I want to talk a bit about cofounders and choosing who to work with on a…

I want to talk a bit about cofounders and choosing who to work with on a project.
There’s this popular trait you’ll see in a lot of people whose interviews, posts, stories, etc. you come across — “the desire to be an ideological leader.”
This type of personality has signs:
- they come up with ideas fast
- they sell these ideas well
- but for some reason the ideas rarely make it to the execution that was intended
- it’s really hard for them to work with their hands and “in the trenches”

You can easily find founders like this on the internet. They usually give a lot of interviews, and pretty much all their advice is based on general principles (motivation, the future, and so on). You’ll rarely see professional advice from them, analysis of their market segment, etc.

The most common setup for founders like this is roughly:
- they look for a less experienced workhorse, preferably with a team (2–5 people)
- the workhorse is less experienced in the venture industry and raising money, so it’ll be very hard to find a common language with the person who “provides the company with funds”
- that kind of founder will juggle ideas very fast, and raise money fast too
- but they can’t make it past Series A, meaning it’s this forever-alive company, a builder of ideas that never gets to scaling or selling
- their share is usually 80%, everyone else splits the remaining 20% (you get the idea)
- teams like that are usually very uneven in hard skills, and in the market you’ll feel how you’re falling behind

What am I getting at. For many, this is the fastest way to get relevant experience, but it’s not a way to get a “working product,” an experiment the market needs, and so on. So my advice: work with people like that, but get out of the cycle in time and start your own thing. Look for a cofounder who’s your equal, but has a different skill set. Build your network while you’re working with people like that.