70 First Co-Founder Dates
I spoke with a very adept founder this last fall, who was looking for a technical cofounder to evaluate and build out the platform for the company. It was a compelling idea with clear need, B2B, well-wireframed, well thought out, and she (the founder) brought a litany of information about funding already in the works, contacts, market fit, and to-market strategy. I was thoroughly impressed, and I was on board.<p>Unfortunately, we did not proceed. See, I have a family to provide for. I&#x27;m in my 40s. I&#x27;m not looking for or to build the next unicorn. What I&#x27;m looking for is the opportunity to build a consistent, stable, and yes evolving product that produces reliable baseline revenue, targeting reasonable growth. The founder wanted to work immediately towards unicorn status, with cofounders taking in a salary that was approximately half of what my current income stream provided. She is in her early 30s without dependents. For her, this is a reasonable risk that provides a good lifestyle. For me, that was an unthinkable risk to the detriment of my family, including young children in day care. She also wanted to build out a small engineering team paying roughly 60% of market rate - in this hiring environment. What that would mean was a team of inexperience or heading offshore, both of which were non-starters for me.<p>All in all, I think she got some really bad advice from her SV peers. Her idea could have easily generated 100k MRR with a moderate amount of effort. I couldn&#x27;t even put a number on the immense value of the data she would have been amassing as a side-effect of her idea. Our personalities were a match, we had the same philosophies and ideology was similar enough as to not provide room for conflict. We both thought the idea had incredible merit.<p>At the end of the day, it was a generational divide that proved too large to overcome.