YC co-founder matching is bad

Hello - I'm one of the people at YC who work on YC's co-founder matching site (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching).

It's not totally clear to me if OP is referring to that product specifically or something else, but I figured I would take the opportunity to get feedback anyway!

We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear from people who have used it - what your experience was and how we could make it better.

We've been running the site for about two years now, since we launched it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27750298. Coincidentally, the idea actually grew out of open threads just like the ones OP suggested. We started by experimenting with those threads on HN and our Startup School forum, but nobody ever found an actual co-founder that way.

So we decided to build it as an actual product. Since we launched, over 20 teams that met on the site have gotten funded by YC, and many of them are doing quite well. So we think the early results are overall promising.

That said, co-founder matching is a very hard problem. It's a multi-sided marketplace with complex dynamics, and we know we have a lot of work to do to make it work for everyone. We'd love your feedback if you've tried it.

I've heard it works and it has caused companies to form and get funded.

I signed up like 1 week ago and I'm a 2nd time founder. It depends on your expectations and how you configure it is my read. For me, even though I'm technical, I'm mostly looking for other technical founders. Other than that, the thing I mainly want to feel when I read a profile is a sense of "oh this person would be fun to jam on ideas with" and in addition, "yea I think they got the same level of hustle/urgency as I do." Concurrently, I want to get a sense of the person's motivations - are they all about the $$, I'm a pass usually in that scenario. I just want to build something people love.

I think I've already seen a few people who match that criteria.

Aside: kinda worried about how many people are looking to start an "ai startup" rather than solve a problem which might involve AI.

Such threads exist, but users don't upvote them

"Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Feb 2023)" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34613562)

"Ask HN: Who is looking for a co-founder?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34817765)

"Ask HN: Co-Founder? Seeking Co-Founder?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34629357)

Just do what Brian Armstrong did. It seemed to work out pretty well for him. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754664

Is your title, "YC co-founder matching is bad", saying that https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching is bad? Or is it meant as a general complaint about finding a co-founder for YC?

If you've had a bad experience with YC's co-founder matching platform, I'd love to hear why you think it's bad. I haven't used it, but I've heard OK things about it from folks who have.

If you're suggesting that HN should do something else, in addition to—or instead of—YC co-founder matching, what would this accomplish that the co-founder matching platform isn't currently?

The crux of the issue is that YC funnels its rejects into "YC Startup School" which gets the associated marketing for "YC Co-Founder Matching". Beyond a basic form, there isn't really much (if any) consideration for matching. I did it and noticed that there were three types of users on the platform:

- Those who had been rejected by YC and funneled into Startup School w/co-founder matching. Not sure what the intent of this was...a bunch of people with their rejected startups all mushed in together?

- Those who never applied, but were under the impression that doing YC Startup School or co-founder matching somehow would increase their odds of getting into YC. Everyone from this group thought of it as some type of admissions process to YC.

- Outright scams and people who had blank LinkedIn profiles and 0 experience (tells me that there is no or very little quality control on who is accepted to the matching)

Everyone I met from the first two groups already had their own startup going and wanted me to join, and also said everyone they talked to had their own startups and were trying to recruit from within the same pool.

I met some interesting people through the process but overall it was ineffective. I would think a more focused search using traditional tools and platforms (LinkedIn, etc) and marketing would be a lot more effective.

Cofounder matching is a market for lemons, much like online dating. The best prospects are either never on the open market, or get snapped up very quickly. So it's always a problem of sorting through many low-quality options to find diamonds in the rough (and if you can find one, upgrading a rough diamond to a shiny diamond is still a nontrivial process). Point being, cofounder matching is inherently a frustrating grind.

Is there a place to match with microfounder types? I’d love to build a business but I don’t want to build a billion dollar business. I also have no plans to quit my day job anytime soon.

I don’t really know what the best idea is and need someone who can brainstorm the right idea and then keep me grounded on it.

I can build MVPs and launch. I lean toward absurdly simple, launched too early prototypes. I’m a web developer with 25 years of professional experience. These days I’m a director, mostly managing other devs, but I still love to get my hands dirty.

Anyway, I always thought the YC stuff was for people with bigger ambitions than mine. I have tried YC founder school, which is cool.

Reach out if you wanna chat.

So I’ve matched with 2 cofounders on there. And while I think finding a good cofounder is inherently hard, I’d say it’s the best platform that I’ve seen. It’s similar to relationship dating I guess.

One of the questions that I would add though, is whether the founder is married to a solution or is in search of a problem. First co-founder I worked with was great overall but he was married to a solution, that after talking to prospective users, I realized nobody really wanted.

I'm curious why the assertion that YC co-founding matching is bad?

Anecdotally, I used it, matched with a co-founder, and now the business is doing well. I spent nearly a decade looking for the right person, and with YC matching found them in a couple of months.

I tried the YC founder matching thing several years ago. It was terrible. It asked all sorts of irrelevant questions and then used the answers to disqualify me from the service.

They overthought the problem. All thats needed is a list of people who are looking to connect plus their resume and a summary paragraph. Like a dating website basically. To keep it fresh and focused it should require you click a”still looking” email link once a week. Maybe fields for location/are you technical.

It might have changed in recent years but I never went back.

I found my current co-founder on HackerNews. He is lurking somewhere here. This indeed was along the timeline where YC was introducing the co-founder matching. Startup School already was testing it and I was part of that.

I was matched with quite a few good ones but were on different agendas in life. Two of the ones I know are part of YCombinator now. Quite a lot of them were also pretty shallow and spammy/scammy. But then I think that is part of the deal.

I already had a co-founder (business) and I'm fairly technical. But I needed a hard-core Machine Learning Geospatial person who have meddled with the pigs in the AI mud.

I remembering writing about it more like a job here on Hackernews and we ended up talking about satellites, precision agriculture, climate, and sustainability. After two years, we are still struggling together to building something that we are very proud now and in future, not just for us but for our kids and their friends. :-)

Btw, my prior co-founder got a Government Job in a reputed institute in India. We are no longer co-founders but continue to be friends, hoping that we will something to work together on.

P.S. I'm not actively looking but would love to talk to someone who loves finding ways to curb climate change and is extremely good at sales. I'm getting better at it but far from what I want to be. I want to learn more together and we still have a big chunk of equity reserved for the right person. :-)

Your network is going to help you with this 10x as much as random matching would. I doubt random matching is even very successful, compared to organically finding a partner.

Ask around, see what people in your network know about folks who are building new things. They may even have ideas about folks who would build something if the right partner were to help them.

Like many social or networking platforms especially in startups, you get back what you make of it.

There is a such a spectrum of ideas and approaches that you're unlikely to get a better product out of confining people to any category or stage. Personally I think its a great platform if you put your VC hat on (you're contributing effort rather than capital). If you don't find a the right idea or person to work with then you'll likely learn a lot from seeing what everyone else is doing and how they are thinking (positive or otherwise).

All the big VCs do periodic posts but it takes a bit more work to find the truly novel ideas and projects. With YC co-founder matching, you start with a varied pool of people who have set out to be founders - its up to you what you do with that.

I wish there was a monthly post like this! There should be a monthly project post "Hey, I'm working on X, I need help with Y" or something like that.

Example: I'm not very technical, but I'm very much into the product, operations, and market-fit/research side of things, and have access to funding. I want to join a team where I can grow and learn things, but also do cool shit with cool people. Currently, I'm running a small business as a side-hustle to build a bit of capital, but want to jump back into tech/startups as soon as I can.

I would imagine a monthly post highlighting skills and projects would be great - would be great for people who need something to do, project work, upskilling work for CV building, etc...

I've actually had a few conversations that started from HN posts about what other folks are working on, and they were really enjoyable and I was fortunate to learn interesting things.

You mean like the "Who's hiring?" posts but instead "Who's building and needs co-founder?". I like it.

It's a harder problem to solve than you might think. Because the success metric is difficult.

It would be helpful if the ideas are clustered. Only non-focused founders will spend their time on reading all ideas, which is needed to find matches in specialized areas.

YC could offer hierarchical subreddits for business sectors. It would be possible to collaborate with founders who are attracted to the same topic and it would be possible to offer opportunities to people who want to work in the broader area.

The idea of co-founder matching feels like a dating app for rushing into marriage. It is definitely possible it can work out but it seems like a long shot. If I were going to start a startup today, I'd want to do as much as I could to validate the idea and use that data to persuade some people whom I've had great working relationships with. Whether that's in school or the workplace etc… If you are unable to do that, you're going to have a really hard time recruiting good talent. You also want to know what it's like to have a disagreement with the person you're going to be in kind of a marriage with. Don't have your first fight after marriage.

I've met some pretty cool people through YC's co-founder matching tool.

The people I've met helped by making intros inside their network. I've provided similar intros, referrals, and a bit of technical advice.

I don't have any expectation that I'll meet a co-founder, but it's nice to chat with people who really "get it." Most of my friends, family, and former colleagues think I'm batshit for trading a cushy salaried gig for my own startup.

I've thought about this too. I tried YC's co-founder matching, looking for a co-founder for my current company. But it's all new founders (i.e. no experience running or even building a company). It's kind of like Indie Hackers -- it's full of wantrepreneurs (nothing wrong with that!), with very little entrepreneurs.

There's gotta be a better way.

Could be fun to try matching with a large language model, using some technique like cross encoders

https://sbert.net/examples/applications/cross-encoder/README...