Humbled MBA

I'm curious if there are more up-to-date recommendations for his light regulation technique, linked at the beginning of the article: http://humbledmba.com/become-a-morning-person-how-to-end-insomnia-f For example, the "NatureBright Per3 Deluxe Wake Up Light" recommended in the 2012 update is no longer available on Amazon.

Seems like I see this article on hacker news a lot. Here are some of my past favorites. http://www.humbledmba.com/startups-in-stealth-mode-need-one-piece-of-a… http://eaaasyusuf.blogspot.com/2012/03/tell-everyone-about-your-busine…

Vagueness will get you no where with this crowd. You may want to read the following: http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find . My intention is not to be rude but I think you need to understand the context of what you are asking. You will not find what you are looking for here, nor are you attacking the problem with the right strategy, as such you are setting yourself up for failure.

It can definitely be done like your mentor said. As a Rails developer myself, I'm kind of biased to coders being part of the DNA of the company and having a strong stake in it. This is a great article on humbdledmba for non-tech co-founders: http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find They make a good point. The coder's biggest is fear is wasting his/her time. Do as much as you can to alleviate their fear. For example - start a blog, get a following. I hope this is helpful for you.

What is your amazing idea? http://www.humbledmba.com/startups-in-stealth-mode-need-one-piece-of-a…

>Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities? Ultimately, whether or not it was "worth it" will always be decided based on the final outcome of the company coupled with a large dose of hindsight bias. A startup founder who sacrificed relationships to build a successful company will be recognized as having made the correct decision amidst the company of those who couldn't understand his/her vision. A startup founder who fails having sacrificed relationships and friendships will be recognized as foolish and overly ambitious. If you want a story that aspiring founders responded positively to: "How credit card arbitrage funded my first company."[1] fared pretty well on Reddit/HN when it was first written. From the comfort of success it's easy to judge one's decisions as the correct decisions. It's just as easy to condemn the same decisions made by a failed founder. [1]http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-try-this-at-home-how-credit-card-arbitr…

I really dislike articles like this, which state unproven thoughts as facts and useful advice. 1) Learning to code isn't hard? It is. But let's say you did learn some basic stuff and put up an MVP which is gaining traffic. You now need to hire more engineers. How are you going to vet them? When you hire them are you going to manage them or are they going to manage you? Are they just going to take over the product? How do you know if they are doing a good job or not? 2) Hire an external team. Good luck! You have all the same problems as above but now you are probably paying a lot more cash and less equity for the work. 3) Simplify your MVP. Wait, but I already did simplify it, and now I need to grow it! An MVP does not a company make, and once you do make an MVP all your problems don't naturally go away. 4) No settling for a mediocre team. I spend a lot of time interviewing people for engineering positions, I have a very strong technical background, and I can assure it is extremely difficult. Great people and mediocre people don't walk around with signs around their neck. They all blend together and it is your job to identify them, and it isn't easy at all. As somebody mentioned in a comment post, I think this similar article which is linked to is significantly better: http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find This response for how to find a technical co-founder is just perfect: > I can't help you with that, but all the good…

How do you find a good cofounder? Asked and answered many times, but I like this answer the best: http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find Should your programmer/designer be local? I think your programmer should be you, to begin with. Don't know PHP? I think you can learn it in the next six months at minimal expense. You may groan and discover you hate PHP, and end up moving to another medium because there's a reason you hate it. If you're going to try and get a technical cofounder, presumably with equity only, you'll significantly expand your available talent pool if you can get the talent to take you seriously. That can be done by either having money to throw at the project (ruled out already), or being able to at least carry on a conversation on how to get things done in the medium you've chosen. You can often find programmers in far-flung regions of the world that work for cheap, but probably not many work for equity. That leaves your immediate surroundings or whoever you can travel to get an audience with. Is crowdfunding a good source for raising capital? Yes. That's why it's illegal. Other than end-runs around the system (crowdfunding a loan you're personally liable for like with prosper or lendingclub, or crowdfunding a project through direct sales of finished product like kickstarter), you're stuck with friends, family, and fools.

Yep...know how you feel bud. Thanks for sharing out loud. I want to add one additional suggestion. I think lack of light and Seasonal Affective Disorder gets mixed into the normal startup depression quite frequently. It's never surprising to me when people feel depressed during winter months. The lack of light, lack of vitamin D—it contributes heavily. Now, the OP mentioned this is a once-a-quarter pattern, so S.A.D is clearly not the only thing at play. But I would be willing to bet that it contributes. For those that know me, I'm a huge evangelist of light products to solve insomnia. In the winter, these same light products solve for S.A.D. My old post on insomnia has lots of good links: http://www.humbledmba.com/become-a-morning-person-how-to-end-insomnia-… My new favorite light product is the NatureBright Per 3 (http://www.amazon.com/NatureBright-PER3-Deluxe-Light-Therapy/dp/B000S5… It's well worth a try. Whatever you buy, make sure it provides minimum 5000 lux and that you use it at least 30 minutes a day. And finally— Regardless of all this, props to you for writing a wonderfully authentic post. And it's already quite obvious with the comments here that you are not alone. Keep at it.

Great post, and I definitely empathize with your struggle. Finding a good co-founder is damn hard, whether he's technical or business. As someone who has been in those shoes before (but wearing the business hat looking for a technical co-founder), I have found it at least as hard, if not harder, to find good technical co-founders. I think a business person who is unwilling to learn any amount of coding, especially on the front-end, or who is uninterested in product development like UX, customer development, etc, has no business doing a startup -- and you shouldn't waste your time on them either. From the business founder's perspective, I have always found a couple posts I've read from other business founders pretty inspiring, and I think they ring true for what any good business co-founder should bring to the table. The next time a business founder reaches out to you looking for a technical co-founder, maybe you can point him to these articles and say, "do this first" and then we'll talk. Best of luck to you, and keep pushing at it! http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2332349

Yes. See http://humbledmba.com/become-a-morning-person-how-to-end-insomnia-f

He links to another article which states clearly what he was trying to say: Don't look for a technical cofounder; earn one. http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find

I'm not sure how this matches up with your previous article, http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-give-bullshit-advice , that made the point: "Don't tell an entrepreneur whether you think his idea will work. You don't know. You have absolutely no idea." Either you give advice about what doesn't work, or you don't... you can't do both.

I've found this helpful as well: http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714304 Get out there an meet as many people as you can! Go to local events, tap into your personal networkm do whatever it takes. Its not easy, but it is possible. Good Luck!

Good talk, but lots of big generalities. You have to pick and choose what to really take to heart, IMO. Good counterpoint that you may have already seen: http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-give-bullshit-advice

Not sure who downvoted me for this but I share the same sentiment being said here when I made this comment: http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-give-bullshit-advice Think about all the times ideas like million dollar homepage and pet rocks pops up. People are quick to judge but never seem to see that what they think will succeed or fail is purely an opinion. You can't predict whether something will be a success or not for others.

I'll point you to some articles written by people more experienced than I at this: anti-family: - Jason Friedman http://www.humbledmba.com/the-drag-coefficient-scoring-system-how-to-d… Pro-family: - Vivek Wadhwa http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1431263 http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-founding-successful-… Hope you find these helpful. Good luck!

No, what you have done is to post on a discussion board a request for a technical co-founder. What you clearly have not done is perform a search on that discussion board for previous cases where people have asked for technical co-founders, or people have posted articles about why it's hard to find technical co-founders, or articles about why asking for a technical co-founder is bound to fail. Here, click this: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=technical%20cofounder&sort=byPopular… Here are some results, and therefore some things you should read before asking for a technical co-founder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5769824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3236955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3844177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8959377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2332349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1820495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3952751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714304 These are the discussions here. For just some of the articles themselves, here: http://humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find http://www.hailpixel.com/articles/technical-cofounders http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/15/stop-looking-for-a-technical-co-found… http://alexeymk.com/finding-a-technical-co-founder-slides/