{"id":246115,"date":"2010-01-29T10:20:20","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T15:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=60944"},"modified":"2010-01-29T10:20:20","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T15:20:20","slug":"who-should-you-start-a-company-with-as-seattle-evolves-founderdating-has-an-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/246115","title":{"rendered":"Who Should You Start a Company With? As Seattle Evolves, FounderDating Has an Answer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
startups<\/a>, entrepreneurs<\/a>, Innovation Community<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\t\"Bad<\/a>
\n\t\tGregory T. Huang wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Before they were the co-founders of billion-dollar technology companies—Microsoft, Apple, Google—they were friends, classmates, lab mates.<\/p>\n

But most people aren\u2019t lucky enough to meet their ideal co-founder before it\u2019s time to start a company. Is there a more systematic way for today\u2019s most promising entrepreneurs to find the right business partners?<\/p>\n

The short answer is no. In Seattle, local events and organizations like Seattle Tech Startups, Seattle 2.0, Open Coffee, Lunch 2.0, nPost, NWEN, and WTIA all play important roles in bringing the entrepreneurial community together. But none focuses solely on matching up potential founders<\/a>. That\u2019s where FounderDating comes in.<\/p>\n

OK, in Seattle we already have Founder\u2019s Co-op (seed-stage tech investment fund) and Founder Institute (entrepreneur training), and Foundry Group\u2019s Brad Feld is a household name in these parts (he\u2019s helping to bring startup bootcamp TechStars to Seattle this year<\/a>). But FounderDating—this is something entirely different. And it could contribute to the changing face of how early-stage companies get off the ground in this town.<\/p>\n

Unlike TechStars and Founder Institute, FounderDating<\/a> is not looking to provide mentorship or training to entrepreneurs. And unlike most other local tech events, it\u2019s not about content or general-purpose networking. It\u2019s about one thing: hooking up with the right co-founder. (And no, not that kind of hooking up. For that, check out this site<\/a>, which is edited by Seattle-area tech entrepreneur Jasper Kuria.)<\/p>\n

FounderDating was started in the San Francisco Bay Area by Saar Gur of Charles River Ventures and Jessica Alter from Formative Labs. They are bringing the event to Seattle for the first time on February 9, with the help of local organizer Brian Schultz, the co-founder of Seattle\u2019s Ontela and Djinnisys (now Plectix Biosystems), who\u2019s currently on his second tour of duty with Microsoft. The exact format of the event is TBA, but it will involve roughly 25 hand-picked entrepreneurs and potential co-founders meeting in a structured way at a restaurant. It might incorporate some \u201cspeed dating\u201d elements or other ways to match up people who have interests in areas like mobile, Internet, commerce, advertising, and aerospace.<\/p>\n

Schultz, who worked for Lehman Brothers in a previous life, speaks from experience when he says the big challenge in starting a company is \u201cfinding good people to do it with.\u201d That means being able to \u201cdiversify the skill set and get momentum around ideas.\u201d He says, \u201cMost likely the sweet spot for FounderDating will be founders who have done it before. They know what they want, and what they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

The importance of the team can\u2019t be overstated, it seems. \u201cThe number one cause of companies dying is founders not working well together. You don\u2019t hear about those because they\u2019re stillborn,\u201d says Dan Shapiro, a fellow Ontela co-founder and now chief technology officer of Photobucket. \u201cPicking your co-founder is a make-or-break decision for a company.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve recently talked with a number of Seattle-area entrepreneurs and scientists who are interested in the FounderDating program—either in participating directly, or in its potential to give a boost to the local innovation scene. A common thread is that it\u2019s damn near impossible to …Next Page »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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startups, entrepreneurs, Innovation Community Gregory T. Huang wrote: Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Before they were the co-founders of billion-dollar technology companies—Microsoft, Apple, Google—they were friends, classmates, lab mates. But most people aren\u2019t lucky enough to meet their ideal co-founder before it\u2019s time to start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}