What do you do when you have a great potential co-founder, but don't like their idea?

Posted by pxigorth on Friday October 19, 2007 @12:09PM
from the self-post dept.

I have friends who are smart and talented and would make good potential co-founders. And they want to work together. But often the idea they want to work on isn't right. Either:

1) I feel they're thinking too small. They're incredibly talented people, but they want to pursue what I think is a really small market, and could be doing something more worthy of them.

2) We have different opinions on the business prospects for the idea - I think it's just OK, they think it's amazing.

3) The idea seems boring to work on, often because the idea is 95% marketing or content and not technology (e.g. a variant on an online store, blog, content site, etc.) This is bad for motivation.

I have good ideas of my own, but it's hard to persuade people to change their mind once they've decided what they want to work on. Since I'm not in school, I've had to work hard to find other good people (through a lot of networking) and it would be a shame not to do something with them, So, should I move on and look for someone to buy into my own ideas, or start working with these talented friends of mine and hope to evolve their idea into something better?

( 5 comments | 2 points | on HN )

Re:What do you do when you have a great potential co-founder... by mrtron on Friday October 19, 2007 @12:31PM (#70382)

1) Starting small is often the best route to doing something big. Starting small gives you the ability to complete something and not run out of steam along the way. 2) Ideas don't need to be mind blowing, they need to be good and for them to work well in a business they need to be solving some sort of problem that will result in you getting paid. 3) That could be a huge problem for your motivation. Is there some subset of the idea that you could run with and think a little bigger than they currently are?

Finding the right co-founders is much harder than finding the right idea in my experience, so I think that is why the general YC motto is the idea doesn't matter nearly as much as the co-founders do.

Best of luck...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What do you do when you have a great potential co-founder... by ajkates on Friday October 19, 2007 @01:03PM (#70392)

I think that honesty is your best weapon. If your co-founders are truly intelligent and motivated, you can probably convince them to think bigger. Try to do it in such a way as to show you thoroughly understand the current idea and its merits, which demonstrating its shortcomings. Just be sure to be nice about it; people tend to get angry when you talk about their own ideas that they put so much time and effort into.

Your course of action, I guess, really depends upon how far along you are though. If you're near a complete beta or working release, you might want to just ride it out.

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Re:What do you do when you have a great potential co-founder... by brlewis on Friday October 19, 2007 @02:01PM (#70421)

If you have great potential co-founders who are psyched about their idea, run with it right now.

(1) As has been said many times, having 100% of a small market is more attainable than having 1% of a huge market.

(2) If they think the business prospects are amazing, that's great motivation for them.

(3) Boring is good for startup success. The last field you want to compete in is the one everybody's excited about.

If the idea flops, drop it and do something else. If it works, use it to bootstrap your next idea.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What do you do when you have a great potential co-founder... by eposts on Friday October 19, 2007 @12:14PM (#70373)

Do you have an idea of your own? Talk about your great idea and see if you can get your co-founder all excited...

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Re:What do you do when you have a great potential co-founder... by DanielBMarkham on Friday October 19, 2007 @12:16PM (#70375)

Make a logical case for why the idea won't work in the marketplace.

If necessary, come up some criteria you both can agree to.

Remember that you both have to be flexible, or the company won't fly anyway.

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