funding/investors/other crap, you get to work on your idea, in a "remote area of Greece", be your own boss and grow the company how you want. I can very easily see this idea being modestly successful and giving you a lot of freedom to work on other ideas.
Thanks, I think that would be ideal. Still, I think YC would facilitate this in that you don't really need to put as much effort into networking (they do it for you), so I can work on my idea in Greece while still getting introduced to interesting people.
Your site and idea look great. I would probably move away from the paid accounts and try to monetize another way. I am sure you probably do have some paid users but I wouldn't pay for a service like this even though I like the idea. You'd probably be better off with an advertising model.
Thank you. I've found that paid users actually provide the most revenue at this stage, as the advertising model needs a bit of scale to work well. I think it does have great potential to work in the future, though.
A very well-thought out site and a good implementation (I've just tried it). I'm going to use it.
I'm a single founder and whilst I've never reached a point with stratospheric income, the businesses that I have built in the 15 years I've been an entrepreneur have been great. I've enjoyed life. For me, being a single founder has always meant quick decisions and I employ people to compliment me. I'm not a 'finisher' - I'm an ideas person - and so I needed to employ people who would keep me on track and help me finish. There is no right or wrong way in terms of the number of founders, my opinion, and indeed I have both seen and experienced that having more than one founder can lead to disagreements. Good luck with Historious. I really like it
Thank you, there are definitely advantages and disadvantages to being a single founder (avoiding founder drama is an advantage, for sure). I'm glad you've managed to work things out for you, after all is said and done, I don't think there's anything people like us would enjoy more than running a startup, even if it's not wildly successful.
excellent writeup, great perspectives -- thanks for sharing!
> They did seem to be a bit dismissive about the product (as in “why would I use this, I already have bookmarks in my browser”), but I’m sure that’s just standard procedure in this sort of interviews.
i'm curious what others' experiences are on this front?
Nevertheless, you kick ass. You are from Europe (me too), from "secondary" country (me too), one founder (me too), you did make it to the interview (I didn't).
Just an aside on histori.us, it's a useful feature, we wanted to do the same but never got round to it. I noticed today however that when you're logged in to Google, and search, there is the option to just search "Visited pages". Although a super-set of your bookmarks, it's still useful, and free... I'm not sure how long the option has been there.
what did you tell them when they said 'i have already bookmarks in my browser'?
i started hacking on a similar idea (a chrome extension that monitors every url I visit and logs them with a web service that performs snapshots and full text searches), but then realized chrome's history already performs full text searching.
I said that it's not comparable, as the browser only stores the title and gives you lists, etc. Something like Google Bookmarks is a more direct competitor, but I don't think that's the thing to watch out for either, as it seems to be someone's weekend project and they don't really develop it any more. I'm much more worried about Pinboard, for example.
I can't speak for your specific case, but I would guess that stubborness would indeed work against you. The rules for single cofounders work the same as for teams: call out YC when they incorrectly correct something you know to be valid (and back it up) but if the criticism/idea they inject is good then roll with it and riff on it with them. You'd do the same, presumably, if you were chatting with your entrepreneur friends... I'm not sure it's really that different; it's basically a panel of hackers :)
I wasn't aware of them suggesting anything that I dismissed. It's my policy to consider every suggestion, be it from users or not, and I don't recall them suggesting anything...
Thank you, I'm not aware of the YC guys saying anything about not talking about the experience, and I don't think I'm being disrespectful to anyone, so here it is!
I have to ask what benefits your idea offers over something like diigo.com or even delicious.com. You present the idea slightly differently from diigo, but in the end diigo does exactly the same things, and then some (a lot more actually). I don't mean to discourage you at all, I'm just wondering what I may be missing here.
The disadvantage I see in all these services is, actually, the fact that they do more. Most people don't want to think about bookmarks, they just want an easy way to add them and then find them again. The fact that you never really have to visit the site, and that you can just click a button to bookmark things and then find them just by recalling the slightest detail is what sets historious apart, in my opinion.
However, different people will need different things. I just think there's a market there for both approaches.
Well, your bookmarks and data are never shared with anyone unless you make them public, so we take very good care of your private data remaining private...
The reason why I think they rejected you is because you are a single founder. That means if you get hit by a bus they're fucked. Whereas, if you had a team or a co-founder the company can still go on without you.
Fortune 500's biggest company is a single-founder company. Most Fortune 500 companies were founded by a single person. Don't let detractors tell you single-founder companies don't work.