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Why are you reluctant to accept one person companies? One person is often sufficient for a workable prototype. Others can join later. In fact, Y Combinator can act as a match maker of sorts, encouraging mergers among similar proposals/prototypes.

7 comments

Amichail, I know exactly what you mean. Some people work better on their own. But even if you're looking for a founder, there are some places where you're out of luck. I go to the University of Virginia, and to tell you the truth, it's nearly impossible to find good hackers to work on startups with (even though 50% of Reddit went here). And without that, there's no hope getting into something as prestigious as the YCombinator.

I propose we make a simple site that allows hackers find one another, locally. A single hacker isn't going to make a Meetup group to find other hackers; that takes too much work. It should be more like Craigslist, but for this startup community. Sorted by city, people can exchange email addresses, screen names, and most importantly, ideas.

All it takes is two founders, and you never know what kind of matches people will find.

Granted, they should know that they can work together before taking on a huge project, but I think that something of this sort will really help people discover one another and get their startups going.

I'm not suggesting we re-invent Craigslist, but there are enough people here to merit something like this. Ruby on Rails, anybody?

Idealy we should have profiles with location, url, short description and email address fields.

If that doesnt happen then this cofounders meetup board would be good. Count me in. You can find me via danshub.com or contact me at dan@danshub.com.

Actually, why not do it here? I bet that sort of functionality could be integrated somehow into this site, and from Paul's first post to the group on the reasons for the site I think it would fit in well. Then again you won't be able to use Ruby...

yeah if we fill out the profiles - and add a location and status field. It'll work pretty well at first - as you can browse people's profiles to see if they are also looking for a co-founder etc. Things can then be taken up on email

Very good idea. We can assume most people here are in the startup community. So perhaps there should be a search by location field on a page here so that people can find each other.

if you guys are interested I could host this (the site and SVN) and maybe hack away at it a little bit (If you're doing it in Rails) I totally feel you on this one, its shouldn't be as hard as it is to find passionate people who are technical AND entrepreneurial.

I'm with you. Paul - what do you think about this? Hosting that sort of thing here would foster the entire YC community, but doing it over there means a more select user base of people who are specifically looking for partners to work with.

We'll gradually be adding more features of this type.

http://www.buildv1.com/ may be what your looking for.

buildv1 is quite rigid - and it doesn't have the activity of this site. I think the principle of buildv1 is great and essential - i'm not sure if the execution is quite correct.

hey omarish - i'm in on this. Shoot me an email. Sumon [at] zintilla [dot] com

all,

I decided to give this a try. Please let me know what you think:

http://www.founderfinder.com/

forgot the email.... its jamiequint **AT** gmail

It wouldn't work to assemble teams of cofounders. A startup puts such strains on your friendship that you need it to be an established one.

It's true that doing a startup right off wouldn't work, but why not meet up with other people who are just as interested and try and form friendships from there?

Paul Graham also stated that Silicon Valley is impossible to be cloned in Europe. That doesn't mean successful start-ups can pop-out in Europe. And they have, Skype, AllPeers, Six Apart, NetVibes, Fon etc... Successful single founders is necessary to encompass a lot more characteristics. It's difficult enough to find 2 motivated people to take risk starting up, finding 2-in-1 it will be a lot harder. But if they try to avoid it, althout they don't exclude it, it doesn't mean it can happen at YC, or someone on his/her own.

Paul Graham also stated that Silicon Valley is impossible to be cloned in Europe. That doesn't mean successful start-ups can't pop-out in Europe. And they have, Skype, AllPeers, Six Apart, NetVibes, Fon etc... Successful single founders is necessary to encompass a lot more characteristics. It's difficult enough to find 2 motivated people to take risk starting up, finding 2-in-1 it will be a lot harder. But if they try to avoid it, althout they don't exclude it, it doesn't mean it can happen at YC, or someone on his/her own.

Excellent point; YC might find that combining individuals and 2,3 member teams into new companies is where they get the most out of their portfolio. I'll probably apply for the next round as a 1-person entity myself, though unless YC announces they're changing that policy, I doubt they'll pick me.

http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html 1. Single Founder

http://www.miketaber.net/articles/TheSingleFounderMyth.aspx

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What's up with all the empty comments? Bug?

People trying to delete their posts. Erasing the text == deleting the post.