One of the major dilemmas facing would-be entrepreneurs (at least judging by this thread at Hacker News) is whether or not to seek a co-founder once you have a viable idea.
Opinions differ pretty strongly about this. Paul Graham has espoused the feeling that startups with more than one founder are more likely to succeed. He goes on to suggest that two or three founders is the optimal amount. Many people seem to think that he is the king of all things startup, and so these same people think that his way is the only way.
Which leads to posts like this one. A bright guy is hesitant to start working on what is probably a good idea, all because he lacks a co-founder! This is the danger of relying too heavily on one theory of startups. This guy should probably just go ahead and start his idea, rather than look for a complete stranger to entrust half his company to.
On the other hand, there are also people like this. After reading that long-ass rant, I'd be disinclined to work with him as well. He seems to have a pretty high opinion of himself, and seems convinced of the brilliance of his idea to the point where he is unlikely to accept any criticism.
So what is the answer? You and your co-founder don't want to end up like Mr. White and Mr. Pink up there, at each other's throats with .45s. But if you go it alone, it is definitely harder.
As I posted in the thread, I think there is a middle ground. One should neither seek out a co-founder actively or ignore all potential co-founders. Just look amongst the people you have known for a few years or more, and decide if any of them share similar goals. If not, expand your horizons and look to meet some like-minded people -- not for co-founders, but to meet new friends. Among these, you may find a co-founder or you may not. Just continue to expand your network of friends, all the while working on your idea.
Just my two cents. Slow news day, and I actually had my coffee well in advance of posting today, so this is a much calmer entry.
Time for a departure from my normally scheduled crap concerning lame-ass web startups* and stuff I like on the internet. This post is about COFFEH!
This post is also going to be profane. Watch those sensitive ears, ladies.
Coffee, as a rule, is delicious. I don't care how you imbibe it, be it lattes, cappuccinos, espressos, regular fucking coffee, whatever. It all tastes good and it all has a fucking stranglehold on my brain. It has gotten to the point now where a day without caffeine input (preferably coffee) leaves me incredibly irritable and with a skullsplitting headache.
As addictions go, this is a pretty tame one. I'm not sucking dick for coffee in alleys, or mugging people from the Midwest on vacation for coffee money. I should be glad that I am addicted to such a readily available substance. However, I am dismayed, probably just like any cocaine/heroin/janjaweed addict, by the vastly varying quality of my substance of choice.
Point in case: I am drinking a Dunkin' Donuts** coffee right now. It tastes like pee. But it is still much, much better than some coffee you can get. While it dismays me that this coffee is the best available to me on my way to UNH, it also makes me glad I am not drinking coffee from Cumby's, a disgusting gas station chain whose radio ads constantly shrill how awesome and trendy they are for serving Bengal Trader coffee ("ANY SIZE JUST 99 CENTS! YOU BETTER GET TO CUMBY'S!"). After some thought (not a lot, though), I decided to rank my coffee options:
1) Taste The Golden Spray
This is the highest ranking, reserved for the best indie coffee shops and other fine places where you can get some exotic shit to placate the monkey on your back. Also Illy, which I consider to be some of the tastiest mass produced coffee, unless you can get some Zabar's. The finest uncut Colombian.
2) I'd Buy THAT For A Dollar
This is my ranking for the best chains. I'd say stuff like Starbuck's and Seattle's Best rank in here somewhere. China white: it's been stepped on a little, but it's better than what everyone else is getting.
3) Mean Bean Machine
Dunkin' Donuts and all their ilk. Semi-decent coffee if you are in a hurry and don't need anything but a fix. Compare to Mexican Brown: tastes a little weird, still gets you where you need to go.
4) Cleveland Steamer In A Paper Cup
Gas station coffee. Any kind. It's all gross. Green Mountain is the best of this group, but still shitty. Badly stepped on Mexican Brown. Cut with Ajax.
5) SANKA TIME
Any decaf, anywhere. Hardware store complimentary coffee. ANY complimentary coffee. You're bootin' black tar heroin now.
And that's all I got today. Maybe tomorrow I will make fun of how useless Open Social is so far. Or maybe write about my amigo John's blog, which is so far even more content-free than my own, which is a feat indeed.
* Seriously, WTF. Like Amazon is impossible to use or some shit. Also their site design looks like one of those linkjack shitholes. As Ted Dziuba has been known to say, WARP FACTOR FAIL.
** Those of you from somewhere other than New England may not know what Dunkin Donuts is. I don't care.
Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Nick Negroponte.
Prepare to meet the best way to drop $400 dollars this holiday season.
Whilst in Miracle of Science, I struck up a conversation with a guy who happened to do some scut work on this project. I hesitate to let any of it loose, because it probably isn't for the public, but I learned some amazing stuff about this sweet machine. But let me just say, this is going to be an amazing piece of hardware and software. Buy it for some lucky kid elsewhere right now, or grab one for yourself as well on the twelfth!
And some requisite super disco breakin' at the Miracle of Science Bar and Grill in Cambridge. These were my events last night, and the highlight of my weekend, besides seeing my girlfriend greet me at the door with a pink spotted apron holding a beer and cooking chicken. Those fifties guys never knew how good they had it!
Anyway, this post is less to brag about my awesome girlfriend, and more to talk about how cool people interested in startups are. As a regular reader of Hacker News and (future) startup co-founder myself, I was loathe to pass up the opportunity to meet up with some other people interested in (and founding) startups, especially at a cool science themed bar. The bar in question also had Brooklyn Lager on tap, which is enough reason for me to show up right there. I'd show up to a Klan rally if they had that shit to drink.
So I showed up and started sipping mellifluously on brew and waiting for my co-founder, one John Watson, to show up. I scouted the bar trying to guess which other people might be from YC. This was tough; pretty much everyone in the damn bar looked like a YC geek, just like me. I later found out that half the bar was indeed from YC, but no one knew it yet.
Watson showed up dead on time, and immediately commenced drinking as well. Having showed up early to check out the bar, we spent a pleasant half hour or so talking shit about employers past and present. We got antsy when 8:30 rolled around and no one had made any announcements ("IS ANYONE HERE FROM THE INTERNET?"), but then John had a fine idea.
Being a tremendous dork, I had brought my PowerBook to the bar. John suggested I fire it up, load up Paul Graham's homepage (with that bitchin' Y combinator tattoo) and a text editor with "Y COMBINATOR??" in the biggest readable font, and point it at the door.
Man, did that ever work. People started showing up in droves, cheering and waving, ordering beer, ordering food, and chatting about whether they had been chosen for funding or not. Seeing as Watson and I didn't even merit an interview, people seemed quite free to not feel too bad about being interviewed but not getting funding, which was the dominant theme of the evening. However, we did meet some people who DID get in, which was tremendously exciting. One of which refused to say anything whatsoever about his idea (which tantalized the rest of us, much to his obvious amusement), but the other seemed to have a pretty well established product in RescueTime, which looks like a fairly interesting application, and is already in beta.
And so a good time was had by all, and some interesting discussions were had with a guy from an interesting Comet-based startup, which will probably merit another post later, when I am less lazy.
Both the band Wham! and Wal-Mart's customers implore you to make it big.
Let it be known that I do not particularly care for Wal-Mart. While offering an abundance of cheap shit to consume, they manage to keep some of it cheap by raping their employees with shitty healthcare coverage. Way to put people first, Walton.
However, this is not a post about lame-assed Wal-Mart gripes. It is a post about whether or not Wal-Mart selling a Linux PC for $200 dollars is a good idea for Linux in the long run.
Some might say that Linux needs any form of publicity it can conjure up. This may have been true once, but at this point, even your grandmother knows the name Linux. She may incorrectly identify it as a presidential candidate running for the Green party or something due to the preponderance of greasy hippies wandering around with Linux shirts, but she will recognize the name. Linux needs only good publicity at this point, especially desktop Linux. long touted as being "just around the corner from kicking Microsoft's ass in the desktop market!"
This is an egregious misstatement. Desktop Linux, while it has improved, still needs some serious help in the user-friendliness department. I have horrible visions of people buying these PCs and trying desperately to plug in ancient, obsolete printers and scanners and PDAs, and being enraged when they aren't supported immediately. Now I agree that some of this detritus wouldn't be supported in Windows, either, but these people are likely to believe that it is Linux fucking them over, not their innate cheapness.
Consider the following enchanting repartee:
Jim: "Hey Bob, bought one of those cheap two hundred buck peecees I saw on Wal-Marts web site. I know why they's so cheap now!"
Bob: "How come, cuz?"
Jim: "They's missin the Windows! They work, but none a my files work with em. Technical support says they don't support none of my Word stuff. Says they only use Leenucks."
Bob: "What's a Leenucks?"
Jim: "It's a part of the computer machine that keeps my files from workin!"
and so on.
Now, some of you (whoever you are) reading this might believe this to be an unfair representation of Wal-Mart's customers. "Hey !" you are thinking to yourself, "I shop there! And I am technically savvy, too! He's just an elitist jerk."
Not so fast, cheapass. Consider this quote from the Wired blog:
"Even at the low end, however, image is everything. The gPC is built using tiny components, but put inside a full-size case because research indicates that Wal-Mart shoppers are so unsophisticated they equate physical size with capability." --Rob Beschizza, Wired Blog, 10/31/2007.
And now you see why George Michael's goofy album adorns the top of this post. And why maybe a bargain-basement PC marketed to a relatively unknowing crowd isn't the best way for Linux to break into the desktop market.
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