Why a ‘day zero’ start is important
By: John Childs-Eddy
Tags: Startup, Problem Solving, Cofounders

I’ve been on the path to starting a startup since March 4, 2021 and I’ve done five cofounder trials through YC’s Startup School. Here are some of my observations so far.

First things first: I’ve done startups before, and this is the first time I’m focusing on finding the right cofounder first. I’ve decided that this time, I’m not executing an idea for real until I find that person (or people).

I believe the right startup team is the essential difference between 10x output and normal output. If I wanted normal output I would work as a solo founder, or, just go and get a job at an already successful startup, whose founding team no doubt managed to get 10x output for long enough to reach escape velocity.

In my opinion, the largest edge that comes from building a startup from scratch is being able to work on the problems you and your cofounder(s) think are the most critical to solve and by doing them together, you are amazingly good at solving them faster/better than anyone else has so far.

While that sounds good in theory, I’ve found finding the right cofounder(s) incredibly difficult.

Why is it so hard to find the right cofounder?

There just isn’t a deep talent pool of people wanting to co-found a startup with someone they haven’t met yet. Of the people who do want to do it, most are not capable. (It’s just the nature of the beast). Of the people who do want to do it, and who are capable, most have an idea they are already sold on. Now they want to sell other people on that idea and there are multiple problems with this approach when you dig into it, as I will do below. And lastly, There are very few people who want to work from day zero.

It’s that last one: ‘working from day zero’ that I believe to be the most critical, and overlooked, piece of the puzzle which I want to discuss in more detail here.

For a pre- ‘product market fit’ (PMF) startup, ‘day zero’ is the only rational place that a team who has not worked together previously can start. There are a few reasons for this.

First, while it may not feel like it, there is likely not enough evidence that any particular problem is real. By definition, a pre-PMF startup has not proved they are working on the right problem, there is a solution for that problem, and that’s the right solution. Compounding this, there is no pre-existing relationship between the founders, meaning it’s not easy — or even possible — to simply trust that you (or them) know enough about the problem and the required solution. Plus, you’re either being asked or asking someone to do at least a few months’ unpaid work on this, and I say this having been on both the buy and sell side of this equation.

A ‘day zero’ start gives a new team the best shot at success

A ‘day zero’ start solves this problem because it means you jointly collect evidence around the nature of the problem you will work on. You jointly discuss how it might be solved. Remember: in the real world, nearly all frequently occuring and highly painful unsolved problems can’t be solved. So even if the problem is real: most of the time, there is no actual solution for the currently existing, highly frequent, highly painful problem you are thinking about.

The reason why there are almost no real problems that are good for startups to work on, of course, is because the nature of capitalism means that some enterprising person who is adjacent to the problem is already working on solving it. And if they haven’t solved it, why will you?

If the problem is a good one for a startup, it might become solvable when a 10x cofounding team works to solve it.

But the problem I (and possibly you) have is that the brilliant cofounding team you want to work with needs to buy into it in the first place, and the only way for them to do that is to be part of the research process that validates it initially, before anything gets built.

They also need to buy into more than the problem and solution — they need to buy into other critical things, like the market itself. How big is it? How fast is it growing? There’s a reason investors like Reid Hoffman look at market size when considering an investment before looking at any of the details of the startup: it’s because if he isn’t sold on the market, nothing else matters.

I’ve learned this the hard way

Openly sharing some of my own failures here, more than once, I’ve tried really hard to convince some really smart cofounders that I’ve found a way to get x amount of y$ users in z market (for which I personally am a credible problem aggregator and have documented extensive user interviews/research). But, they do not have my personal experiences, and they do not know me well: what evidence do they have that this is true?

Market sizes are also often the function of market scope definitions. These are as adjustable as the problem itself and based on the fallibilities of the observer. Likewise, I’ve been in their shoes on the other side.

Now, I believe the following is true: anyone who is smart enough to want to work with you will also need to be part of hearing the pain first hand from the users, and ideating on the first version of the MVP to validate a solution might exist at scale.

Moreover, first forays into new problems and ideas are always incredibly nuanced, and actual solutions are often extremely counterintuitive. AirBNB (“who in their right mind would sleep on an airbed in a stranger’s home?”), Uber (“get in a stranger’s car and get driven somewhere?”), LinkedIn (“connect with people whose phone numbers and contact details you already have”), Google (“we will generate a single page of blue links that send you immediately off our website”). Are all incredibly counterintuitive ideas. But the thing is, pretty much all good startup ideas are counterintuitive ideas — the reason no one has done them yet is precisely because they seem like a terrible idea.

So in light of this, to rephrase what you will need to do as a new co-founding team building a world class startup: you will need to jointly come up with a problem definition and a requisite problem solution that sounds downright crazy to anyone who isn’t on the team.

And you will need to do this with someone you don’t know very well.

This brings with it the problem of having little shared experience. This lack of shared experience is a bridge made even harder to cross if you have different disciplines as skill sets (like an engineer and an MBA). On the one hand, team heterogeneity means you will have the advantages of having different points of view, but the disadvantages of not being able to communicate effectively with each other (yet).

So: solving for shared experience is also one of the first things you will need to do to learn to communicate effectively. Before you can agree on a problem, you need to share the experience of the problem with each other. You may even discover you do not agree on how to define the problem itself — even when presented with the same evidence. You will inevitably see the problem differently. This is good. It means your team is already functioning and providing value. But it also means if you’re a solo founder trying to sell someone on the work you’ve already done, you may have to backtrack, realize that what you’ve done so far is probably a sunk cost to some degree, and make the rational choice to see it that way.

This is hard. Very hard.

So now, when I chat to a potential cofounder and see they’ve built a solution, named it, and become emotionally attached to XYZ “startup of my dreams”, it’s always an immediate ‘no’ in my mind. This person hasn’t realized they need to have shared experiences to define the problem, and they are starting our relationship at the wrong starting point, which is a strong negative signal when assessing their ability to make other decisions correctly. And so I say, “No”. Not because I don’t buy into their idea per se (although it’s quite difficult for anyone to buy into someone else’s idea when they have little personal experience of it) but, I say no mostly because of the incorrect decision making I see.

Most startups start with the wrong idea. That’s fine. The most important thing is simply to start. Wrong ideas are fixable. However, incorrect decision making is not fixable, and worse, it compounds over time.

The thing is: there’s a tendency all people have to commit to things as they spend more money and time on them. Even if those things are wrong. Smart people commit to incorrect ideas all the time — I’ve done it multiple times myself. Mentally, I refer to it as the cost/commitment paradox. It’s a pattern I see everywhere. The more Thing A costs Person B to get, the more Person B values it and doesn’t want to let go of it — regardless of thing A’s objective value.

Fighting this tendency in myself is one of the hardest parts I’ve found being a founder in the past. One way it has manifested in my startup career is that as I have spent time on problem research and solution ideation, I can become convinced I’ve discovered something. I may have spent weeks doing user research, validating the pain, building a lightweight MVP and launching it…only to talk to folks I really respect who shoot it down for the real flaws that it really does have.

This is reality. Starting a startup is hard. Really, really hard.

True intellectual honesty is one of the major advantages a startup actually has over a major (but highly politicized and inefficient ) incumbents. A ‘day zero’ start gives a young startup access to a level of intellectual honesty that becomes harder to hold on to as your startup evolves.

This is why I believe that a ‘day zero’ start is so important.

I’m reminded of what Paul Graham has said in the past: great startups are focused on asking great questions, and paradoxically are not focused on positioning themselves as providing a great solution. As in “we are asking if we can provide a great transportation experience by offering rides in everyday peoples cars?” — instead of “we are building the best alternative taxi company”.

Notice that if you phrase it as a question, you allow the possibility that the answer is “No!” It’s a startup! A rational person realizes x problem and y solution might not be (and almost certainly isn’t) the winning combination, and so they allow for evolution by starting with the question. Conversely, the statement approach reflects non-inquiry and a static worldview: this is what we do and we are the best at it. Even if it is not true, we always say we are this, regardless of the evidence.

If Slack had done this, they would be a failed social gaming company you’ve never heard of; Segment would be a failed educational tool that once let professors know their students were confused; and AirBNB would still just be a conference spillover site for trade show accommodation. These are instead great companies because their founding teams fearlessly and repetitively asked great, hard questions and were intellectually honest in their answers.

So, I conclude by saying I am not focused on being the number 1 choice in cofounders, but rather, the question I am asking myself is: am I able to attract a world class co-founder — who also wants to start at day zero, not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary?

I don’t know yet.

But at least this time, I know I’m starting with the right question.

P.S. If you’re interested in starting something from ‘day zero’ and are looking for a cofounder, please check out my LinkedIn profile and get in touch.