Introvert Entrepreneur? Go Indie, or Go Home

There are exactly 24,289 startup schools across the world. Business schools included.

OK, I made up that number without any research. But basically that is what most successful of them teach to their founder students. Always speak with numbers to land credibility.

When an introvert entrepreneur is secretly searching how to start a startup, they also advise him / her heavily on how to find a great cofounder.

In fact, some startup consultants consider cofounder as the extremely vital ingredient.

The problem is:

While it is great to find the right match using those steps, finding the right partner is more of a matter of luck.

Let us dissect reasons why you need one.

What came first? The idea or the partner?

If it was the partner, and you are assured that the idea could not have existed without your co-existence, it makes complete sense to develop your great startup in unison.

Sometimes, founders pitch their ideas to random groups online and offline. They come across people who have quite interesting execution strategy that can complement those ideas.

In those cases, too, it makes sense to team up as soon as possible, leverage abilities that complement each others, develop faster than the rest of the world.

Are you the business idea guy?

If you are the business guy, you are in a relatively precarious position finding a cofounder.

You need to risk discussing your idea with tech guy(s) who bump into you in meetups and hackathons. NDAs are useless unless and until you have a business contract.

Expert developers scowl at developing proof of concept for free, or for chump change. Asking them for cost estimates results in lot of it depends sort of answers.

You need to heavily invest into them before you know if they have absorbed your dream right.

A good sermon should be like a woman’s skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials.

Ronald Knox

That quality is extremely essential in pitching your idea to a potential tech cofounder.

If you are an introvert, your last resort is to pay an agency / freelancer to develop your SAAS / Robotic instrument / AI solution. That thing comes with a baggage of its own.

Agencies / freelancers are mostly self-funded. It makes sense for them to use common resources (read people) and common templates (read website formats and boilerplate code) on multiple projects.

They often deliver peanuts in return of peanuts, asking for extension in scope / time, making you feel I could do it better myself a thousand times during the execution.

There goes your money down the drain, along with your unique edge above your target market, bugs notwithstanding.

Are you the tech guy?

Being a tech guy has its obvious advantages. You have tools to ascertain the scope, time and cost of your dream project.

Even if you have to outsource for the skill you lack, you know what to expect, and you can seal your money’s fate by drafting concrete contracts with agencies / freelancers.

But your Achilles heel come from your lack of motivation. During startup events, 90% devs having outstanding products are too shy to speak about their products, and hesitant to network with partners that could give them free / cheap exposure.

Such tech guys end up hiring a cheerleading community builders, who often happen to exude great energy. But they have little / no idea about:

• What is the ideal audience for the product
• How to make high value connections
• Where to look for quality audience.

Result? High energy, low return community building events bring some nice revenue figures, but with enormous costs attached. Community builders brag about MRR figures on startup forums.

Couple of years later:

• Community pages and Github repos are left orphan.
• One would be lucky to find the original founder on LinkedIn.
• Community builders are exhibiting their passion for competitor product.

There is only one way:

YCombinator founder Paul Graham lists being solo founder as the #1 mistake entrepreneurs make at very early stage.

But while individual shortcomings can be corrected upon, working together for a better outcome is more the case of luck.

Individual determination has much higher odds of success. Because it uncovers your most important asset: Being in control.

If you are business guy, learning any tech online is a matter of time. You gain control over cost uncertainty of your Proof of Concept.

If you are tech guy, learning to network is an investment you must make in yourself. If Elon Musk can go on founding N next-gen ventures, anything is possible.

Lumenora founder Rosie Haft has done some interesting analysis on how startup capital raising has better chances of success with solo founders. She also has made an interesting list of successful solo founders topped by Jeff Bezos.

You always have the option piggybacking on earlier failures and checking the boxes.

One by one.