Lessons from building a startup and finding cofounders

Turning ideas into reality is better done in pairs or more

Dear Peer2Peer community,

Hope your long weekend was a blast💥, or a restful one 🧘. Today the article is an excerpt of a blog post brought to you by John Reinstra, currently a Staff Engineer at Robinhood. He previously founded General Task, a startup focused on enhancing productivity through innovative task management software, and is exploring a floating city idea. His experience at Robinhood, including its rapid growth and organizational challenges, inspired him to create General Task. John believes that effective time management is crucial for achieving significant goals and aims to streamline workflow by integrating various productivity tools. For more about John and his work, visit his website.

Four startup lessons I learned from General Task

1. Take time off from work before you start

After leaving Robinhood on Friday, October 15, 2021, I started hacking on General Task the very next day, on Saturday morning. I should have recognized that I was a bit burned out at that time, and should have given myself at least a week, if not several weeks, to decompress and prepare myself mentally for the big challenge ahead. There’s no need to rush into a huge commitment of energy and time so quickly.

2. Prepare for things to take much longer and be much harder than expected

Just about everything that could have gone wrong at General Task, did go wrong, and just about every timeline I had for hitting major milestones around users or retention was far shorter than what actually happened. While you don’t want to go into a startup with a pessimistic attitude, it’s important to prepare yourself mentally for what will be a very long and difficult (but also exhilarating and adventurous) journey. Startups are not “get rich quick” schemes and are not for the faint of heart.

3. Wait until you find a cofounder

I was impatient to get started with General Task, so I started off as a solo founder. I thought that I would enjoy having more equity and more control over the company, but I was not ready for the level of stress and difficulty that solo founders experience. You need someone who you can share the burden with, keep you accountable and self-aware, and help work through difficult decisions. So, consider finding a good partner from the very beginning, who is equally invested as you are (and has a roughly equal share of equity). It’s more than worth the reduction in control and starting equity.

4. Find a cofounder with complementary skills

I partnered with a cofounder about nine months into my startup journey. While it was great to no longer be a solo founder, we both had similar software engineering backgrounds and so it was difficult to appropriately divide our responsibilities, and neither of us were experts in important non-technical areas of the business. If you can, you should find a cofounder who is good at things you are not good at; you’ll make a more potent team that way.

For the full list of 34 lessons, read here.

Get a warm intro to Robinhood

John has graciously agreed to refer people to Robinhood. There are selected senior, staff, and manager positions available on Peer2Peer. For a more comprehensive list, check out their career site.

Find the right cofounder with CoffeeSpace

If you’re looking to meet others exploring venture ideas or find a cofounder, you’re in luck. I'm pleased to share that Peer2Peer has partnered with CoffeeSpace, a Tinder/Hinge-like platform that algorithmically matches people currently exploring ideas and/or looking for a partner to build their venture with.

Since launching in early March, they have 2,600+ signups, 65,000+ swipes, and 2,750+ matches and counting. For more info & to join, visit: https://onelink.to/coffeespace.com and use the referral code P2P_0517 at the end of the onboarding to get one month free of their Business Class premium tier (worth $49.99).