Have done it. No, not a matching thing.

Do all the work involved in a startup that you can do. Create the value:

• Website
• Newsletter
• Advisors
• Partners
• Demand

It’s VERY valid that a capable engineer is not going to just join you to try, doing all the heavy lifting they do on some promise that you will. What are you waiting on?? Do it.

You do NOT need the app, solution, product, to start. Whomever keeps saying that is either lying, an idiot, or selling you something.

When prove and establish demand for something, what you’re doing is creating value and de-risking something in which someone else wants to solve.

Doing that work, you create publicly, evidence that people want you to fix their problem … And that signals to that technical cofounder not just that you want to try, but that if they work with you, they’ll succeed in solving the problem they want to solve.

You don’t find that person through matching. Who has the time to meet all those people for a shot at a match?? You find that person because YOU have clearly established that you’re the person to work with on said thing – they’ll gravitate to you if you do it right/well.

Things startups should not pay for until they have figured out that they can make money doing so:

• Legal
• Custom website
• QA
• Office space
• Hardware

Patents only apply in the countries where recognized. And if you can’t afford to fight it out in court.

Good job getting your patent. China doesn’t care.

No one that matters cares. Anyone selling you a “better” is selling you something, and that something isn’t a template or slide format that will make any difference at all to your funding.

Would LOVE integration with Analytics or CRM (or both) to weave into it priority, weight, and impact scores of some sort. I would think AI could be trained to assess that from data, scores, values, etc. to help direct the team based on data.

I was, for a long time, too long. Handled it, consulting. Turned into a company that scales by seeking a team as though a marriage - same vision, same passion, same commitment. Anyone who joins us who doesn’t clearly and quickly align in the same way, goes; starting a company is hard, so is marriage and a baby, I’m not dealing with anyone who doesn’t 100% agree with the commitment.

Because there is decades of experience marketers have trying pages and learning what works

Same focus as always: Vision Resources Team alignment Selling

If you’re just coding, you should be the CTO If you’re not building and can’t get resources, be the CMO (or whatever else your talent enables)

Don’t be the CEO if you can’t do those things. Your job is making sure everyone else has what they need to do theirs.

Maybe. Not saying you’re wrong, just that I think it’s a good question and important discussion.

It’s very hard to learn a different personality. What the study somewhat correlated is that there is a reason 90% of startups fail; that, coincidentally, only 8% of the population has these traits and that those people correlate with 80% of the success. That’s a lot of people without these traits that rather closely lines up with most of the failed startups.

Coincidence? Maybe. But some relevance? Must be. So why not just teach founders to be like this (arguably, we’ve known this for decades; this is just research that proves it out). Why do we teach Lean, business model canvas, pitch deck, and all the technical considerations when what we know is simply: is this you or not? If not, you must learn it.

Because we can’t just change how people are. Hence they found and advise what we also already know - you must have a team (solo founders almost always fail). Likely because without knowing or realizing it, a team makes it more likely that someone has these traits.

Need for variety and novelty, reduced modesty, an openness to adventure, and heightened energy levels

Notice, it doesn’t say focus. There is a great school of thought that I’ve found true, that “focus” is common but bad advice to startups. Focus on what?? You can’t know, it’s a startup.

Need for variety and novelty is explicitly not focus. If something needs to be done, do it. Such people do it.

How? Sense of adventure and Heightened sense of energy. I don’t work 9-5. I work all the time, as much as I can. I love it.

You can’t teach adventurousness (risk tolerance, thrill seeking, novelty, willingness to fail spectacularly, taking on uncertainty). People just have that, or they don’t.

Eh, sure, not one size fits all but Oxford released a study a couple weeks ago and found that people with these traits correlated with 80% of successful startups. So, it matters.

Need for variety and novelty, reduced modesty, an openness to adventure, and heightened energy levels

They further found that about 8% of the world has these traits (characteristically, “entrepreneur”) and though that teams are just as capable - that if you don’t have these qualities, find a cofounder who does.

The intent is sound. There is a problem = founders don’t validate ideas well and don’t know how to do marketing to do so. Generally.

Arguably, that is the leading cause of failure and why so many startups fail.

Here’s the rub: Founders need to learn how to do this and have the skill, because it’s a never ending process

Startups have no money

So while the intent is based on a very valid problem and solution, I think you’re going to struggle. People have been working on this challenge for at least as long as I’ve been in startups (25 years) and in my perspective, the only thing that will work is :

1. More VCs and service providers sponsoring incubators so we can teach more founders properly and not pass the cost on to them

2. Fixing what people think marketing means and does, so founders prioritize

3. Create a lot more freely available content about how to validate ideas. Flood the internet with it.

Or… The data shows that most Startups fail, so knowing you are highly likely of doing so, advice is oriented to helping you achieve any means necessary of success. People unfamiliar with VC aren’t likely to get it; guiding you that direction is because it’s the least familiar thing, and most difficult to achieve – lots of people can tell you how companies work.

You were dead at “demos to get investment.”

Likely best for you to move on. They’re on the wrong track

Most do. The idea that there is privacy online or that “selling your data” is rare and therefore bad, is entirely rhetoric. The internet is by default very tracked and shared; that’s why it was built.

Walk away now. Any founder with any sense of entitlement needs to be removed for a startup to work.

You all have to sacrifice so much, to get through the pain, hardship, difficulties, and failures along the way, and anyone who says they’re due more just because, can f right off and needs to be removed from the startup ecosystem overall.

They know someone??? Please, have this anonymously sent to them, have them message me, and I’ll tell them they are a detriment to founders everywhere.

You EARN your equity by doing the work that needs to be done. They vest. You vest. What work needs to be done? Marketing, sales, develop/deliver. That’s it. Anyone not doing that work, themselves, without resources, needs to go.