Jessica Livingston: recommendation

Transcript context

…Awesome. A couple other things you mentioned earlier, just to unpack a little bit. So being committed, something you look for, and co-founders getting along. In terms of committed, I imagine, these are very practical things. How are they actually going to stick to this? Are they actually excited to work on this? Maybe talk about that a little bit. We all know how hard startups are, but I think you don't really know how hard it is until you actually do it. A lot of people would start a startup still having a job at Google or wherever, and they do it on the side. I do recommend, if people are just getting started and don't want to raise money yet, starting it on the side is a great way to get going, but at some point you have to commit, you have to burn the boat, because we found that founders who were still getting a paycheck and health insurance, once the going got tough, they did not quit their job. And you sort of need that desperation like, "I have to make this startup succeed because it's my job." Not like, "Oh, I'll just stay at Google." You need that. And we found that founders who weren't leaving their jobs, it was just not working out. Or that co-founder would always wind up leaving the company because they didn't want to actually leave their job. And that's fine, there are people that can't leave their jobs for financial reasons. That's fine. You just shouldn't be starting a startup if you're not going to be prepared to leave your job. So that's the leaving of the job thing. And the co-founders getting along, oh my. I spent a lot of my time at Y Combinator when I was there all the time, full time, mediating co-founder disputes. And so many startups died or had near-death experiences because the co-founders didn't get along or broke up. It just happens all the time. And so that's why I think, during interviews, I was desperately trying to search for any clues that the co-founders didn't get along, or if they blatantly contradicted each other. But you could also tell if they were answering, finishing each other's sentences. I love co-founders that have a history together; either they went to school together, they went to college together, work together, maybe they're siblings. Because when you have a long-term relationship, you trust each other and you know each other's weaknesses, and you're usually on the same page with your aspirations and everything. It's really scary when two founders get together just to start the startup and don't have any history. Massive red flag. Sometimes it works out like in the case of Dropbox, Drew and Arash both went to MIT, but I think they didn't know each other before they started Dropbox, and it worked out. But most of the time it doesn't. So we've talked about co-founders getting along, looking for defensiveness, domain expertise, the sign of making shit happen, earnestness. Is there anything else that we've missed that you look for in the founders that tell you maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't?…

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