Bearing a Startup Child Without the Other Parent!

Have you lately conceived an idea? Do you really wish to bring it to life? Then, rush. Start looking for the other parent - THE CO-FOUNDER. A co-founder is to a startup what a parent is to a child. All right, the subject is not new. Almost every entrepreneur/mentor/investor worth an idea has talked about the importance of a co-founder. What’s new is that despite being in the know, this is exactly what I am going through these days.

Pregnant with an idea, I soon started working towards it. Of course, all by myself. I soon realised that I begin my day with a determination to finish 10 tasks and end up finishing 5. Startups are a hell lot of work; they suck your energies like the dementors at Hogwarts, the difference perhaps being that in the case of startups, every time you are not as lucky or as gifted as Harry Potter! That's the reason many startups breath their last in the crucial stage of conception to execution.

Someone who is not a product of a business school or an engineering school has an equal right to become an entrepreneur but he should be ready to swim solo. These schools, apart from building acumen for business give you – co-founders. People who themselves want their ideas converted into reality, taking physical shape. Even if you discount Bill Gates-Paul Allen, Sergey Brin-Larry Page and Steve Jobs-Steve Wozniak-Ronald Wayne as extraordinary examples, there are thousand others which prove beyond doubt that a co-founder is a necessity of a startup you can’t ignore. When you Google the word ‘co founder’ chances are http://cofounderslab.com and http://techcofounder.com will feature in the first 5 results. I mean look at that, now there are dedicated services coming up to find you a co-founder! Though I don’t have a way to ascertain but I somehow suspect that the founders of the sites must have been in desperate search for a co-founder but when they didn’t find any lightning struck in the skies and another idea was born :-)

Now, what should people like me who fail to find one, do? Quit?

Hell, NO! There will be times when you feel down and out, some tasks will take longer to finish, some brainstorming sessions will have to be spent talking to a wall. But along the way, one thing becomes very clear; leaving an idea for the absence of a co-founder would be a bad idea. 

When you don’t have a co-founder, the process of feedback is something which acquires critical importance. And, here I don’t mean the typical end user of the potential product. Share your idea with the people you trust and who seem to be reasonably intelligent.  What I have learned in the last couple of weeks is; if you put genuine effort in collecting feedback, your startup idea is going to be so much enriched.

Keeping yourself charged up is another challenge. As the time of delivery nears, you start feeling a little edgy as the other parent of the child is not there to take care of you. In times like these, it’s important to not lose focus, to realize that the child needs to see the light of the day.

It has to be born!

If you find a co-founder for your startup, nothing like it but even if you don’t, you should not lose heart.

Remember, it’s ok to work on a good idea alone than to work on a bad idea with more than one founder.