I can’t speak for everyone but as a solo founder with an engineering background here are my thoughts:
CoFoundersLab and YC Startup School are trying to solve for this. On these types of sites, the ratio is usually 99.99% business people with a GrEaT iDeA tHaT JuST nEeDs SoMe CoDe and 0.01% developers who can actually build those ideas. YC has a strong brand and I think you’re going to have a hard time convincing the very few (relatively speaking) engineers already on that platform to join this other one that you’re proposing to create. Communities are hard.
I’m negative on this idea because I see adding cofounders as a risk. Seen too many cases of “good on paper” cofounder relationships that fail for reasons beyond the usual “make sure you both agree on equity and work styles” and this causes giant changes to the business, employee churn, etc. Not unlike a normal relationship, sometimes the person you end up going into business with isn’t who you thought they were, and that only becomes obvious after working together for a year. Except this cofounder “relationship” is typically legally binding and much more difficult to exit if something goes wrong.
As someone with an engineering background who is willing to do tasks beyond writing code like sales, product vision, marketing, SEO - I just don’t see the need for me to work with a cofounder and needlessly give away equity. I wouldn’t use the site.
I can’t speak for everyone but as a solo founder with an engineering background here are my thoughts:
CoFoundersLab and YC Startup School are trying to solve for this. On these types of sites, the ratio is usually 99.99% business people with a GrEaT iDeA tHaT JuST nEeDs SoMe CoDe and 0.01% developers who can actually build those ideas. YC has a strong brand and I think you’re going to have a hard time convincing the very few (relatively speaking) engineers already on that platform to join this other one that you’re proposing to create. Communities are hard.
I’m negative on this idea because I see adding cofounders as a risk. Seen too many cases of “good on paper” cofounder relationships that fail for reasons beyond the usual “make sure you both agree on equity and work styles” and this causes giant changes to the business, employee churn, etc. Not unlike a normal relationship, sometimes the person you end up going into business with isn’t who you thought they were, and that only becomes obvious after working together for a year. Except this cofounder “relationship” is typically legally binding and much more difficult to exit if something goes wrong.
As someone with an engineering background who is willing to do tasks beyond writing code like sales, product vision, marketing, SEO - I just don’t see the need for me to work with a cofounder and needlessly give away equity. I wouldn’t use the site.
That's great feedback. Thank you!