It didn't work out

Adam Kalsey — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 23:10:45 +0000

Remember that startup that was looking for a cofounder by spamming Craigslist?

They’re back. It seems they found someone, but it didn’t work out so well.

We recently hit a bump in the road when we found out that the “developer” we brought on couldn’t really develop so we had to let her go….now we need to fill the spot!

Imagine that.

What’s really sad is they don’t seem to learn. They hunted for desperate people by spamming Craigslist, demonstrated they have no ability to properly screen people, and when it didn’t work out, they decided to do things exactly the same way again. Sounds like a fantastic business mind to me.

How many founders

Adam Kalsey — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 21:52:51 +0000

Brad Feld asks how many founders do you need to be a success?

I just looked through the companies I’m currently on the board of. The number of founders range from 1 to 4 with a concentration of 2 and 3. The few companies that have single company founders paired up with an experienced entrepreneur as CEO early in their life.

When I look at the list of my successful companies, the distribution is very similar. Lots of two founder companies, a few threes, and a few fours.

Location

United States

Finding Startup Co-Founders

Adam Kalsey — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:51:46 +0000

Finding a co-founder for a startup can be a tricky proposition. Unless you have a lot of capital to hire help early on, you’ll probably want to find someone to work alongside you from the beginning.

Your co-founder will need to share your vision and passion for your idea. If they don’t share the dream, they’ll lose focus and interest when things get tight.

They’ll need to have skills and a personality that compliments yours. There will be plenty of disagreements and hardship in the early days of a startup and adding to it with personality conflicts is just asking for failure.

So when I saw someone advertising for a co-founder via Craigslist, I was dismayed. After I read the posting, however, I was left wondering if the startup founder has a clue at all.

We are a Web 2.0 Startup looking for the best web/graphic designer out there to join our team. Candidate should be familiar with all things Web 2.0 (tagging, bookmarklets, widgets, badges, etc.) You should be able to create a visually appealing, cutting edge, full featured, scalable, and optimized site. Must be familiar with Linux/Apache/Tomcat/AJAX/mySQL+PostgreSQL. Goal is to get up and running within next 3-6 months.

They need a web designer who knows Tomcat and databases? And the implication of this paragraph is that the designer should not only be able to create a beautiful site but is responsible for making it scalable as well? I suppose you could consider that a design needs to scale, but from the technologies described, I think they want their designer to build out the technology, too.

Position would have NO initial salary (like us) but equity between 3-5% and future salary upon funding - for the right person. Looking for candidate that is highly motivated, capable of designing what we are looking for, and entrepreneurial minded.

So they want a co-founder — a partner — who will build their vision for them, but for all this sweat equity they’ll only get 3-5% in an unfunded company with an unproven idea. If funding ever happens for this company, expect that 3-5% to turn into 1-3%. The more rounds of funding, the smaller this piece of pie will get.

Company based in Arlington, VA. We would like to have someone who can work along side of us but if you are outside the area and have the skills we can make it work!

This was advertised on Sacramento’s Craigslist. I’m betting if I looked I’d find it on every other local Craigslist site too. If you’re looking for a partner to build a company with, spam is probably not a great starting point.

Imagine looking for a spouse by posting “please marry me” on every message board you can find. You might get a favorable response from someone, but it’s probably not going to be from who you’d like.

Please respond to this email with references, portfolio, skills. If interested we require an NDA signed before proceeding with initial interview.

Before they’ll tell you about their fabulous, world changing vision that they’d like you to buy in to, you’ll have to sign a legal agreement not to discuss the idea with anyone else. But you don’t know anything about what you’ll be agreeing not to talk about. It might be very similar to something you’ve already thought of. After signing that NDA, they now own your thoughts.

This ad shows a number of signs of an inexperienced entrepreneur who’s had a few business classes. He might have a decent idea, but he doesn’t have the skills to implement it. And he’s showing he doesn’t have a clue about how to find help, either.

Don’t be like this guy.

SacStarts - cofounder

It didn't work out

How many founders

Location

Finding Startup Co-Founders