Co-Founder Weekly provides musings on entrepreneurship, investing, and tech culture. This week’s newsletter has 3 sections: Tweeter’s Digest, Articles, and a Weekend Thought.
✨✨ Tweeter’s Digest✨✨
Articles
Founder Collective’s Joseph Flaherty highlights the benefits of bootstrapping a profitable company versus taking venture capital. Pros of bootstrapping include: (1) founders of these companies pay themselves well (2) they face no artificial timetables, (3) they’re free to run their companies the way they want. Cons of bootstrapping include: (1) slower growth horizon, (2) recruiting/retaining talent can be tougher, (3) if you’re successful enough you may still be subject to reporting by the gov’t, (4) markets can change rapidly so you may lose your window to cash out. Link.
5 attributes investor a16z Lin Jin looks for to figure out if an e-commerce startup is a good opportunity (click the link for full tweetstorm):
1) Does it have defensible, scalable acquisition channels?
2) Is it operating in a category that is well-suited to brand building, and if so, has it built a brand that people love and trust?
3) Is it selling a unique product that not everyone can offer?
4) Does the business have network effects?
5) Are there economies of scale that can be captured ahead of later entrants?
Lightspeed Venture Partner investor Jeremy Liew offers 3 pieces of advice to new early stage investors:
1) Play to your strengths. Don’t try to replicate others’ paths. If you’re non-technical, consider categories that don’t need deep technical experience (e.g. e-commerce, marketplaces, SaaS).
2) Specialize. Pick one sector, spend nearly all of your time in it, and become an expert in it. Ideally, pick a sector where there are few experts already.
3) Being right is more important than being contrarian. Getting associated with good companies early in your career build momentum throughout your career. Early in your career, stretch on valuation to get in on a deal.
Weekend Thought
Company building is tough.
It can be even tougher being in the startup trenches alone.
I was recently chatting with a entrepreneur who shared with me her experience building her first company as a solo founder. She makes over 100 decisions per day, all based on instinct, experience, and skill. It can be exhausting at times.
It got me thinking about the benefits and costs of solo entrepreneurship versus co-founding a company.
So I put together a brief list of Pros and Cons of having a co-founder. My conclusion, for now, is that having a co-founder is typically the preferable ideal path. It would be interesting to see data on startup success based on solo founders versus co-founders.
Here’s the Pros and Cons of having a co-founder (versus being a solo founder):
Pros:
Play to your strengths. Most people aren’t Superman. With a co-founder, you can focus on work that’s in your flow state and delegate/outsource your weaknesses.
Emotional support. It’s nice to have someone to ride the highs and (especially) the lows with.
Idea serendipity. Bouncing ideas off of someone else can generate even better ideas.
Less biased decision-making. We are more prone to bias when working alone.
Expanded networks. The more co-founders, the stronger the networks (for hiring, fundraising, business development, etc.).
Cons:
Equity dilution. More pie to split!
Slower decision making. Additional decision makers means more time spent on each decision. This can be tricky for strong-willed founders.
Possibility of disagreement. Founder breakups and in-fighting is a common cause of startup failure. No co-founder, no problem.
This list is just based on my experience. What am I missing? Would love to add to the list based on your experiences.
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Check out newsletter edition 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.