Startup Grind Los Angeles held an interview last June 2013. Derek interviewed Mark Suster (Upfront Ventures) about hiring your co-founder. The interview states about the following:
Engineering vs. Non-Engineering
Mark talked about a friend whom currently work as a cocktail waitress and earns she was paid $34,000 because she has an engineer degree. She also states that her friend doesn’t even know about computers more than him. Since mark is a graduate of Economics, he is paid as a business guy, which is less compared to an engineer. That’s the time he decided to focus to become a technology guy. So his goal was to transfer into the deeply technical part of Andersen Consulting so people would see me as a technologist because I love technology. He got transferred and got better opportunity when he joined to Network Solutions which do computer networking, the predecessor to the internet.
A startup
Mark started a startup. Then he decided to create a second company and named his as a serial entrepreneur since he was always being called as a startup guy. He wanted to go into venture capital but he hesitated since he needs to be in EIR. He got a lot of things in his mind and wanted to do all of them. That’s the time he think pretty well where he got wrong. In the end, he concluded the best way to do it is to make your own brand.
Create Your Own Brand
One thing with creating your own brand is to have confidence and sense of purpose that what Mark stated in the interview. He have wrote it in his blog post “Is It Time to Earn or Is It Time to Learn?”
Hire Your Co-Founder
Fact that most people don’t want to start a business since most of them doesn’t have an idea and don’t want to start a business from scratch. In addition getting funds to start a business is a lot of work. Hiring a Co-Founder is a good idea since you don’t want to start a business that to do on your own. Give them a large sum of equity. 20%. 30%. Even 40% for your Co-Founder.
Here’s a summary of the Co-Founder Mythology
- 50/50 partnerships can be hugely unstable – even if you’ve been friends since high school.
- When you start a company a 50/50 partnership seems obvious. Either you’re not technical and you think you need a technical co-founder or vice-versa
- Conventional wisdom says that you gain far more in working as a team than you lose by diluting by half before you start.
- 50/50 partnerships can be hugely unstable – even if you’ve been friends since high school.
- I think most people do 50/50 partnerships because they’re afraid to start alone.