Comments for How to Avoid Mediocre Co-Founders

How to Avoid Mediocre Co-Founders

2010-01-28T23:00:00Z

Just because your college roommate won the university's engineering award in 1996, does not mean he'll perform well in a VP role now. Early-stage startup teams come in many forms and while it's nice to showcase those founders who began with personal ties, more often than not, these teams fail. Speaking as a recent panel participant at the Girls in Tech Conference, Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston revealed that early-stage companies tend to list recruitment as one of their toughest issues.

]]> Said Livingston, "Above all else, never hire a B player - B players hire C players and then you find yourself with a mediocre team. My best advice is to always hire someone more competent than yourself."

Echoing Livingston's sentiment, Fast Ignite CEO Simeon Simeonov wrote an excellent guest post for Venture Hacks entitled, When to Fire Your Co-Founders. Simeonov argues that weak teams get built when founders fail to anticipate a pivot from the original business plan or model and when they do not spend the time expanding their recruiting network. He offers ten rules for building agile founding teams including using your investor network to recruit, setting clear expectations and agreements and my personal favorite, "[hiring] generalists early and specialists later."

We've all seen the early-stage company with one great founder / generalist and an entourage of childhood friends who are ill-equipped to help with anything beyond their lackluster specialities. As Simeonov points out, VC's just think, "Shoot, this is a backable entrepreneur and the idea may have legs but the two other founders are B players and a poor fit for the company at this point...Frustrating... this could have been a good seed deal. Now it's too complicated. I'll pass using some polite non-reason."

You can't afford to miss out on funding because your uncle fancies himself a salesman or your cousin lent you money and thinks he can dictate your operations. In addition to today's Venture Hacks post, ReadWriteWeb's articles on hiring an A team andhiring for the company's life cycle will help you get the info you need to make the right recruitment decisions.

Comment from Ruggero Domenichini on 2010-01-28

2010-01-29T01:48:09Z

Problem:
You are the founder of a microISV.
You have worked hard for 6 months and you now have a working website.
You have tried to pitch your idea everywhere but only RWW and a few other bloggers have noticed and, after the initial spike, the flow of visitors is steadily going down.
You know that you have a winner but you have nearly got to the bottom of your savings so now it's time to find a day job.
How do you find good co-founders that could help you?

Comment from SamRag on 2010-01-28

2010-01-29T02:05:20Z

It is true that you should find the best person for the job, however there are other things to consider as well. Having a good friend along for the ride will make the whole experience so much better.
I would recommend that friends working on projects together realize that even if they are the best suited partners to kickstart something, neither of them might be qualified to actually run the business!

Comment from Thomas Oppong on 2010-01-29

2010-01-29T13:45:32Z

Startup founders will do themselves a lot of good.If they concentrate on building great company and hiring people who share the same vision,it will not be difficult to hire the best especially when they have to be smarter than the founders themselves.

Comment from Cynthia Kocialsi on 2010-01-30

2010-01-31T01:55:02Z

The younger the start-up, the harder it is to convince people to join a start-up, and just because they join, doesn't mean they truly share in the vision. People have a natural tendency to hire people like themselves, not necessarily to hire the person the start-up needs to thrive at that moment in time. A technical founder will know how to hire technical talent, but may have little ability to judge the marketing talent needed and often postpones hiring the other needed skills. I've often seen start-ups hire a great person, but at the wrong time in the start-up. You shouldn't hire a large corporate executive for an seed start-up, this person is used to running an established company, driving incremental improvements and scaling the operation - not creating from ground zero. Hiring is not as easy as it seems.

Comment from Pankaj on 2010-02-06

2010-02-07T05:27:09Z

The other point one must consider while choosing co-founders is to check if as a team ,are they able to bring the best out of them. Passion/interests scale highly compare to Skillsets and non-interactive morons.Co-founders should be able to form a constructive discussion forums among themselves and brings the best out of you.