I’ve had the good fortune to have had a co-founder in both of the startups I’ve been involved with. Given the option, I would always elect to start a business with someone else.

However - before you meet your next cofounder, there will be a period of time where you work on your own idea. Before I founded Zoomin (which we almost, but not quite, sold to a multinational), I worked on the prototype (a social mapping site) for about 4 months.

In a lot of projects, you will have to be a one man band for a while. You’ll have to promote yourself, develop the software, motivate yourself everyone morning.

From prior experience, I know that I can do all of these:

  • Talk to people and investigate the market (research)
  • Code, architect and design (development)
  • Sysadmin, keep records and pay taxes (operations)
  • “Do marketing” and write blog posts (promotion)
  • Set a price and ensure people pay (revenue)

The things is… I don’t think anyone who tries to build a business ever realizes how hard it is going to be - before they set out.