Team Dynamics for Preseed Round
I’ve been seeing solo founders raise preseed rounds ($4/5m) to then hire their co-founders and teams. Many of these only connect with the purpose of starting a company and do not have a prior relationship.
I have also seen more founder breakups within first 2 years which demoralizes & derails the company. Leaves messy cap tables. Really hard things to recover from.
Starting a successful company is not like taking a successful job. There are ups and downs & you mostly have to stick it out for years figuring things out without guaranteed success at below market wages for much higher potential long term upside.
It’s rough at a startup. You have to figure out a lot. Problems aren’t handed to you. You have to find them on your own. Solve them on your own. You have no money to hire people to solve things for you. There is a lot to do. You have no idea what’s going to make it a success.
Sometimes it feels easy to take capital first and then figure it all out later. Figuring it out after you take money is too late. You’ve taken money, made commitments, hired people, and honestly given up better opportunities where you could have been more successful.
It takes a while to figure out how to build a trusting co-founder working relationship with someone. Figuring that out while building a startup just sounds very painful.
Our education system fools us into believing we can get it right the first time. You are expected never to fail.
Starting a startup is about making mistakes and figuring out what works and what does not. You must run small experiments and ditch the things that do not work.
When you start out with capital, you no longer make small mistakes you make large ones. A marketing channel which would have been found to be useless with a mere $200 ends up getting $20000. Your mistakes are bigger, your decline faster and the time you have to recover lesser.
Plus because they raised money - ego.