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Conecta con personas sumamente interesantes y con gran visión.

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Conecta con personas sumamente interesantes y con gran visión.

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Esta plataforma está dedicada 100% al networking. Conecta de manera aleatoria a personas con gustos, experiencias y conocimientos similares o de intereses comunes. Todo con breves reuniones virtuales a través de la misma plataforma.

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Lunchclub is an AI superconnector that makes introductions for 1:1 video meetings to advance your career

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https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/308890

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A mediados de año salí de vacaciones con mis hijos. Alejados de la civilización, pasamos varios días en la Sierra Huasteca. Un día tomamos el camino equivocado y nos perdimos. Al principio, mis hijos estaban preocupados porque no sabíamos dónde estábamos. Sin embargo, llegamos a uno de los lugares más increíbles de todo el viaje. La ironía es que encontramos ese maravilloso lugar porque tuvimos la suerte de perdernos en el camino. ¡Si! La suerte de perdernos en el camino, porque así hay que enfrentar las adversidades. Porque si no nos hubiéramos equivocado, no hubiéramos disfrutado esos hermosos paisajes. Y al final del día, encontramos el camino y llegamos al destino que teníamos planeado.

Recordé una conferencia que di unos meses antes y aproveché la oportunidad para compartir las ideas principales con mis hijos. La conferencia trataba sobre la importancia de ponerse objetivos y amar lo que uno hace, tanto en lo personal como en lo profesional.

Establecer objetivos nos da propósito, sentido y dirección a lo que hacemos. Lo asombroso es que, una vez que defines un objetivo, inmediatamente aparecen varios caminos que podemos tomar para llegar a él.

Mis hijos preguntaban si estábamos perdidos, a lo que les respondí que sí. Preocupados me cuestionaban, ¿qué vamos a hacer, Pa? Seguir adelante - les dije - no sabemos en dónde estamos, pero si sabemos a dónde queremos llegar y en qué dirección tenemos que ir. No se preocupen, pronto vamos a llegar a nuestro hotel, les decía para tranquilizarlos.

El miedo de mis hijos se explicaba porque todo era nuevo y grande para ellos, y además no sabían con claridad a dónde íbamos o que tan lejos estábamos de llegar. Si tuviéramos un mapa, ellos no podrían señalar en dónde se encontraban, estaban perdidos. El mundo aún es demasiado grande para ellos. Yo, por el contrario, había preparado el viaje algunos días antes. A pesar de que equivocamos en el camino, sabía, a grandes rasgos, donde me encontraba, el entorno, la extensión del terreno, y la dirección en la que había que seguir avanzando.

Pero el aprendizaje es reconocer que, manteniendo sus respectivas proporciones, hay ocasiones en que el mundo también parece ser demasiado grande para mí. Les confesé a mis hijos que hay momentos en que yo me siento igual que ellos. Al empezar una empresa o un nuevo proyecto, el futuro es incierto y no todas las variables se conocen. Es natural que la incertidumbre nos genere miedo, para que seamos prudentes y cautelosos. Lo desconocido nos da miedo, pero no nos debe detener para seguir avanzando.

De ahí la importancia de establecer un objetivo. Éste nos da el rumbo y la dirección que necesitamos, le da sentido a lo que hacemos, nos motiva para seguir adelante.

Al igual que cuando se navega en un velero, sólo podemos ver hasta dónde llega el horizonte. Nuestro destino puede estar más lejos de lo que se alcanza a ver, y no sabemos cómo serán las aguas más adelante. Sin embargo, seguimos adelante porque cada vez que avanzamos, se nos presenta un nuevo horizonte, y el futuro que era incierto, se aclara. Es posible que el viento no nos deje llegar en línea recta, pero ajustamos nuestro rumbo para acercarnos poco a poco a nuestro destino. Y conforme transcurre el tiempo, cada vez estamos más cerca hasta que eventualmente llegamos a nuestro destino.

Son pocos los momentos que tengo tanto tiempo con mis hijos, y como estábamos de vacaciones, no se podían esconder de mí. Seguí aprovechando la ocasión para preguntarles ¿Y qué nos da fuerza para seguir adelante? ¿Qué nos da valor para enfrentar nuestros miedos y no desistir en el camino? Después de un momento de silencio y al ver sus caras de "¿Whaaat?", yo mismo respondí: el amor por lo que hacemos. Espero que, en el futuro, ustedes elijan hacer algo que los apasione, porque si aman lo que hacen, nada los podrá detener.

Si amas lo que haces, cualquier problema que se te presente tendrá una solución. El amor es la fuerza que te permite seguir adelante ante cualquier adversidad, y disfrutar con plenitud el camino que tomes.

Así como nos equivocamos en el camino, en la vida se nos presentarán obstáculos y cometeremos errores. Pero si nos apasiona lo que hacemos, encontraremos una solución a cada problema, aprenderemos de nuestros errores, y disfrutaremos del camino que tomemos. Recorreremos caminos intransitados, y a veces tendremos que abrir brecha, pero contaremos con la fortaleza para hacerlo por el amor a lo que hacemos. Disfrutaremos el viaje independientemente de la ruta que tomemos.

No importa que te desvíes, si tienes un objetivo y el amor para alcanzarlo, tarde o tempano llegarás a tu destino. Lo importante es lo que se aprende en el camino

Sin embargo, si no amas lo que haces, cualquier problema será un obstáculo que no podrás resolver, no hallarás puentes en los ríos que tengas que cruzar, y tú mismo encontrarás problemas que no existen. Y si además no tienes un objetivo, no importa que tanto te esfuerces, no llegarás a ningún lado.

Mi hija, de 9 años y la más pequeña de los tres, soportó las largas caminatas. Subiendo la montaña por veredas bastante inclinadas, hubo momentos en que ya no podía más y nos sentábamos a descansar unos minutos. A ella le compartí algo que aprendí de pequeño en Suiza. Puedes llegar más lejos, si avanzas a pasos pequeños, constantes, y con una respiración profunda. Al final del día, todos llegamos a la meta juntos.

En uno de los discursos más inspiradores de la Universidad de Stanford, Steve Jobs les dijo a los estudiantes que "la única manera de hacer un gran trabajo es amar lo que haces. Si no lo has encontrado, sigue buscando. No te detengas." Y agregó, "ten el valor de seguir a tu corazón y tu intuición. Pues ellos de alguna manera ya saben en lo que verdaderamente te quieres convertir."

Espero que estas experiencias les sirvan a mis hijos en el futuro. Para ser personas más completas, que disfruten el viaje, que aprendan en el camino, que no tengan miedo a equivocarse, que sean perseverantes y resilientes. Pero, sobre todo, que siempre elijan hacer las cosas con amor.

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Por qué debes establecer metas con pasión

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A mediados de año salí de vacaciones con mis hijos. Alejados de la civilización, pasamos varios días en la Sierra Huasteca. Un día tomamos el camino equivocado y nos perdimos. Al principio, mis hijos estaban preocupados porque no sabíamos dónde estábamos. Sin embargo, llegamos a uno de los lugares más increíbles de todo el viaje.

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https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/296105

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Israel es hoy uno de los países más prósperos de la región y, junto con Silicon Valley, se posiciona como uno de los centros de innovación y desarrollo más importantes del mundo.

El éxito de Israel parte de su espíritu emprendedor: su economía está basada en el desarrollo de capital humano, la innovación y el conocimiento. Es el país con la mayor inversión per cápita en investigación y desarrollo; cinco de sus nueve universidades están dentro de las mejores del mundo, y el 60% de la población cuenta con un grado de educación superior, lo que lo ubica en el lugar número 4 de la Organización para la Cooepración y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE).

Gracias a la inversión en talento, más de 500 aceleradoras y fondos de inversión se han instalado en Israel para impulsar el emprendimiento.

Cuatro factores han sido determinantes para el éxito de Israel: incertidumbre, talento, agricultura, y miedo al fracaso.

1. Incertidumbre

Los israelitas están preparados para la incertidumbre. El ejército juega un papel muy importante en la formación de los israelitas. El servicio militar es obligatorio para todos los jóvenes, hombres y mujeres. Ante las constantes amenazas de guerra, los jóvenes israelitas desarrollan una capacidad de adaptación que les permite responder de manera efectiva para hacer frente a cualquier escenario.

En el ejército se forman líderes orientados a resultados y resolución de problemas. Estas son aptitudes necesarias para la operación efectiva del ejército, pero, en otro contexto, son competencias fundamentales para cualquier emprendimiento. Particularmente en el entorno actual, donde los cambios son constantes y acelerados, la capacidad de adaptarse es la diferencia entre el éxito y el fracaso. Y los israelitas están preparados.

2. Talento

En la educación superior, sobresale un dato interesante: los estudiantes entran a la universidad a la edad de 22 años comparado con los 18 años del resto de los países. Esto se debe a los tres años que pasan en el servicio militar y a un año adicional que la mayoría de los jóvenes toman para viajar por el mundo. Durante este año, se forman una visión global que les servirá más adelante como emprendedores. Al ingresar a la universidad, los estudiantes tienen una idea más clara de lo que quieren hacer.

El espíritu emprendedor se empieza a fomentar desde la universidad. Los jóvenes tienen acceso a fondos de inversión, aceleradoras e incentivos del gobierno para desarrollar sus ideas desde la universidad. La aceleradora Siftech, como ejemplo, tiene un fondo de inversión que es administrado por estudiantes y para estudiantes. Los mejores alumnos seleccionan los proyectos de otros estudiantes para invertir capital semilla.

La lógica de este modelo es que los estudiantes están en el lugar donde se generan las ideas y el conocimiento. Son, además, "early adopters" de nuevas tecnologías, por lo que son las personas ideales para identificar, seleccionar y promover los mejores proyectos. Talento genera talento.

La Autoridad de Innovación de Israel (AII) es el puente entre las ideas y el mercado, dejando la actividad de innovación para los emprendedores. Con este enfoque, invierten en empresas desde etapas muy tempranas y las apoyan hasta llegar a una escala global. Con las iniciativas de la AII, se crea un ecosistema que fomenta el desarrollo de talento y el emprendimiento

No es coincidencia que las principales compañías tengan oficinas en Israel. Empresas de alta tecnología como Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco y Motorola, y más de 300 otras empresas internacionales, han establecido sus centros de investigación y desarrollo en ese país. Israel es líder mundial en desarrollo de tecnología de vanguardia, lo que ha derivado en que empresas como Google, IBM y Facebook, adquieran distintas startups israelíes para integrar a sus soluciones.

Las empresas encuentran en Israel el talento necesario para crear la tecnología del futuro.

3. Agricultura

Israel transformó su entorno en la década de los 60. El riego por goteo permitió hacer un uso racional del agua para convertir su suelo árido en uno fértil para los cultivos. Para impulsar la agricultura, el gobierno se enfocó en transformar el suelo para que las semillas encontraran una tierra fértil donde crecer. Para fomentar el emprendimiento en la década de los 90, el gobierno utilizó un enfoque similar.

Crear empresas no es un problema de reingeniería, procesos o logística. El desafío se asemeja más a un problema de agricultura. Al igual que una semilla, el emprendimiento florece de manera natural si las condiciones son adecuadas. Cuando hay un problema y un mercado, hay una oportunidad para el emprendimiento, pero que la empresa florezca depende de las condiciones del suelo. Por lo anterior, el gobierno no se dedicó a crear empresas, se enfocó a establecer las condiciones adecuadas para favorecer el crecimiento natural del emprendimiento y facilitar un terreno fértil donde las empresas puedan prosperar.

El gobierno estableció incentivos para fomentar la inversión extranjera directa y la innovación. Implementó subsidios y beneficios fiscales con el propósito de impulsar las empresas de alta tecnología y a las actividades de investigación y desarrollo.

En los 90, el gobierno lanzó el proyecto Yozma (iniciativa en español) para impulsar el emprendimiento. Asignó 100 millones de dólares para crear 10 fondos de capital de riesgo en un esquema de coinversión con el sector privado. El éxito de estos fondos semilla residió en la alineación de incentivos entre los participantes. El gobierno destinó hasta 85% de los recursos a fondo perdido, pero requería que el emprendedor ponga el resto o lo consiga de otros inversionistas. Así, aseguraron una alineación con el mercado y la evaluación objetiva de un tercero independiente.

A 20 años de lanzar la iniciativa, hoy hay más de 500 fondos de inversión y aceleradoras en el país.

4. Miedo al fracaso

Carol Dweck, investigadora de la Universidad de Stanford, estudió las conductas que separan a las personas exitosas de los demás. En su investigación, encontró que las personas exitosas tienen una mentalidad de crecimiento, se nutren del desafío y ven al fracaso no como evidencia de la falta de inteligencia, sino como una vía para crecer y ampliar sus capacidades. El fracaso es una oportunidad de aprender.

En Israel utilizan el término "fracaso constructivo". No le temen al fracaso y es considerado como parte del proceso de mejora continua. Esto contribuye a la cultura de innovación que se respira en Israel, donde el fracaso se entiende como parte de la experiencia empresarial y del desarrollo profesional de las personas. No castigar el fracaso es lo que ha impulsado a miles de jóvenes a cuestionarse la manera tradicional de hacer las cosas, a asumir riesgos, a tomar decisiones y a emprender. Este enfoque es exitoso gracias al talento de los emprendedores. Los jóvenes están preparados para hacer frente a los desafíos futuros y a superar cualquier adversidad que se encuentren en el camino.

Hoy, Israel es el país que genera el mayor número de empresas nuevas cada año, por lo que hoy se le conoce como el Startup Nation.

Lecciones para México

Como país o como empresa, debemos atraer, desarrollar y retener talento para enfrentar los retos del futuro de manera competitiva. El talento generará nuevas oportunidades de crecimiento y transformará los fracasos en éxitos. No existe la innovación si no fracasamos en el camino. Innovar es cuestionar el status quo, experimentar, equivocarse, aprender, perseverar y mejorar. Por eso, tenemos que perder el miedo, aprovechar las oportunidades que derivan de la incertidumbre y apostarle al talento. El talento genera más talento.

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Los secretos de Israel para convertirse en el otro Silicon Valley

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Israel es hoy uno de los países más prósperos de la región y, junto con Silicon Valley, se posiciona como uno de los centros de innovación y desarrollo más importantes del mundo. El éxito de Israel parte de su espíritu emprendedor: su economía está basada en el desarrollo de capital humano, la innovación y el conocimiento.

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1.- Agrega sólo contenidos relacionados con emprendimiento.
2.- No se permite por el momento publicaciones de compra y venta de productos o servicios.
3.- Usa lenguaje respetuoso: No se permiten los comentarios degradantes sobre raza, religión, cultura, orientación sexual, género o identidad.

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Jumpstart es una plataforma colaborativa alimentada por emprendedores de LATAM. Encuentra contenidos y recomendaciones, pero también ayúdanos a impulsar el emprendimiento en LATAM, recomendado recursos que puedan ser de valor.

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Es una herramienta que permite categorizar y definir en niveles de incidencia de diferentes actores relacionados a una temática o problemática que se desea abordar para definir una forma de actuar sobre el proyecto

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The People & Connections Map is a quick and simple way to visualise exactly who you are trying to reach and how. It gives you an overview of all the different individuals and organisations involved in what you do. It allows you to develop a clearer picture of how all the different people and organisations relate both to your work and each other. These might include the people or communities you work directly with; the various bodies from which you receive (or are seeking) funding; or your own peers, local communities and even international support networks.

The People & Connections Map can be a great resource when sharing what you do and how it links together within the community of stakeholders that surround you. This tool is based on an original Stakeholder Spidergram developed by the Helsinki Design Lab, and further inspired by the Stakeholder Mapping tool by Namahn and Yellow Window.

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The People & Connections Map is a quick and simple way to visualise exactly who you are trying to reach and how. It gives you an overview of all the different individuals and organisations involved in what you do.

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Proviene de una metodologìa, con la cual se busca encontrar las causas, y causas raices de una problemàtica

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El árbol de problemas es una técnica que se emplea para identificar una situación negativa (problema central), la cual se intenta solucionar analizando relaciones de tipo causa-efecto. Para ello, se debe formular el problema central de modo tal que permita diferentes alternativas de solución, en lugar de una solución única.

Luego de haber sido definido el problema central, se exponen tanto las causas que lo generan como los efectos negativos producidos, y se interrelacionan los tres componentes de una manera gráfica.

La técnica adecuada para relacionar las causas y los efectos, una vez definido el problema central, es la lluvia de ideas. Esta técnica consiste en hacer un listado de todas las posibles causas y efectos del problema que surjan, luego de haber realizado un diagnóstico sobre la situación que se quiere resolver.

Cómo se elabora el árbol de problemas

A. Se define el problema central (TRONCO).

B. Las causas esenciales y directas del problema se ubican debajo del problema definido (RAÍCES). Las causas son las condiciones que determinan o influyen en la aparición del problema. Es importante verificar la relación directa que existe entre ellas y el problema.

C. Los efectos o manifestaciones se ubican sobre el problema central (COPA O FRUTOS). Se refieren a las consecuencias e impacto producidas por el problema.

D. Se examinan las relaciones de causa y efecto, y se verifica la lógica y la integridad del esquema completo.

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El árbol de problemas es una técnica que se emplea para identificar una situación negativa (problema central), la cual se intenta solucionar analizando relaciones de tipo causa-efecto. Para ello, se debe formular el problema central de modo tal que permita diferentes alternativas de solución, en lugar de una solución única.

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https://www.nvgroup.org/

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Acceleration. We provide strategic support, mentorship and business development to social entrepreneurs in México and Latin America. Ir. Ecosystem Building.

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https://www.ashoka.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/5%20R%27s%20Framework%20in%20the%20Program%20Cycle.pdf

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https://www.ashoka.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/Estrategias%20para%20el%20Cambio%20Sist%C3%A9mico.pdf

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https://www.ashoka.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/Un%20mundo%20de%20Equipo%20de%20Equipos.pdf

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Blog dedicado a contenido de emprendimiento de Ash Maurya.

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Thoughts on Continuous Innovation. By the makers of LEANSTACK.

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https://www.ashoka.org/en-us/ashoka-changemaker-index

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The Ashoka Changemaker Index | Ashoka | Everyone a Changemaker

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The Changemaker Index is built on the philosophy that changemaking is not static, it is a journey on which someone can grow. For this reason, the Index leverages the Likert Scale, a rating scale on which an individual indicates how much a particular statement describes them.

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Es una herramienta que permite al estudiante/emprendedor, identificar su proposito en su empresa y en su vida

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Want to make a change in your workplace and grow together? Well, we want to help! This course is great for teams looking to empower their employees on their journey for purpose and value-driven action.

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mapa que a través de preguntas concretas y específicas ayuda al emprendedor a conocer la persona que es su cliente/consumidor

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Download now our Empathy Map Template in PDF format. High quality letter and A3 sizes to print and create your own.

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Herramienta para generar innovación a partir del comportamiento humano

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A human-centered innovation consulting, digital transformation, and startups development agency, specialized in creating real value for people, while doing business in an ethical, sustainable and profitable way.

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- DON'T MISS OUR LAST WENIBAR* -
*It's like a webinar... with drinks.

- LOOKING FOR CONSUMER INSIGHTS? CHECK OUR BEHAVIORAL TRENDS -

Click here to navigate our list of Behavioral Trends for value creation, full of insights and needstates, written from a post-demographic human-centered perspective by our partner Andrea Lobo.

Chat with us!

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Human-Centered Innovation & Startups - BUSINESS AS UNUSUAL

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o o o - DON'T MISS OUR LAST WENIBAR* - *It's like a webinar... with drinks. - LOOKING FOR CONSUMER INSIGHTS? CHECK OUR BEHAVIORAL TRENDS - Click here to navigate our list of Behavioral Trends for value creation, full of insights and needstates, written from a post-demographic human-centered perspective by our partner Andrea Lobo.

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Es una escala que mide en nivel de maduración de
la tecnología. Nueve niveles definidos por la NASA.

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Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) are a type of measurement system used to assess the maturity level of a particular technology.

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Herramienta utilizada para conocer la experiencia del usuario de una soluciÃ³n

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Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

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Are customer journey maps worth it? Discover the importance of a customer journey map, how to create one, plus examples and templates to create your own.

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Herramienta para poder identificar los clientes, las necesidades de los clientes y desarrollar propuestas de valor.

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Business Canvas - Business Models & Value Propositions

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Download a complete set of Business Strategy and Corporate Innovation tools. Download the business canvas pdf template now | Strategyzer Tools

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Es un herramiente que permite al emprendedor conocer el punto de vista del cliente sobre el problema que intenta resolver desde todos los sentidos

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An empathy map is a collaborative tool teams can use to gain a deeper insight into their customers. Much like a user persona, an empathy map can represent a group of users, such as a customer segment. The empathy map was originally created by Dave Gray and has been gaining popularity with the agile community.

Here's a simple design of what it looks like:

How Would I Use an Empathy Map?

A sample empathy mapping session may be as follows: Assemble your team and have them bring any personas, data, or insights about the target of your empathy map. Print out or sketch the empathy map template on a large piece of paper or whiteboard. Hand each team member sticky notes and a marker. Each person should write down their thoughts on stickies. Ideally everyone would add at least one sticky to every section. You might ask questions, such as:

What would the user be thinking & feeling? What are some of their worries and aspirations?

What would their friends, colleagues, and boss be likely to say while the user is using our product? What would the user hear in these scenarios?

What would the user see while using our product in their environment?

What might the user be saying and/or doing while using our product? How would that change in a public or private setting?

What are some of the user's pain points or fears when using our product?

What gains might the user experience when using our product?

Have the team members speak about the sticky notes as they place them on the empathy map. Ask questions to reach deeper insights so that they can be elaborated for the rest of the team. To help bring the user to life, you may even wish to sketch out the characteristics this person may have on the center of the face. At the end of the session, ask the team members what insights they learned. More importantly, ask them what hypotheses they now have about the users that they'd like to validate.

When Would I Use an Empathy Map?

Empathy maps can be used whenever you find a need to immerse yourself in a user's environment. They can be helpful, for example, when:

- diving into the customer segments of a business model canvas
- elaborating on user personas
- capturing behaviors when pair interviewing a customer
- building out the "user" in your user story

What If My Team Is Distributed?

While empathy mapping sessions are ideally conducted in a collocated scenario, online tools are emerging that allow you to host a session virtually. I've created a simple Empathy Map Google Docs Template that is simple to use. Innovation Games has also recently added the empathy map to its collection of online experiences.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An empathy map is a collaborative tool teams can use to gain a deeper insight into their customers. Much like a user persona, an empathy map can represent a group of users, such as a customer segment. The empathy map was originally created by Dave Gray and has been gaining popularity with the agile community.

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Es una herramienta para modelar negocios, es muy sencilla, pero se puede hacer tan a detalle como sea posible para quien la usa.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Business Canvas - Business Models & Value Propositions

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Download a complete set of Business Strategy and Corporate Innovation tools. Download the business canvas pdf template now | Strategyzer Tools

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Herramienta para definir modelos de ingreso.

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Revenue model flowchart B2C - Board of Innovation

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Discover new ways for your business to make money. This flowchart helps you easily pick the right revenue models for your product or service idea.

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Herramienta para definir al cliente, plantear hipótesis, hacer experimentos y registrar aprendizajes.

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Fondo Mentefactura Emprendedora para desarrollo de productos mínimos viables y validación comercial para empresas que radiquen en el Estado de Guanajuato

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Fondo Mentefactura Emprendedora para desarrollo de productos mínimos viables y validación comercial para empresas que radiquen en el Estado de Guanajuato

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https://idea.guanajuato.gob.mx/convocatorias/

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CONTACTO | TRANSPARENCIA | MAPA DEL SITIO

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Convocatoria "De la Ciencia al Mercado" 2021 para proyectos provenientes de patentes obtenidas, y modelos de utilidad con registro o en trámite y vigentes en el Estado de Jalisco

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Convocatoria "De la Ciencia al Mercado" 2021 para proyectos provenientes de patentes obtenidas, y modelos de utilidad con registro o en trámite y vigentes en el Estado de Jalisco

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https://www.coecytjal.org.mx/Plataforma/app/index.html#/DELACIENCIAALMERCADOPROYECTOS

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Plataforma Marcia te da a conocer logos registrados y te apoya en la definición de tu marca innominada (logo)

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Plataforma Marcia te da a conocer logos registrados y te apoya en la definición de tu marca innominada (logo)

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Solicitud en línea al IMPI de registro marcas y patentes

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Solicitud en línea al IMPI de registro marcas y patentes

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Portal de Acceso a Servicios Electrónicos

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YC Partner Eric Migicovsky shares a framework for asking questions and collecting feedback from your users.
Watch this if:

you haven't started talking to users yet

your users are asking for conflicting features

you aren't getting valuable information from talking with users

Transcript

Eric: Hi everyone. My name's Eric Migicovsky. I'm a partner here at YC. I actually started a company that went through Y Combinator back in 2011. I started a company called Pebble. We made one of the first smartwatches. I am really excited to be here to talk about talking to users because this is one of the perennial things that you always hear about as one of the critical factors in starting a company. The best founders maintain a direct connection to their users throughout the lifespan of their entire company. They maintained a direct connection because they need to extract information from their users at all different stages of running their company.

Oftentimes, people think that, you know, they're the CEO or they're the CTO, they're the technical kind of product leads of the company. They can outsource this research to other people in their company. They can hire salespeople, they can hire heads of product. But at the core, the best companies are the ones where the founders themselves maintain a direct connection to their users. If you are the CEO, it is your job. It is in your job description to talk to customers. So, take the time to learn how to do it well.

All founders need to participate in this process as well. If you're the engineer, if you're the developer, don't think that you can escape this process just because you're the person who's coding. There's a pretty classic scene from the movie "Office Space," where there's an individual who says, "I'm the person who is the go-between between engineers and users. I know how to talk to people. I have people skills." And that is one of the things that you do not want to have happen at your company. You want to make sure that the founders and the core members of your company are the ones who develop the skills for talking to users. So, you do not have to hire someone like that to be the go-between.

Talking to users is so critical that at the core of kind of YC's teachings, there are only two things that you must do in order to search your company. You need to code or build your product and talk to users. So, this is easier said than done. I want to provide today some tactical advice on how to plan your strategy for talking to users, as well as some questions and strategies that you can use to conduct your own user interviews at the beginning of your company. A lot of the advice that I'll present today is actually synthesized fantastically in this book actually written by a YC founder called, "The Mom Test."

The name of the book comes after kind of the process in which probably I'll go through where we want to tell our parents about the company that we're working on. And we think that by talking to people that love us and want to support us, we're actually extracting good or useful information about how we could adjust or improve our company but at its core, this is not the best way to get information. So, "The Mom Test, " as Rob actually explains, his three common errors that we make when we try to conduct user interviews, the first problem, the first mistake that we pretty much all make is we talk about our idea.

We're founders. We love to pitch our idea. We love to talk about the product that we're working on but during a user interview, that is not the time to be pitching the product. The goal of a great user interview is to extract information from the person that you're talking to, to extract data that will help you improve the product or improve your marketing or improve your positioning. It is not to sell them on using your product. So, at the core of a great user interview, you need to learn about their life. You need to talk about specifics around the problem area that you're trying to solve that the user may be going through.

The second mistake that we pretty much all make is we talk about hypotheticals. We talk about what our product could be. We talk about features that we want to build. We ask questions like, "If we built this feature, would you be interested in using it? Or would you be interested in paying for it?" That is wrong. Instead, talk about specifics that have already occurred in the user's life. This will give you stronger and better information in which to make product and company changing decisions. You also want to talk in general about the user's life. You don't want to just talk about the specific problem or, sorry, the specific solution that you're presenting.

Try to extract information about the users, the path that led them to encounter that problem. Ask them questions about their life in more broader ways to extract context around how they arrived at this problem. Learn about their motivations. Learn about why they got themselves into that problem in the first place. The third trap that we pretty much all fall into is that we talk, we talk a lot. We're founders, we're always pitching investors, we're pitching employees. We're trying to hire people. We're trying to partner. So, we tend to spend a lot of our time talking.

In a user interview, try to restrain your interest in talking and really listen. Take notes and listen to what the user is saying because, in that span of time, the 10, 20, 30 minutes that you spend with the user, you're trying to extract as much information as possible, so that when you return to the office and when you've returned to your co-founders, you're bringing hard data, real facts about users' lives to the table. I think that there are five great questions that everyone can ask during their early customer interviews.

The first question is, "What is the hardest part about doing the thing that you're trying to solve?" Let's take Dropbox for an example. Now, many of you may not remember a world before Dropbox but put yourself back in the position of Drew, the founder of Dropbox, in 2005 when he was initially working on kind of the initial idea of Dropbox while studying at MIT. Imagine you're in the computer lab at MIT, and you're sitting next to your friend, you turn and you ask, you're working on this project to create Dropbox. You want to learn more about how other people are sharing files so that you can learn, you know, "Are there potential users here or what are the problems that I can help solve with this new technology?"

So, you turn to your friend and you ask, "What is the hardest part about working on a group project with school computers?" You're sending the computer labs, the perfect context for asking that kind of question. And you begin an open-ended conversation, trying to extract information about how that person currently works on group projects together with friends. Hopefully, you'll learn about specific pain points that they have. Like, they log on to a shared computer. They have to get their files from somewhere. They may have a network drive attached to the university system but they're working with someone who may not be logged onto a university computer at that time.

Maybe you learn about problems with synchronizing of shared work. Maybe you're both working on the exact same document at the exact same time. How do you currently attempt to solve that problem? In general, the best startups are looking for problems that people face on a regular basis or that they're painful enough to warrant solving. This question can help confirm for you whether the problem that you're working on is actually one that real users feel is a pain point. It feels as something that they actively want to solve in their life.

The second question to the point that I was making earlier about trying to get to specifics rather than hypotheticals is to ask the question, "Tell me about the last time that you encountered this problem." The goal of this question is actually to extract context around the circumstances in which the user encountered that problem. So, for example, in the Dropbox case, you may be talking to your friend and learn about a week ago, a specific timeframe, who were they working with? Which class were they working on? Was this a computer science problem? Was this an English paper?

Try to extract as much information as you can about the context in which they began solving this problem so that as you develop your product, you'll be able to actually reference real-life examples of past problems that potential users have had. And you can overlay your solution on top of that, to see if it would have helped in that particular circumstance.

The third question is, "Why was this hard?" Why was the circumstance in which that student was trying to work on their shared project or their project with other folks, why was that hard? What were the specific things that they encountered that were difficult? The reason why you want to ask this question is because you'll hear many different things from different people. Going back to the Dropbox example, you might encounter some people who say that maybe the number one problem that they were encountering was when they emailed files back and forth, they ended up duplicating work because they didn't have the exact same kind of document at the exact same time.

Maybe other people will say that they submitted the wrong document in the end to the professor for their group project because they had like crazy strings of file version numbers on the end. So, the benefit from asking this question is not just to identify the exact problem that you may begin to solve with your solution to this problem. But you'll also begin to understand how you market your product, how you explain to new potential users the value or the benefits of your solution. In general, customers don't buy what. They don't buy the what, they buy the why.

So in the Dropbox example, they may not be excited and overjoyed at saying, "Oh, I now have this kind of file sinking tool that can keep all my files in sync." But they'll buy the why. They'll say, "This product will help with this exact problem that I had just two weeks ago when I was trying to work on a student project with some of my friends." So, answers that you get from customers to this question of why, why was this past problem that you encountered so hard? May actually inform your marketing or your sales copy as you build out the rest of your kind of product.

The fourth question is, "What, if anything, have you done to try to solve this problem?" One of the biggest things that I've encountered while helping YC companies over the last few years, is that if potential customers are not already exploring potential solutions to their problem, it's possible that the problem that you're trying to solve is not a burning enough problem for customers for them to be even interested in your better solution to this product. So, this question tries to get at the root of that issue. Is the person who encounters this problem already trying to solve this?

So, in the Dropbox example, you're working on a group project, or you're talking to someone who's worked on group projects in the past, try to figure out what tools did they experiment with, what tools did they try to use to solve this in the past. Maybe they solved this by getting all the individuals together in one room to work on the project with four computers so that they could talk in real-time to each other as they were working on the project. Maybe they experimented with email. Maybe they tried setting up as one of the top comments on Hacker News posted during the original Dropbox launch. Maybe they had set up auto sync and they had already solved this problem with an SFTP or something like that.

Again, you want to ask this question for two reasons. One is to figure out whether the problem that you're solving or you're working to solve is even really something that people are already looking for solutions to. And the second one is what are the other competitions out there? What will your product be compared against as you end up rolling out your solution and offering it to end customers? The fifth question is very tactical. "What don't you love about the solutions that you've already tried?" This is the beginning of your potential feature set. This is how you begin understanding what the features are that you'll build-out for your better solution to the problem.

Now, note that this is not the question of, "What features would you want out of a new file syncing product?" In the Dropbox example. Because that's a hypothetical question. Users in general are not great at identifying the next features that they want in the product. Just like the old, you know, Henry Ford quote, you know, "When we were developing the automobile, our users would have wanted a faster horse rather than a car." So, this question specifically targets what are the problems with the existing solutions that they've already tried. These are specifics and you can begin to kind of figure out what the differential between your new solution and the existing solutions already in the market will be.

Talking to users, as I said before, is useful at pretty much all stages of your company but there's three critical phases to an early-stage company. I would kind of define that as a company that has not yet reached product-market fit in which talking to users would be extremely beneficial. Those three stages are at the idea stage before you've even begun developing any of your product at the prototype stage, where you have the first kind of rough beginnings of your product but you haven't really gotten into the hands of any paying customers or any users yet. And the third one, which is after you've launched and you're iterating towards product-market fit. How do you guide that journey? So, I'll talk about a few tips for each phase.

At the idea stage, you may have the back of a napkin idea. You may have a thought, you may be commercializing some technology that you've been dreaming of but you don't yet have any first users. So, you need to begin finding the first people that will be interested in either providing information about the problem that they've encountered or potentially signing up to be your first users. People come to me and ask, "How can I talk and how can I find my first users?" Honestly, some of the best companies are products or services that are built for the founders themselves.

So, start with yourself. Begin...like, test your user interview strategy on yourself. Try to walk through a situation where you've encountered that problem. The next step after that is to talk to friends, is to talk to coworkers to get warm introductions. It doesn't take a lot of people. You don't have to talk to thousands of people. Every good user kind of research strategy begins with just one or two people. The critical feature here is executing an unbiased and detailed customer or user interview strategy, rather than just trying to pitch your idea to them.

Another cool hack that we've seen some great success with, actually a YC company in this batch is actually selling products to firefighters. And they realized that cold email introductions was just not working, was not a way that they could get through to customers. So, what they did was they actually just dropped by fire stations in-person. They didn't even, you know, email them to say that they were coming ahead of time. They just showed up and they said, "Hey, could we speak to the fire chief? Could we talk to someone about this problem that we've got a solution to?" And you know what? It worked great. They managed to get dozens of in-person, you know, 10 to 15 minute long meetings just by showing up.

So, when in doubt, if there's a specific target customer base that you're looking to get feedback from, just try showing up. It feels a little bit weird because it feels like you're imposing on someone. But at the end of the day, the mindset that I like to get into is if you truly think that you're solving a problem that your target customer base is facing, you'll actually be doing them a hand. You'll be helping them out by taking their 15 minutes and learning more about the problem.

Industry events are another great way to get a high number of new customer interactions. I remember that when I was working on Pebble, we actually went to CES, which is this large consumer electronics show in Vegas. We didn't have a booth. We just went in guerrilla-style. We just like randomly started setting up meetings with potential users. And we met them in like the coffee shop outside of the conference. We did that for $0 without any sort of marketing budget. Just because that was where a lot of people in the industry were and we knew that there was like a high concentration of potential people that we could talk to.

Some tips for the stage, take notes. Take detailed notes because like I said before, you'll never know until later, which key facts of these user interviews may be useful. If you're not great at taking notes while you're talking to someone, bring a friend, bring a cofounder. Ask the person if you could record it. When in doubt, capture as much information as possible. Keep it casual. Like I said before, you could just show up, you don't have to preplan. You don't have to have, you know, 20-minute blocks on your calendar scheduled for days on end of user interviews.

Feel free to react. Like, honestly, you'll learn so much through the first 5 or 10 user interviews that, you know, your process will dramatically improve from those first interviews to the next batch. So, don't feel like you have to do 100 user interviews all at the same time. Just start with one, start with three, start with five until you get the hang of it. The third thing is you need to be cognizant of the other person's time. Again, going back to what I said at the beginning, you know, we love our idea. We're founders. We love talking about our idea. So, you need to keep yourself in check and make sure that you're cognizant of the other person's time.

Honestly, you'll be able to get probably the best information out of say a 10 to 15-minute long first interview and that might be all the time you need just for that initial chat. As you move past the idea stage into testing your prototype with users, the next major kind of benefit that you can get from talking to users is figuring out who will be your best first customer. This is critical because it's possible that if you choose the wrong first customer, that you may be led down a path that constrains you or artificially traps you without actually getting paid by that first customer. So, we've created a framework that you can use to begin to identify before you begin working with them who the best first customers will be.

During user interviews at this stage, I love to ask questions that extract numerical answers to three facts about the customer that I'm working with. The first one that I want to get to the bottom of is how much does this problem cost them today? I like to get a hard number either in terms of how much revenue do they stand to earn if they solve this problem, or how much expense do they currently spend trying to solve this problem? How much money is wasted today as they try to solve this problem? The second one that I like to get to the bottom of is how frequently do they encounter this problem? Do they encounter it on an hourly basis, a daily basis, a quarterly basis, yearly basis?

The best problems that startups can target are ones that are encountered more frequently. This is usually beneficial for two reasons. One is they encounter a problem on a more regular basis. It means that the customer is feeling the pain of that problem on a more regular basis and they'll be much more receptive to a potential solution. The second reason why you want to tackle a problem that people encounter on a more frequent basis is you'll get more chances to know whether your product is actually solving a problem.

In my case with Pebble, I love the fact that I was working on a device that was kind of intended to be used every day. You know, you wake up in the morning, you put your watch on. That was great for me because I knew that if users weren't wearing their watch on a regular basis, that meant that I was doing something wrong. So, the best first customers are ones that have this problem very frequently. The third thing that you want to get to the bottom of is how large is their budget for solving this problem? You can imagine that, say, you're solving something for an industrial assembly line, a problem on the industrial assembly line.

If you're talking to the operator, the person who's actually there on kind of the assembly line, they may encounter this problem on a really regular basis but they just don't have the budget. They don't have the authority to actually solve the problem. That's their boss. So, that's someone above them in the office or in the headquarters. So, again, as you're trying to identify the best first customers, make sure that you're asking questions about whether they actually have the ability to solve the problem given the choice.

I like to visualize answers to these three sets of customer questions as overlapping Venn diagrams. With the best first customer being at the center of the Venn diagram, where they have the highest kind of numerical answers to the three questions that I outlined. So, let's take a quick example. Imagine if you're working on like a super-smart blender that's designed to produce the tastiest new fruit smoothies. You talk to several users. Let's say you're talking to McDonald's, The French Laundry, and the Google Cafe. You create a spreadsheet that simply has three columns with the answers to the questions that you've extracted through your user interviews.

This data can actually be used in prioritizing which customer you begin to sell your product to first. So, for example, The French Laundry is an amazing restaurant up in Napa. Maybe they have an opportunity to roll out a new extremely fancy over the top smoothie with your new technology. They can extract a lot of money from each sale but the frequency is not that high. There's just not that many customers that are interested in a fruit smoothie at The French Laundry. And you're talking to maybe the sous chef at the restaurants. So, you realize that they don't really have that much money to solve this problem even if they wanted to.

The other potential customer that you're talking to is the chef at one of the Google cafes. Unfortunately for you, Google gives away their food for free to their employees. So, that person doesn't actually stand to earn more money or save that much more money if they were to use your new smoothie technology in their restaurant. Granted there are a lot of Googlers, so there probably would be a lot of smoothies made per week. But at the same time, again, you know, they just don't have the budget to be able to really dig into this problem. So, you learn through the initial customer interviews that McDonald's is actually the best potential first customer for your product.

Well, even though the cost of a new smoothie at McDonald's may not bring in, you know, a large dollar amount per transaction, they have a ton of stores and each of those stores services at a ton of people. And on top of that, you happen to get a warm introduction to the like chief food officer of McDonald's, which I'm not even sure they have but that person actually controls like a multibillion-dollar budget. And if they wanted to solve this problem, they would have the authority and they would have the budget to do so. And so, you put that information in your spreadsheet and you actually do like a simple stack rank that just pulls the best answers to those questions up to the top. And you can use this framework for kind of pulling together all of the information that you get from various user surveys to find the best customers.

The last stage before product-market fit that can benefit from user interviews is actually the process of iterating towards product-market fit. Paul Graham's cut definition for product-market fit is, "When you've made something that people want." Marc Andreessen also has an amazing blog post about product-market fit, where he describes it as, "When the product is just being pulled out of you. When you no longer have to push the product on customers, they're just pulling it from you." But the problem with these definitions of product-market fit is that they're vague. They're also retroactive in that you have to already have product-market fit in order to know that you've reached it. So, they're not as useful for helping you figure out which features you need to build in order to iterate in order to improve your product to get to product-market fit.

You may have heard of the app Superhuman, which is a super-fast email client. Well, the CEO published an amazing blog post a little while ago, about how he was actually annoyed with this vague definition of what product-market fit is and how it was a lagging indicator that didn't help him predict product-market fit. It only told him whether he had achieved it or not. He wanted to create a real-time quantitative system that had helped guide his company towards product-market fit. And, of course, it involved talking to users.

He wrote a great blog post on this. You can just Google it. I'm just going to kind of touch on it but I would highly recommend reading the entire thing because it is fantastic. But in it, he describes a process where on a weekly basis, he asks pretty much all his customers but it doesn't even have to be your entire customer base. It could just be, you know, 30, 40 users, a critical question. "How would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman?" Three answers, very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, not disappointed. He measured the percentage of users who answered the question, "Very disappointed." These are the users who most value your product. These are the users who your product has now become a key part of their life. It's kind of weaseled their way into their daily habits.

He read some analysis that said that if 40% or more of your user base reports that they would be very disappointed if your product went away on a weekly basis, that that's kind of the signal. That's the differentiation point that it says, "If you get past this point, your product will just grow exponentially." And he evaluated a number of other successful companies and realized that the answer to this question was always around or above 40%. So, again, I probably won't be able to go into it too much more in detail but I would recommend reading this blog post. If you're at the stage where you're iterating and you actively have users that you can ask this question of, this can be an immensely useful thing for quantitatively, determining whether the features that you worked on in the previous week were actually benefiting or adding to your product-market fit, or potentially detracting from it as well.

Some other great tips that we've found at this stage is kind of a simple hack. Ask your users for the phone number during signup because oftentimes you'll be looking at the data and you'll be wondering, you know, "Why is the data showing this particular kind of learning about our customers?" And you may be like thinking in aggregate, like, you know, 20% of people have this problem. Sometimes it helps to just get on the phone and talk to one person who's encountering this problem. So, I always encourage founders to put contact information, including phone number, which is like a direct connection to customers, pretty high up in the user signup flow.

The second one is don't design by committee. You can't simply ask your users what features they want. You have to begin to understand whether those features are truly going to help make your product more sticky and more useful. You can do this through kind of the advice that the Superhuman CEO lays out in his blog post, or you could ask other tactical questions. Like, instead of asking, you know, "Will users be interested in using this new product or this new feature?" Instead say, "Here's an upgrade flow. If you want this new product, put your credit card." Or, "If you want this new feature, put your credit card information or pay more." Even before you actually built out the feature, this could help give you information about whether the feature that you're working on is actually something that the users are going to use.

The third thing to do during user interviews at this stage is to remember to discard bad data. Some of the kind of worst bad data that you may encounter is compliments. People may say, "Oh, I love the new design." Or, "Man, this thing is really useful." You may love that during the course of your user interviews but they actually are not useful information because it's not specific. It's more of a general statement about your product and it's not tactical. It's not giving you correct information on what you can change or what you can improve about your product.

The second main type of bad data that you may encounter is fluff. These are hypotheticals. These are generic statements. Whenever you're in the middle of a user interview and you start getting onto this hypothetical, you know, "Oh, here's what the product may look like in the future." Try to steer it back to specifics. Again, you're conducting a user interview, not to pitch your product but to learn about problems or issues that the user has faced in their past so that you can improve it in the future. That's it. That was meant to be like a quick short dive into "Talking To Users." I don't know if we have any time for questions. Cool. Awesome. Well, I'd love to answer any questions but other than that, thank you very much.

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How to Talk to Users: Startup Ideas, Building Product | Y Combinator

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YC Partner Eric Migicovsky shares a framework for asking questions and collecting feedback from your users. Watch this if: you haven't started talking to users yet your users are asking for conflicting features you aren't getting valuable information from talking with users Eric: Hi everyone. My name's Eric Migicovsky.

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ABC Legal para startups mexicanas by Cinthya Gómez R. | Novus Concilum + Startuplinks

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Masterclass para Conseguir Inversión en VC Academy

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Will your business idea work? Find out. This free guide features 24 validation experiments to help you test your hypothesis & de-risk business decisions.

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Validation guide

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Masterclass: La Importancia de la Mentoría | VC Academy

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Since this video was created, we've launched YC Co-Founder Matching. The advice in this video is still correct -- if you have an existing network to search for co-founders, that's a great place to look for a match. But many founders have also found success with our co-founder matching service, so we now recommend you try that in parallel.

YC Partner Harj Taggar shares advice on how to find the right co-founder for your startup. This lecture was filmed for the future founder track of Startup School 2020.

Transcript

Hi, I'm Harj Taggar, and I'm partner at Y Combinator. And today I'm going to be talking about what I think is arguably the most important part of starting a company, which is finding the right co-founder.

So let's start by talking about why should you have a co-founder at all. Well, I think there's three main reasons you really want a co-founder when you're starting a company. The first is productivity, you can get a lot more work done if you have someone to divide the work up with. And you can get much better work done if you have a co-founder who maybe has complementary skills, so they can do things that you can't. And there's someone you enjoy discussing ideas with. So you can brainstorm and come up with better ideas than you could alone, or have someone to talk you out of potentially bad ideas. So you get a lot of uplift in just the amount and quality of work you can do with a co-founder.

The second reason is moral support. Startups are an incredibly intense and taxing journey. And it's great to have someone you can lean on for support during the tough times. And what I've noticed about the best co-founder relationships is they have this dynamic where both co-founders kind of balance each other out. So if one founder is having a bad day, they're feeling a little down, despondent, and they've become a little pessimistic and feel like the startup is about to die, the other co-founder can just help bring them up a little bit, and keep them going and keep them motivated. And vice versa. Sometimes you get too carried away, you sign a customer and you think you're guaranteed the IPO. And you can use someone to just ground you and bring you back to reality a little bit. And so that's where I kind of find the best co-founding relationships can help kind of even out some of the highs and lows of the emotional rollercoaster that is a startup.

And while you can get sort of productivity increased by hiring people or bringing your own contractors, you don't get that same emotional support that you do from a co-founder. Because ultimately, anyone who's working for you, you're the boss, and they're not as invested in the success of the startup as you are. And you can't really be as open or honest with them about the company as you can be with a peer. And that's what you get from a co-founder.

The final reason I'd say to have a co-founder is pattern matching to success. If you look at a list of the most successful startups in history, think of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, they all had co-founders when they started. And now I think sometimes people forget this point. Because when you think of these great iconic companies, you associate them with a single person, usually the CEO, who's over time risen to become prominent, famous and a bit of celebrities. You know, when you think of Apple, you think of Steve Jobs, when you think of Microsoft, Bill Gates, and when you think of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, right? I think it's completely true that over time, and we're talking at this point decades, because that's how long successful startups are around for, over that time period, it's pretty common for one person to kind of really drive the company become the figurehead for it and stick out that company for a long period of time. And that's why we remember those people.

But we're talking about the earliest stages of starting a company. And in those days, all of these founders had co-founders that they lent on for all the reasons I just mentioned. So I think it's always important to remember that when you're starting a company, and wondering whether you should have a co-founder or not.

Okay, so hopefully, I've convinced you that you really do want a co-founder when you're starting a company. But what if you're really keen to get started in a company right now, and you don't have a co-founder that immediately available, or someone that you can bring on board? Should you wait to get a great co-founder before you start a company? Or should you just go ahead and get started? Well, I think the default answer is that you should wait because of all the reasons I just mentioned, all the benefits that you get from having a co-founder. But Y Combinator has funded single founders, and we have done so successfully. So I've noticed that there are some exceptions to this rule and they tend to follow a particular pattern. And that pattern is that the single founders, those who start company by themselves, has sort of two things that are true.

So one is they have an idea that they have incredibly high conviction about either because they're solving a personal problem for themselves. So there really no solution is necessary. Or they're a domain expert, they're working in a field where they know for sure the sort of technology that's missing, where the customers might be. So there's all of that because they have such conviction in the idea that they don't need a co-founder to convince them that this is a good idea to get started on. They're ready to go.

The second condition is that those single founders, they are able to make progress on that idea without a co-founder, in the short time at least. And that almost always means that they're technical, or at least technical enough to be able to build the first version of the product so they can show it to potential investors, or maybe even to potential co-founders who may want to join the company. And that second point is something I've noticed that the best single founders are also able to do is not only are they tremendously productive in building product and talking to users themselves, they're also able to run a great background search for co-founders and keep their eyes open. And if the opportunity arises, bring on a great co-founder. And I think the best example I can think of here would be Drew Houston of Dropbox.

So Drew applied Y Combinator way, way back now, in 2007. He had a really solid idea for building Dropbox, because he'd already felt the pain of losing his own files. So he knew for sure, there was a better solution to build. But he didn't have a co-founder. And so Paul Graham, the Y Combinator founder, messaged him back saying, "We love your application, you're great, the idea's great, but we really won't fund you without a co-founder. So come back to us when we have one." And Drew kind of went away, continued building the Dropbox prototype, while also looking for co-founders and found Arasha, who would be later the Dropbox CTO and his co-founder. And he applied again, and [inaudible 00:06:34] And now Dropbox is obviously a tremendously successful company.

So that's kind of what I'd ask you to bear in mind is, if you're really keen to get a startup right now, but you don't have a co-founder, ask yourself like, do you have absolute high conviction in this idea, you know sure that this is the idea that we want to work on? There's no other ideas that you'd be open to? And can you really make progress without having a co-founder? And if those things are true, sure. Go ahead and give it a shot. But if not, I'd really suggest you wait until you do have a co-founder to start a company.

So when you're thinking about bringing on a co-founder, what should you be looking for in them? Well, I actually think the single most important thing to know about someone before you start a company with them is how do they handle stress. Sort of second most important is how well are they going to help you handle stress. And the reason I say that is startups are very incredibly stressful, intense experience, as I mentioned before. And a great co-founder should be able to support you through those and help you through those. Because if you're determined and motivated, enjoy working together, you'll keep working on this startup for a long period of time. And that's usually what it takes to build a really successful company. So you really don't want to start a company with someone that you don't know particularly well. Because even if you've spent time with them in social events, or you hung out together a little bit, you don't really have insight into how they're going to respond to pressure and stress. And are they someone that's going to stick around when things are tough? And are they someone that's going to help you want to stick around when things are tough?

So the best people to start companies with are always people that you've got some sort of personal experiences, where you kind of know the character and how they're going to respond to those tough situations. And that usually means there's someone, a close friend, or someone that you've worked with, under stressful conditions. So I'd certainly recommend that you be on the lookout and think about that when you're considering co-founders. The second thing I think you really want to look for is understanding the goals and values someone has for starting a company or wanting to do a startup. And honestly, I think when I was younger, I used to think of some goals and values as being sort of fuzzy terms. I didn't need them too much. But over time, I realized, really what they mean is understanding the motivations someone has for doing what they do. And in this context, I think it's really important to talk with someone, even if you know them very well, about why they want to do a startup, what are they hoping for? And the kinds of things that can come out are avoiding conflicting goals, right.

So for example, let's say that you really want to build a high-growth, high-intensity, high-risk startup and you want to push forward, you want to raise venture capital, you want to hire a bunch of people, you want to just really go for it. And your goal is to take the company public and you're okay kind of taking lots of risks along the way to get that. That's a totally fine set of motivations, it's a very common set of motivations for startup founders. But let's say your co-founder prefers to take kind of a slow and steady approach. Maybe they're more motivated by building great software for a small group of people. And they will be totally fine if you just made enough revenue to pay yourselves good salaries and just grew a little bit every year. That's also a completely fine set of motivations for wanting to start a company. But the two motivations there aren't compatible with each other and they'll lead to inevitable conflict.

So what I'd suggest is make sure that you have this conversation. And it's not a perfect predictor, because people's goals and ambitions for a startup change over time. I've seen people start companies because, honestly, they just wanted to get rich. And their hope was that they would be able to sell the company in two to three years for a good amount to a bigger company. But they got two to three years into the company, and they loved it so much, they got so excited by the challenge that they kept working on it, and they're still working on it a decade later. So that's totally fine. I'm not saying that having this conversation means you're gonna know for sure whether your goals and values are aligned over the next decade, which is how long it usually takes if a startup is successful, but at least having the conversation gives you a better chance of finding a co-founder who you're aligned with around a high level important stuff.

Now, as you're probably wondering, I'm talking about what you should look for in co-founders, and I haven't mentioned the obvious thing, which is, what skills do they have. So it's obviously really important to have a co-founder who has the right sort of skills to help you grow the company. And usually that means someone who's got complementary set of skills to you, right? So if you're really great at sales, talking to users, getting customers, ideally, you'd have a co-founder who's really great at building product, and writing code, and building software, because the two of you can divide and conquer and get a lot done. Why do you think that's really important? I don't think it's one you should overly fixate it. All right. So more important than anything is just working with someone that you like working with and you trust. And so if sort of the person best fits that description doesn't necessarily have the perfect set of complementary skills, tools, I think that's fine, you should still bring them on as a co-founder. And then you can start hiring people as you need, and make enough progress in the company to get investment, you can hire people to kind of fill in the skills gaps, and that's okay.

Another point I'd just make on this is, when you are trying to see if someone's got complementary skills to you, don't go too much into the details of how well do their skills map onto this specific idea you're working on right now. So a common example of this we see sometimes is someone's considering bringing on a technical co-founder. And they want to build an iPhone app. But the co-founder, even though they know them, they trust them, they've worked with him before, that co-founder isn't necessarily an iPhone app developer, they haven't built iPhone apps in the past. That's not a reason to rule someone out as a co-founder, right. What does matter is that they're willing to learn what they need to learn. So if they're not an iPhone developer, they're willing to learn how to do that. And particularly, they're willing to learn things that maybe aren't glamorous, like startups are often just a grind of doing a lot of boring work to get the thing going. And so long as you have a co-founder who's okay with that, it's totally fine if they don't have the perfect set of skillsets. So don't rule someone out who's potentially a great co-founder because they don't have this checklist of specific skills you're looking for. But do make sure you count them in if it's someone that you trust, you like working with, you've got a good sense of how they're going to handle the stress and pressure of the startup journey.

So where should you look for to find co-founders? Well, the answer here is a little obvious. It's to start with the people you already know. So ideally, your friends and colleagues, and kind of ironically, the best time to find a co-founder are when you're not actually necessarily looking for a co-founder to start a company with right now. What I mean by that is, if I were going giving myself advice 10, 15 years ago, what I would say is, rather than sort of trying to pick a startup idea, and go and find co-founders to work on with it, I would suggest that I just look for people to do projects with. So if you're in school, look around, see who's in your class, who's in school, and like, identify people that you think would be cool to work on a project. And this project doesn't have to be a takeover the world idea of a company, just somebody you find interesting. Like maybe you're into games, and you want to build a cool game together. The thing that's awesome about projects is that it's much less scarier and asking for a far lower of commitment if you ask them to work on a project with you than it is to go straight into, "Hey, let's start a company together." Right? So you have sort of a higher chance of people saying yes, if you ask them for this.

And the other thing that's great about projects is you can work on different projects with different people and you can start developing a taste for who do you like? Well, what kinds of personalities? Like what kinds of skills are you actually good at as opposed to what you might think you're good at? And so what kind of complementary skills might you look for in a co-founder. And again, being in school or college is a really ideal time for this because you're surrounded by lots of people who usually have a decent chunk of spare time. And so you can start getting together to work on things that you think are fun. And, again, kind of ironically, although this is I'm suggesting you don't try and start a startup. Projects that you work on in your spare time often tend to be some of the greatest sources for actually finding great startup ideas and building huge companies. Facebook's an obvious example, something that started out as a project while Mark Zuckerberg was an undergrad at Harvard. And now it's turning into one of the biggest companies in the world. But that's not why I'm suggesting you do this. I'm suggesting you can look for people to work on projects with because that's a great way for you to get a sense of what kind of person do you enjoy working with, and what specific type of personality do you work well with.

And this advice also applies if you're not in college or school, maybe if you're working at a company, like look at your coworkers, like, keep a list of people that you think are particularly smart, particularly capable, who impresses you, and start getting to know them better. And ask them if they're up for working on things in the evenings or weekends. That's the kind of personality...the kind of person who is interested in working on evening and weekend projects is the kind of person that's likely to make a great co-founder. I actually remember years ago at Y Combinator startup school, when it was an in-person physical event, we had Phil Libin, the founder of Evernote, there. And he kind of gave a somewhat extreme version of his advice, which was that he sort of years and years before he started a company knew that he wanted to start a company someday. And so he would only make friends with people that he thought could someday be a co-founder. And now, while I think that advice is maybe a little extreme, if you don't just want to be around people who might be co-founders, there is truth to it. Right? So I think this is kind of the thing where if you make this of a conscious effort well before you start a company, it'll probably the best bet for finding a great co-founder.

But let's say you do know for sure that you want to start a company, and you're kind of ready to go, again, right now. How do you start finding co-founders? Well, again, you start in the same place, you start with people that you know. And what I've noticed is an issue people run into here is that they can be really reluctant to just ask people they know to start a company with them. And it's all kind of reasons, like maybe you're worried about how your relationship will change, like maybe you don't value the personal relationship more than the risks of working with someone. And those are fair concerns. But it's not the right optimization for starting a company, you have to make the ask.

So what I'd suggest, the pretty simple algorithm here for finding co-founders, it's make a list of the people that you know, you're closest to that you think would be great co-founders, and start from top to bottom, and ask every single person there to go grab a coffee and talk to them, and ask them if they'll start a company with you and be your co-founder. If they say no, that's totally fine. Say you understand. But like, who would they start a company with and make it very specific. Ask them, "If you were starting a company, who would be sort of your top three or four co-founders that you want to try and convince to work with you?" And ask them for an introduction to each of those people. So your list keeps growing now. You ask the people you know, if they say no, you at least get some more ideas for names. And then you meet with those people. And you ask them and you simply repeat, repeat the same algorithm, ask them if they'd be interested in being a co-founder with you along. And if they say no, ask them who'd they try to recruit. And so this way, you start growing the tree of potential co-founders beyond those people you immediately know, but at least they're still connected via people that you do know. So they're not just sort of completely random strangers.

The final sort of bit of advice, I'd say, for where to look is go out and try and meet people that just have similar interests to you. Right, it kind of sounds a little bit just like how to have a social life. But this is essentially what finding co-founders reduces to. So if you're an engineer, attend, like developer meetups or work on open source projects, or go to hackathons. Do things where others, engineers and builders are hanging out. And you're likely to find some meets. And if you're not technical, if you're interested in those things, you should totally attend those kinds of events too. But maybe also just attend or find people who are interested in the kinds of things you're interested in. Maybe you're interested in economics and finance, and that's kind of the pool of things, or is a pool of interests where you think you'll find a startup idea. Well, make a real effort to go out and meet people that have similar interests. And in these COVID times, there's lots of online groups and communities that you can join. But even in regular times, there's always ways to find people that have similar interests to you. And because if constantly on the lookout for people who might make co-founders, you have a high chance of finding someone who could be a good fit.

So once you found a potential co-founder, how do you test out and know for sure that you both want to start a company together before making the final commitment? Well, it's not a perfect process. And at some point, you just kind of have to make the leap and hope that it will work out. But one way to de-risk it is to allocate a chunk of time where you agreed to kind of work together. And set yourself a deadline by which time you want to have ideally, like a MVP, or a prototype of something built, or you at least want to have gone out and try it out, pitching some customers and convincing them to pay you if you did build a particular product. These are all things you'd usually do when you're signing up with a new company or testing out new idea anyhow. And do that together, and agree that at the end of the time that you've set aside, that you both have an honest conversation, decide, "Do we both enjoy working together on this? And if so, great, let's go ahead and make the leap." And if not, be honest and say, "Hey, let's go our own separate ways."

So making that a little bit more tangible. If you both have the no other commitments, you know, which is pretty uncommon, but sometimes happens if, say, you both graduated college and you didn't go and get a job because you want to start a company, then I'd say treat this like your full time job, right? Say that, "Hey, we're going to set aside a month or three months. And let's just pick idea we're excited about and get as much progress made as we can on building the first version of it, and going out and signing customers." Even if you can't do that full time because you have other commitments, but then do it on evenings and weekends, right. But you'll have to sacrifice some amount of time doing other things in order to actually spend time working together. But the more times, the more hours you can accumulate of working together on the idea, the better sense you'll have for sure if you want to start company or not. Right.

So once you've kind of done that, let's say you've decided that, "Hey, we do want to start the company, and we want to be co-founders," then I think there's two important points you want to make sure that you're in agreement on. First is the equity split, right, like who owns how much of the company. Now, I think the way to think about this is, your sort of default equity allocation should really be 50/50. That's where you want to start from, right, because assuming that nothing's been built yet, you're at the earliest stages of the company, you're both going to make equal contributions, you both want to be equally motivated to work super hard in the company. And all the work is years and years ahead of you. So there is not really too much reason to deviate from a 50/50 equity split early on. However, we have seen different equity arrangements, and they have been successful. And so I kind of think the underlying thing that you're solving for here is making sure that both of you are happy with what the equity arrangement is, and will be motivated to keep working on the company for a long period of time. Right.

And so, again, usually that means 50/50, but let's just say that you have been working on the company for a little bit longer, or you de-risked it somehow by yourself, and you're bringing on what is commonly called a later stage co-founder, then sometimes deviate from 50/50 might make sense. But the thing I would really encourage you to do is not optimize for the short term, right. So just because you made a little bit of progress and the idea by yourself, and you have a great co-founder, and you're sort of thinking, "Hey, maybe I should take 70% interest, just leave them 30%," because you've made progress in the last 6 months, I would encourage you not to do that. Startups are a really long-term game and you win by making the best decision long term. Right. So if you have a great potential co-founder, and even though you made a little bit of progress on the company yourself, if you know that they won't be all in and fully committed to the success of the company unless they're a 50/50 partner, you should do that. You should make them 50/50 equity partner so you can keep them as motivated and get as much out of them as possible.

The second thing I think you really want to decide is who's the CEO. Now, this can sometimes be an uncomfortable conversation. And to be honest, it's actually, I think, a bit of a red flag if it is uncomfortable conversation. And so as far as the actual title itself goes early on in the startup when it's just two or three co-founders, in terms of how it impacts your day to day and how you divide up responsibilities, the title doesn't actually matter. Like early on, you're all going to be doing a little bit of everything, there's like plenty of like unglamorous grunt work to go around. And just because you have a CEO title doesn't mean you get to sort of abscond from them. Right. So practically, it doesn't matter, like, in terms of who does what.

One exception to that might be, if you need to be doing sales, it usually might be good if the CEO is a person, where CEO title is the person talking to customers and users and convincing them because they might feel a little bit more flattered if the CEO is pitching them. And this kind of gets the point of where really the only impact the CEO title has. And that is externally, and I would say specifically for investors. So investors care about seeing that there is sort of a clear leader, and a clear final decision maker or a tiebreaker. And that person should be the CEO. So when you're pitching investors, it's usually better for whoever sort of does most of the talking, whoever is going to be leading those conversations, that that person is the CEO.

And now, where you run into problems, and a very, very common source of co-founder friction we see at Y Combinator is where two people really want to be the CEO. Right. And this can sort of...we can see this in Y Combinator interviews, where you end up with two people who kind of talk over each other, they interrupt each other, they can look at each other with a little bit of content when the other person's answering. These are all really, really bad signs, right. So be honest with yourselves, if you think it's really important to you to be the CEO, and you both feel that way, you're not good co-founders for each other. So just avoid all that pain and heartache and don't start a coming together. You ideally want to start a company with someone who doesn't care about that stuff if you do, or you're both indifferent to it and you'll find picking whoever you feel is best suited to the role for now, even if that changes sometime in the future.

So let's kind of wrap up everything we've talked about. Once you're sure you want a co-founder, which I hope I've convinced you to, once you run the process to find some good candidates to be a co-founder, and you've identified someone that you really do want to start a company with, because you spent a little bit of time working on projects together and testing each other out, so to speak, then you have the conversations around what's the equity split and who's going to be the CEO. Now you're ready to formalize things. And formalizing really means the legal act of incorporating a company, setting up a vesting agreement. This is really important. Vesting means that the shares in the company, we don't all get them at once. They vest over a period of time, and there's very standard templates and documents for this that you should really ensure that you have in place. And then you're pretty much good to go.

And you know, the when exactly should you sort of leap from, "Hey, we're hanging out, working together," to, "Hey, okay, let's like do some paperwork." Not a perfect answer to that, but it's just kind of up to you. Like once you've made the commitment to yourself and each other, that we're gonna make a real go of trying to build a company together, that's kind of the trigger for when you start making things real by getting sort of the legal, corporation and paperwork done. So, that's all the advice I have for how to think about finding the right co-founder and how to make it happen. I hope that helps and good luck.

Hi, I'm Harj Taggar, and I'm partner at Y Combinator. And today I'm going to be talking about what I think is arguably the most important part of starting a company, which is finding the right co-founder.

So let's start by talking about why should you have a co-founder at all. Well, I think there's three main reasons you really want a co-founder when you're starting a company. The first is productivity, you can get a lot more work done if you have someone to divide the work up with. And you can get much better work done if you have a co-founder who maybe has complementary skills, so they can do things that you can't. And there's someone you enjoy discussing ideas with. So you can brainstorm and come up with better ideas than you could alone, or have someone to talk you out of potentially bad ideas. So you get a lot of uplift in just the amount and quality of work you can do with a co-founder.

The second reason is moral support. Startups are an incredibly intense and taxing journey. And it's great to have someone you can lean on for support during the tough times. And what I've noticed about the best co-founder relationships is they have this dynamic where both co-founders kind of balance each other out. So if one founder is having a bad day, they're feeling a little down, despondent, and they've become a little pessimistic and feel like the startup is about to die, the other co-founder can just help bring them up a little bit, and keep them going and keep them motivated. And vice versa. Sometimes you get too carried away, you sign a customer and you think you're guaranteed the IPO. And you can use someone to just ground you and bring you back to reality a little bit. And so that's where I kind of find the best co-founding relationships can help kind of even out some of the highs and lows of the emotional rollercoaster that is a startup.

And while you can get sort of productivity increased by hiring people or bringing your own contractors, you don't get that same emotional support that you do from a co-founder. Because ultimately, anyone who's working for you, you're the boss, and they're not as invested in the success of the startup as you are. And you can't really be as open or honest with them about the company as you can be with a peer. And that's what you get from a co-founder.

The final reason I'd say to have a co-founder is pattern matching to success. If you look at a list of the most successful startups in history, think of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, they all had co-founders when they started. And now I think sometimes people forget this point. Because when you think of these great iconic companies, you associate them with a single person, usually the CEO, who's over time risen to become prominent, famous and a bit of celebrities. You know, when you think of Apple, you think of Steve Jobs, when you think of Microsoft, Bill Gates, and when you think of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, right? I think it's completely true that over time, and we're talking at this point decades, because that's how long successful startups are around for, over that time period, it's pretty common for one person to kind of really drive the company become the figurehead for it and stick out that company for a long period of time. And that's why we remember those people.

But we're talking about the earliest stages of starting a company. And in those days, all of these founders had co-founders that they lent on for all the reasons I just mentioned. So I think it's always important to remember that when you're starting a company, and wondering whether you should have a co-founder or not.

Okay, so hopefully, I've convinced you that you really do want a co-founder when you're starting a company. But what if you're really keen to get started in a company right now, and you don't have a co-founder that immediately available, or someone that you can bring on board? Should you wait to get a great co-founder before you start a company? Or should you just go ahead and get started? Well, I think the default answer is that you should wait because of all the reasons I just mentioned, all the benefits that you get from having a co-founder. But Y Combinator has funded single founders, and we have done so successfully. So I've noticed that there are some exceptions to this rule and they tend to follow a particular pattern. And that pattern is that the single founders, those who start company by themselves, has sort of two things that are true.

So one is they have an idea that they have incredibly high conviction about either because they're solving a personal problem for themselves. So there really no solution is necessary. Or they're a domain expert, they're working in a field where they know for sure the sort of technology that's missing, where the customers might be. So there's all of that because they have such conviction in the idea that they don't need a co-founder to convince them that this is a good idea to get started on. They're ready to go.

The second condition is that those single founders, they are able to make progress on that idea without a co-founder, in the short time at least. And that almost always means that they're technical, or at least technical enough to be able to build the first version of the product so they can show it to potential investors, or maybe even to potential co-founders who may want to join the company. And that second point is something I've noticed that the best single founders are also able to do is not only are they tremendously productive in building product and talking to users themselves, they're also able to run a great background search for co-founders and keep their eyes open. And if the opportunity arises, bring on a great co-founder. And I think the best example I can think of here would be Drew Houston of Dropbox.

So Drew applied Y Combinator way, way back now, in 2007. He had a really solid idea for building Dropbox, because he'd already felt the pain of losing his own files. So he knew for sure, there was a better solution to build. But he didn't have a co-founder. And so Paul Graham, the Y Combinator founder, messaged him back saying, "We love your application, you're great, the idea's great, but we really won't fund you without a co-founder. So come back to us when we have one." And Drew kind of went away, continued building the Dropbox prototype, while also looking for co-founders and found Arasha, who would be later the Dropbox CTO and his co-founder. And he applied again, and [inaudible 00:06:34] And now Dropbox is obviously a tremendously successful company.

So that's kind of what I'd ask you to bear in mind is, if you're really keen to get a startup right now, but you don't have a co-founder, ask yourself like, do you have absolute high conviction in this idea, you know sure that this is the idea that we want to work on? There's no other ideas that you'd be open to? And can you really make progress without having a co-founder? And if those things are true, sure. Go ahead and give it a shot. But if not, I'd really suggest you wait until you do have a co-founder to start a company.

So when you're thinking about bringing on a co-founder, what should you be looking for in them? Well, I actually think the single most important thing to know about someone before you start a company with them is how do they handle stress. Sort of second most important is how well are they going to help you handle stress. And the reason I say that is startups are very incredibly stressful, intense experience, as I mentioned before. And a great co-founder should be able to support you through those and help you through those. Because if you're determined and motivated, enjoy working together, you'll keep working on this startup for a long period of time. And that's usually what it takes to build a really successful company. So you really don't want to start a company with someone that you don't know particularly well. Because even if you've spent time with them in social events, or you hung out together a little bit, you don't really have insight into how they're going to respond to pressure and stress. And are they someone that's going to stick around when things are tough? And are they someone that's going to help you want to stick around when things are tough?

So the best people to start companies with are always people that you've got some sort of personal experiences, where you kind of know the character and how they're going to respond to those tough situations. And that usually means there's someone, a close friend, or someone that you've worked with, under stressful conditions. So I'd certainly recommend that you be on the lookout and think about that when you're considering co-founders. The second thing I think you really want to look for is understanding the goals and values someone has for starting a company or wanting to do a startup. And honestly, I think when I was younger, I used to think of some goals and values as being sort of fuzzy terms. I didn't need them too much. But over time, I realized, really what they mean is understanding the motivations someone has for doing what they do. And in this context, I think it's really important to talk with someone, even if you know them very well, about why they want to do a startup, what are they hoping for? And the kinds of things that can come out are avoiding conflicting goals, right.

So for example, let's say that you really want to build a high-growth, high-intensity, high-risk startup and you want to push forward, you want to raise venture capital, you want to hire a bunch of people, you want to just really go for it. And your goal is to take the company public and you're okay kind of taking lots of risks along the way to get that. That's a totally fine set of motivations, it's a very common set of motivations for startup founders. But let's say your co-founder prefers to take kind of a slow and steady approach. Maybe they're more motivated by building great software for a small group of people. And they will be totally fine if you just made enough revenue to pay yourselves good salaries and just grew a little bit every year. That's also a completely fine set of motivations for wanting to start a company. But the two motivations there aren't compatible with each other and they'll lead to inevitable conflict.

So what I'd suggest is make sure that you have this conversation. And it's not a perfect predictor, because people's goals and ambitions for a startup change over time. I've seen people start companies because, honestly, they just wanted to get rich. And their hope was that they would be able to sell the company in two to three years for a good amount to a bigger company. But they got two to three years into the company, and they loved it so much, they got so excited by the challenge that they kept working on it, and they're still working on it a decade later. So that's totally fine. I'm not saying that having this conversation means you're gonna know for sure whether your goals and values are aligned over the next decade, which is how long it usually takes if a startup is successful, but at least having the conversation gives you a better chance of finding a co-founder who you're aligned with around a high level important stuff.

Now, as you're probably wondering, I'm talking about what you should look for in co-founders, and I haven't mentioned the obvious thing, which is, what skills do they have. So it's obviously really important to have a co-founder who has the right sort of skills to help you grow the company. And usually that means someone who's got complementary set of skills to you, right? So if you're really great at sales, talking to users, getting customers, ideally, you'd have a co-founder who's really great at building product, and writing code, and building software, because the two of you can divide and conquer and get a lot done. Why do you think that's really important? I don't think it's one you should overly fixate it. All right. So more important than anything is just working with someone that you like working with and you trust. And so if sort of the person best fits that description doesn't necessarily have the perfect set of complementary skills, tools, I think that's fine, you should still bring them on as a co-founder. And then you can start hiring people as you need, and make enough progress in the company to get investment, you can hire people to kind of fill in the skills gaps, and that's okay.

Another point I'd just make on this is, when you are trying to see if someone's got complementary skills to you, don't go too much into the details of how well do their skills map onto this specific idea you're working on right now. So a common example of this we see sometimes is someone's considering bringing on a technical co-founder. And they want to build an iPhone app. But the co-founder, even though they know them, they trust them, they've worked with him before, that co-founder isn't necessarily an iPhone app developer, they haven't built iPhone apps in the past. That's not a reason to rule someone out as a co-founder, right. What does matter is that they're willing to learn what they need to learn. So if they're not an iPhone developer, they're willing to learn how to do that. And particularly, they're willing to learn things that maybe aren't glamorous, like startups are often just a grind of doing a lot of boring work to get the thing going. And so long as you have a co-founder who's okay with that, it's totally fine if they don't have the perfect set of skillsets. So don't rule someone out who's potentially a great co-founder because they don't have this checklist of specific skills you're looking for. But do make sure you count them in if it's someone that you trust, you like working with, you've got a good sense of how they're going to handle the stress and pressure of the startup journey.

So where should you look for to find co-founders? Well, the answer here is a little obvious. It's to start with the people you already know. So ideally, your friends and colleagues, and kind of ironically, the best time to find a co-founder are when you're not actually necessarily looking for a co-founder to start a company with right now. What I mean by that is, if I were going giving myself advice 10, 15 years ago, what I would say is, rather than sort of trying to pick a startup idea, and go and find co-founders to work on with it, I would suggest that I just look for people to do projects with. So if you're in school, look around, see who's in your class, who's in school, and like, identify people that you think would be cool to work on a project. And this project doesn't have to be a takeover the world idea of a company, just somebody you find interesting. Like maybe you're into games, and you want to build a cool game together. The thing that's awesome about projects is that it's much less scarier and asking for a far lower of commitment if you ask them to work on a project with you than it is to go straight into, "Hey, let's start a company together." Right? So you have sort of a higher chance of people saying yes, if you ask them for this.

And the other thing that's great about projects is you can work on different projects with different people and you can start developing a taste for who do you like? Well, what kinds of personalities? Like what kinds of skills are you actually good at as opposed to what you might think you're good at? And so what kind of complementary skills might you look for in a co-founder. And again, being in school or college is a really ideal time for this because you're surrounded by lots of people who usually have a decent chunk of spare time. And so you can start getting together to work on things that you think are fun. And, again, kind of ironically, although this is I'm suggesting you don't try and start a startup. Projects that you work on in your spare time often tend to be some of the greatest sources for actually finding great startup ideas and building huge companies. Facebook's an obvious example, something that started out as a project while Mark Zuckerberg was an undergrad at Harvard. And now it's turning into one of the biggest companies in the world. But that's not why I'm suggesting you do this. I'm suggesting you can look for people to work on projects with because that's a great way for you to get a sense of what kind of person do you enjoy working with, and what specific type of personality do you work well with.

And this advice also applies if you're not in college or school, maybe if you're working at a company, like look at your coworkers, like, keep a list of people that you think are particularly smart, particularly capable, who impresses you, and start getting to know them better. And ask them if they're up for working on things in the evenings or weekends. That's the kind of personality...the kind of person who is interested in working on evening and weekend projects is the kind of person that's likely to make a great co-founder. I actually remember years ago at Y Combinator startup school, when it was an in-person physical event, we had Phil Libin, the founder of Evernote, there. And he kind of gave a somewhat extreme version of his advice, which was that he sort of years and years before he started a company knew that he wanted to start a company someday. And so he would only make friends with people that he thought could someday be a co-founder. And now, while I think that advice is maybe a little extreme, if you don't just want to be around people who might be co-founders, there is truth to it. Right? So I think this is kind of the thing where if you make this of a conscious effort well before you start a company, it'll probably the best bet for finding a great co-founder.

But let's say you do know for sure that you want to start a company, and you're kind of ready to go, again, right now. How do you start finding co-founders? Well, again, you start in the same place, you start with people that you know. And what I've noticed is an issue people run into here is that they can be really reluctant to just ask people they know to start a company with them. And it's all kind of reasons, like maybe you're worried about how your relationship will change, like maybe you don't value the personal relationship more than the risks of working with someone. And those are fair concerns. But it's not the right optimization for starting a company, you have to make the ask.

So what I'd suggest, the pretty simple algorithm here for finding co-founders, it's make a list of the people that you know, you're closest to that you think would be great co-founders, and start from top to bottom, and ask every single person there to go grab a coffee and talk to them, and ask them if they'll start a company with you and be your co-founder. If they say no, that's totally fine. Say you understand. But like, who would they start a company with and make it very specific. Ask them, "If you were starting a company, who would be sort of your top three or four co-founders that you want to try and convince to work with you?" And ask them for an introduction to each of those people. So your list keeps growing now. You ask the people you know, if they say no, you at least get some more ideas for names. And then you meet with those people. And you ask them and you simply repeat, repeat the same algorithm, ask them if they'd be interested in being a co-founder with you along. And if they say no, ask them who'd they try to recruit. And so this way, you start growing the tree of potential co-founders beyond those people you immediately know, but at least they're still connected via people that you do know. So they're not just sort of completely random strangers.

The final sort of bit of advice, I'd say, for where to look is go out and try and meet people that just have similar interests to you. Right, it kind of sounds a little bit just like how to have a social life. But this is essentially what finding co-founders reduces to. So if you're an engineer, attend, like developer meetups or work on open source projects, or go to hackathons. Do things where others, engineers and builders are hanging out. And you're likely to find some meets. And if you're not technical, if you're interested in those things, you should totally attend those kinds of events too. But maybe also just attend or find people who are interested in the kinds of things you're interested in. Maybe you're interested in economics and finance, and that's kind of the pool of things, or is a pool of interests where you think you'll find a startup idea. Well, make a real effort to go out and meet people that have similar interests. And in these COVID times, there's lots of online groups and communities that you can join. But even in regular times, there's always ways to find people that have similar interests to you. And because if constantly on the lookout for people who might make co-founders, you have a high chance of finding someone who could be a good fit.

So once you found a potential co-founder, how do you test out and know for sure that you both want to start a company together before making the final commitment? Well, it's not a perfect process. And at some point, you just kind of have to make the leap and hope that it will work out. But one way to de-risk it is to allocate a chunk of time where you agreed to kind of work together. And set yourself a deadline by which time you want to have ideally, like a MVP, or a prototype of something built, or you at least want to have gone out and try it out, pitching some customers and convincing them to pay you if you did build a particular product. These are all things you'd usually do when you're signing up with a new company or testing out new idea anyhow. And do that together, and agree that at the end of the time that you've set aside, that you both have an honest conversation, decide, "Do we both enjoy working together on this? And if so, great, let's go ahead and make the leap." And if not, be honest and say, "Hey, let's go our own separate ways."

So making that a little bit more tangible. If you both have the no other commitments, you know, which is pretty uncommon, but sometimes happens if, say, you both graduated college and you didn't go and get a job because you want to start a company, then I'd say treat this like your full time job, right? Say that, "Hey, we're going to set aside a month or three months. And let's just pick idea we're excited about and get as much progress made as we can on building the first version of it, and going out and signing customers." Even if you can't do that full time because you have other commitments, but then do it on evenings and weekends, right. But you'll have to sacrifice some amount of time doing other things in order to actually spend time working together. But the more times, the more hours you can accumulate of working together on the idea, the better sense you'll have for sure if you want to start company or not. Right.

So once you've kind of done that, let's say you've decided that, "Hey, we do want to start the company, and we want to be co-founders," then I think there's two important points you want to make sure that you're in agreement on. First is the equity split, right, like who owns how much of the company. Now, I think the way to think about this is, your sort of default equity allocation should really be 50/50. That's where you want to start from, right, because assuming that nothing's been built yet, you're at the earliest stages of the company, you're both going to make equal contributions, you both want to be equally motivated to work super hard in the company. And all the work is years and years ahead of you. So there is not really too much reason to deviate from a 50/50 equity split early on. However, we have seen different equity arrangements, and they have been successful. And so I kind of think the underlying thing that you're solving for here is making sure that both of you are happy with what the equity arrangement is, and will be motivated to keep working on the company for a long period of time. Right.

And so, again, usually that means 50/50, but let's just say that you have been working on the company for a little bit longer, or you de-risked it somehow by yourself, and you're bringing on what is commonly called a later stage co-founder, then sometimes deviate from 50/50 might make sense. But the thing I would really encourage you to do is not optimize for the short term, right. So just because you made a little bit of progress and the idea by yourself, and you have a great co-founder, and you're sort of thinking, "Hey, maybe I should take 70% interest, just leave them 30%," because you've made progress in the last 6 months, I would encourage you not to do that. Startups are a really long-term game and you win by making the best decision long term. Right. So if you have a great potential co-founder, and even though you made a little bit of progress on the company yourself, if you know that they won't be all in and fully committed to the success of the company unless they're a 50/50 partner, you should do that. You should make them 50/50 equity partner so you can keep them as motivated and get as much out of them as possible.

The second thing I think you really want to decide is who's the CEO. Now, this can sometimes be an uncomfortable conversation. And to be honest, it's actually, I think, a bit of a red flag if it is uncomfortable conversation. And so as far as the actual title itself goes early on in the startup when it's just two or three co-founders, in terms of how it impacts your day to day and how you divide up responsibilities, the title doesn't actually matter. Like early on, you're all going to be doing a little bit of everything, there's like plenty of like unglamorous grunt work to go around. And just because you have a CEO title doesn't mean you get to sort of abscond from them. Right. So practically, it doesn't matter, like, in terms of who does what.

One exception to that might be, if you need to be doing sales, it usually might be good if the CEO is a person, where CEO title is the person talking to customers and users and convincing them because they might feel a little bit more flattered if the CEO is pitching them. And this kind of gets the point of where really the only impact the CEO title has. And that is externally, and I would say specifically for investors. So investors care about seeing that there is sort of a clear leader, and a clear final decision maker or a tiebreaker. And that person should be the CEO. So when you're pitching investors, it's usually better for whoever sort of does most of the talking, whoever is going to be leading those conversations, that that person is the CEO.

And now, where you run into problems, and a very, very common source of co-founder friction we see at Y Combinator is where two people really want to be the CEO. Right. And this can sort of...we can see this in Y Combinator interviews, where you end up with two people who kind of talk over each other, they interrupt each other, they can look at each other with a little bit of content when the other person's answering. These are all really, really bad signs, right. So be honest with yourselves, if you think it's really important to you to be the CEO, and you both feel that way, you're not good co-founders for each other. So just avoid all that pain and heartache and don't start a coming together. You ideally want to start a company with someone who doesn't care about that stuff if you do, or you're both indifferent to it and you'll find picking whoever you feel is best suited to the role for now, even if that changes sometime in the future.

So let's kind of wrap up everything we've talked about. Once you're sure you want a co-founder, which I hope I've convinced you to, once you run the process to find some good candidates to be a co-founder, and you've identified someone that you really do want to start a company with, because you spent a little bit of time working on projects together and testing each other out, so to speak, then you have the conversations around what's the equity split and who's going to be the CEO. Now you're ready to formalize things. And formalizing really means the legal act of incorporating a company, setting up a vesting agreement. This is really important. Vesting means that the shares in the company, we don't all get them at once. They vest over a period of time, and there's very standard templates and documents for this that you should really ensure that you have in place. And then you're pretty much good to go.

And you know, the when exactly should you sort of leap from, "Hey, we're hanging out, working together," to, "Hey, okay, let's like do some paperwork." Not a perfect answer to that, but it's just kind of up to you. Like once you've made the commitment to yourself and each other, that we're gonna make a real go of trying to build a company together, that's kind of the trigger for when you start making things real by getting sort of the legal, corporation and paperwork done. So, that's all the advice I have for how to think about finding the right co-founder and how to make it happen. I hope that helps and good luck.

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How to Find the Right Co-Founder: Co-Founders, Becoming a Founder | Y Combinator

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Since this video was created, we've launched YC Co-Founder Matching. The advice in this video is still correct -- if you have an existing network to search for co-founders, that's a great place to look for a match. But many founders have also found success with our co-founder matching service, so we now recommend you try that in parallel.

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Las opiniones expresadas por los colaboradores de Entrepreneur son personales.

Comenzar un negocio nuevo es emocionante. Un mundo lleno de posibilidades te espera, puede ser un gran éxito o un fracaso catastrófico, pero la diferencia entre estos dos extremos es lo que nos hace dudar si debemos convertirnos en emprendedores o no.

Desafortunadamente, nunca habrá un momento perfecto para comenzar un negocio. Sin importar cuánto esperes, nunca tendrás la experiencia suficiente, nunca tendrás el dinero necesario y nunca te sentirás completamente seguro. Siempre existirá la posibilidad de que tu empresa fracase, pero también la hay de que triunfe.

Dicho eso, aunque no hay un periodo ideal para emprender, hay momentos clave para hacerlo. Si has experimentado alguna de estas cinco señales, puede ser tiempo de que finalmente empieces tu viaje:

1. Tu trabajo ya no te llena. En cada empleo vas a tener días buenos y malos. Sólo porque tengas algunos días malos seguidos no significa que la única forma de escapar sea teniendo tu propio negocio. Pero si en los días malos y buenos sientes que tu trabajo actual no te está llenando, tal vez sea tiempo de renunciar.

Muchas veces las personas se sienten así porque no son capaces de hacer el trabajo que quieren, y eso pasa porque alguien más está tomando las decisiones. Si te emociona tener tu propio horario y delegar las tareas entonces es momento.

2. Entiendes los riesgos de tener un negocio. No es buena idea simplemente saltar del precipicio. Hay varios riesgos que debes tomar en cuenta y sólo cuando lo hagas podrás dar el siguiente paso. Antes de que tomes grandes decisiones, investiga un poco.

Tal vez estás conciente de algunas posibles dificultades, pero todas las experiencias te enseñarán algo. Siempre es bueno hablar con los emprendedores a tu alrededor, especialmente con los que ya tuvieron un negocio y fracasaron.

3. Tienes una idea que te apasiona. Si estás pensando en tener tu propia empresa, tal vez ya tengas una idea de negocio. ¿Es algo que no te interesa mucho pero crees que puedes ganar mucho dinero con eso? ¿Es algo que te apasiona pero no estás seguro de los detalles? Lo creas o no, la segunda opción es una mejor señal de que estás listo. Aunque tengas una gran idea, si no te apasiona, no estarás motivado para ser exitoso.

4. Tienes un sistema de apoyo. Muy pocos emprendedores son capaces de hacerlo solos. Aunque seas la única persona que toma las decisiones, los recursos y mentores pueden guiarte a través de las decisiones más difíciles.

Tu pareja, hijos y amigos necesitan conocer tu deseo de emprender y, aunque no estén muy seguros, necesitan apoyarte en el proceso. En algunos casos significa que están listos de dar algo de capital si el plan no resulta como esperabas.

5. Sabes lo que es importante para ti. Algunas personas pasan toda su vida sin darse cuenta qué es más importante para ellas. Muchas llegan a pensar que ser su propio jefe es lo más significativo, pero no se sienten completas cuando lo logran.

Observa tus motivaciones para emprender y ve si concuerdan con tu percepción de lo que es la vida de un iniciador de negocios o si están más enfocadas en lo que de verdad quieres hacer. No te desanimes si en las primeras fases no resulta lo que esperabas.

Es un mundo volátil, pero mientras estés comprometido con mejorar tus ideas y tu trabajo siempre tendrás la oportunidad de triunfar. Confía en ti mismo, de otro modo corres el riesgo de fracasar antes de que tu negocio despegue.

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5 señales de que estás listo para emprender

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Las opiniones expresadas por los colaboradores de Entrepreneur son personales. Comenzar un negocio nuevo es emocionante. Un mundo lleno de posibilidades te espera, puede ser un gran éxito o un fracaso catastrófico, pero la diferencia entre estos dos extremos es lo que nos hace dudar si debemos convertirnos en emprendedores o no.