EPA removes climate change information - <AUTHOR> https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/signpost/cc.html <comment><USER2> Reminds me of one of Peter Norvig's "Plot Synopses for Episodes of a Gilligan's Island Remake Starring Members of the Bush Administration" for McSweeney's Internet Tendency

"The professor's experiments conclusively show that climate change is causing the island to sink into the sea. Gilligan erases his papers and tries to stop him from talking, thinking that will make the problem go away."

</comment><comment><USER3> This should be retitled to "EPA shifts priority and retains only an archive of climate change information" (linked on that page to [https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climatechange_.html](https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climatechange_.html)). Yes, President Trump does not care about climate change--we all know that. But we should be saving our outrage and upvotes for situations where it is actually warranted.

</comment><comment><USER4> The title of this submission is blatantly false. Of the three sentences on that page, one deals exclusively with linking to a copy of the information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, "archives" would have been a better choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting, the new President seems to be able to reverse himself on many issues after discussing them with bureaucrats/foreign policy/trade experts. I wonder who among his administration could convince him to change his mind here.

<comment><USER6> I'm still not convinced it's not an act. The guy would have to be unusually dense to govern with ignorance of both a priori and a posteriori knowledge. The greenhouse effect was discovered over 100 years ago, not placed on a napkin as a hunch in a bar 10 years ago.

<comment><USER7> It's hard to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.

<comment><USER8> – Upton Sinclair

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The same things that make you laugh make you cry.

[http://i.imgur.com/a7lHIaV.gif](http://i.imgur.com/a7lHIaV.gif)

In a few years republicans will be complaining that democrats are manipulating the data.</comment>


An AI Epidemiologist Sent the First Warnings of the Wuhan Virus - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/ai-epidemiologist-wuhan-public-health-warnings/ <comment><USER2> So many submissions, exactly one comment[0] (so far). User rightbyte[1] said:

> _I don 't see any proof of the prediction in the article._

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22179289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22179289)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22170082](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22170082)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22160027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22160027)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22156776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22156776)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22151736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22151736)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22157376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22157376)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rightbyte](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rightbyte)</comment>


Show HN: Header-only C library for arbitrarily deep neural nets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fuzznets/libartificial <comment><USER2> What an excellent and clear codebase. I know it's relatively small to other projects but there is a clear and observable effort to make the thoughts of the programmer transparent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for the feedback! This is my first project in C so it means the world to me. I try to follow all the best practices in the hope that others might want to contribute someday.</comment></comment>


Colony: Visualise your JavaScript Project Structures with d3 and Node - <AUTHOR> http://hughsk.github.com/colony

<comment><USER2> Reminded immediately of the Inclued tool for visualizing PHP include dependencies. Something like that for JavaScript would be very useful.

And of course now I'm wondering what I'd have to do get this working with code that targets a Web browser...</comment>


Page Doesn't Load in Materialistic - <AUTHOR> Wikipedia <comment><USER2> I don't understand the post:

Which page doesn't load? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) ?

What is Materialistic? A browser? Do you have a link to the download page?</comment>


How Airbnb Switched to a HTML5 Photo Manager - <AUTHOR> http://nerds.airbnb.com/67137452

<comment><USER2> smooth operator!

<comment><USER3> Awesome! This will make the task much easier.</comment></comment>


Xbox One X will support 1440p monitors - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/02/xbox-one-x-1440p-native-support/ <comment><USER2> so what</comment>


Pixel Objectness (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://vision.cs.utexas.edu/projects/pixelobjectness/ <comment><AUTHOR> Note that there's a more recent paper than the one linked on the project page: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.04702](https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.04702)

</comment><comment><USER2> Did they cherry-pick the examples? It looks suspiciously good.

<comment><USER3> That's what I was wondering. This is way beyond the level of accuracy that I have seen from anything else.

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I find this practice unacceptable, and unfortunately I see it a lot. The academic world should frown upon this kind of presentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Should have (2017) in the title.

<comment><USER5> Done. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Google Chrome's fear of Microsoft Edge is revealing its bad side - <AUTHOR> https://www.laptopmag.com/news/googles-fear-of-microsoft-edge-is-revealing-its-bad-side <comment><USER2> This is just like when Google Maps was blocked on Windows Phone[1] and when they decided to block YouTube as well[2]. Microsoft now finds themselves in the same position their competitors found themselves in the IE6 era. Google is behaving, if anything, worse, and using its massive reach and user base to stifle competition.

This is deeply disappointing, and all the more reason Microsoft never should have adopted Chromium. They will eventually have to maintain a hard fork, the differences will grow such that they eventually have to increase their engineering spend on it to keep pace with just managing the rebases and patches or reimplement features themselves, and despite all the good will they had for the Chromium team they will see none of it returned by the larger Google/Alphabet corporation.

They should have based Edge on Gecko and invested money in taking marketshare away from Chromium so that the W3C/WHATWG can operate as intended with _multiple implementations_ for a _single specification_. Instead they embraced the Chrome monoculture _and_ were either treated in bad faith or the Chromium team mistakenly believed everything would be fine with a reset in relations. The result will be that Google retains a veto on web technology that competes with them for the next decade or more.

Use Firefox, everyone.

[1] [https://mashable.com/2013/01/05/google-maps-windows- phone/](https://mashable.com/2013/01/05/google-maps-windows-phone/)

[2] [https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/16/4627342/microsoft- google-...](https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/16/4627342/microsoft-google- battle-over-youtube-windows-phone)

<comment><USER3> Sadly, I tried Firefox for a while, and it's big enough of a downgrade compared to Chrome that I went back.

A hard fork of Chromium specifically for Edge might not be the worse thing ever. Having two independently maintained versions of that engine might be enough to force more standardization than in a Chrome-only world.

<comment><USER4> When was this? Recently it's great for me - better than Chrome - with the exception that some extensions are Chrome-specific (meaning you have to repackage them for FF).

<comment><USER5> Hey, can you point me to a good guide for repackaging extensions?

<comment><USER6> actually it may not work for all extension as chrome uses different api than firefox webextension standard api. I must say firefox extension api is far better than chrome one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It was incredible to me how aggressively Microsoft came out supportive of the Chrome team and how loudly they discussed the wonderful amount of collaboration the two companies had been up to since starting work on the new Edge.

I've seen Googlers responding to Edge developers about how they'll get some mishandling of Edge fixed internally at Google. But really, this is just the same story as before:

The "oops" have begun: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec- google-has...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has- sabotaged-firefox-for-years/)

<comment><USER8> >The "oops" have begun...

Try running gmail in firefox. It's abysmal. A single click takes a few seconds to open email. This is malice, not incompetence. And I'm not even going to get into the whole endless captcha on firefox 'feature'.

<comment><USER9> "Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice" -Hacker News

<comment><USER10> This is a systematic issue with many of Google's services. They have the money and manpower to test their interface on Firefox. We're talking about a modern, generally standard-compliant browser here, not IE6. Getting those websites to perform decently on Firefox shouldn't be a problem for Google.

I can believe that they don't purposefully break Firefox for the sake of it, but it's clear that they make no effort to make their websites compatible and they don't appear to consider these issues like bugs. If it works on Chrome then it's good enough. I suspect that internally compatibility issues with Firefox are not even considered bugs at all, it's just the way it is and it's up to Mozilla to fix their browsers to be compatible with Chromium (I have no insider knowledge, but it's the way it feels from the outside).

<comment><USER11> It's an artifact of how they develop and test software. And ultimately Firefox suffered these bugs because their product wasn't compelling.

Googlers push new code to production regularly, with the cycles getting faster all the time. It used to be biweekly (as the article alludes). Then it was weekly. Then it was daily. Then it was "push on every green build".

If you push to production literally the moment your test suite passes, then your browser compatibility is a function of two things:

1\. What the engineers developing a feature use.

2\. What is easiest to build automatic test suites with.

In both cases the answer was Chrome and Chrome. Firefox has never had good support for API driven embedding. Embedded Gecko never took off. The automated GUI test drivers that became popular were mostly WebKit/Chrome based, with some support for IE and using it via RDP to a VM. Nobody forces Googlers to use any particular browser but Chrome was the best so that's what they used.

Also, Google culturally is always on the bleeding/cutting edge of HTML stuff. So it's more likely to hit edge cases than others.

Result: occasional glitches where Firefox bugs or Google app bugs intersected. They always got fixed quickly when reported. Only crazy people would think this was some conspiracy involving tens of thousands of developers who mysteriously never leaked their evil plan.

Mozilla would have done themselves a world of benefit if they'd been pushing hard their own CI/integrated Gecko based test suite and made it the best.

<comment><USER12> > They always got fixed quickly when reported.

Having been involved in a number of these reports, this is flat-out false. Basic "fix your CSS to not rely on this Chrome bug; here's the exact diff you want to make it work both in browsers that follow the CSS spec and in Chrome" things regularly take 2-3 months to apply on the Google side. Basic "your browser user-agent sniffing is broken _again_ in the same way as three months ago" things take a month or two to fix.

Disclosure: Mozilla employee, have been cced on far too many of these bug report threads over the years.

<comment><USER11> The article where the Mozilla guy complained said two weeks, but, yes. Months is possible. Maybe we have a different definition of quickly.

Disclosure: former Google employee, I did many pushes and fixed browser compatibility bugs whilst I was there.

In the timeframe we're talking about most products were on a biweekly push cycle. In the ideal case where there was no delay at all between you reporting a bug and it reaching the right person inside the company who could fix it, if that day happened to be on a branch cut day then that's a minimum of a two week delay to reach production unless the bug was so severe that the entire product was hosed for all Firefox users. Minor glitches in rarely used screens wouldn't count for a rollback or emergency push, for instance.

But sometimes pushes fail. There's a severe bug, attempts to fix it are too slow and the push window closes so the servers are rolled back. Now the latency is a month.

That's only software bugs. Now include the time taken for the bug report to be triaged, mis-directed, pinged, rerouted to the right person. Now include delays incurred if that person goes on holiday, gets sick or has other higher priority tasks, as bug handoff works about as well there as anyone else. That can easily add more time.

Finally, regressions are to be expected in an environment where the extent of browser testing is a function of engineer interest rather than centrally mandated. If they weren't testing Firefox well enough before they weren't testing it well enough after either. If Google had a central rule about which browsers had to be supported then I didn't know about it. There was just an assumption you'd try to support the browsers people used as best you could.

I'm not saying it was awesome or right, just that this sort of thing was not Firefox specific and there were plenty of IE or Safari compatibility bugs too.

<comment><USER12> I think we might in fact have a different definition of "quickly", yes. I think we may also have different definitions of "entire product is hosed". If gmail is significantly worse to use (not "doesn't load", just "loads with obvious visual artefacts"), that's obviously enough to get people to change browsers, all else being equal.

And just to be clear, there are certainly cases when things got fixed quickly. But "always" is really stretching it; this was the exception, not the norm.

> regressions are to be expected in an environment where the extent of browser > testing is a function of engineer interest rather than centrally mandated

Sure. The problem is the environment and corporate policy, not individual engineers. They're just responding to incentives as best they can, and in my experience are generally quite helpful within the constraints of the system.

> just that this sort of thing was not Firefox specific

Indeed, I don't think it was. It was not-Chrome specific.

Here's a thought experiment. Say someone at Google who did _not_ test in Chrome committed a change that degraded the visual experience of gmail in Chrome and it got shipped. How would fixing that be prioritized vs a similar visual degradation in Firefox or some other non-Chrome browser? Assuming there is no emergency push involved, if the fix was not ready by the next push cycle, would it just slide, or would the original commit get rolled back?

<comment><USER11> In the early days there were quite a lot of bugs that affected Chrome and not Firefox from what I recall. The problem was Chrome didn't run on Linux or Mac in the first versions, but Google engineers (by policy) didn't run Windows, they almost all ran Linux. So there was a huge testing gap. On the other hand it was helped by the fact that Chrome was basically Safari at that time so Mac users within the firm tended to notice bugs during dogfood/canary periods.

I can't quite recall the timelines, but I remember it felt like years before the Chrome team shipped a native Mac/Linux version. They also fixed a lot of bugs that broke features of the various apps, e.g. lack of printing was a big one for a while.

I imagine you're talking about later when Chrome got really big. But it's hard for me to say what would have happened because when the features are themselves being developed in Chrome there are hardly ever cases like that when it works in every browser _except_ Chrome and this is somehow not noticed during the canary period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If Google were truly behind open web standards then they would have nothing to fear and no need to promote one standards conforming browser (Chrome) over another (Edge, Firefox or whatever). This just shows that the ultimate desire of all these corporate backed browsers is some degree of vendor lock in, which is why they feel the need to advertise their browser when their competitor's is almost 99.9% identical in functionality and a drop-in replacement.

<comment><USER14> These are different teams within Google, and it's kinda not fair to say that Google is not truly behind open web standards.

Their whole web developer advocate team is behind open web standards, and pushes it forward everyday. The engineering team actually working on Chrome is behind those standards, and pushes it forward. They work closely with other browser vendors. and try to make everything work everywhere.

Then there is the Chrome marketing team which has to goal (OKR) to increase the reach of Chrome. They might still support the open web, but their goal is to get more users using chrome.

<comment><USER13> Okay, I get it, but in that case the marketing is doing engineering a disservice when they implement needlessly aggressive and redundant advertising of Chrome on properties and user agents which ought to be almost 100% identical functionality in Chromium based (if not web standards compliant) browsers. To put it plainly I can understand if Google promotes Chrome when there is a genuine technical feature on one of their properties that _needs_ Chrome to function, but in most cases this is not so, which means the marketing is not for technical reasons but merely to capture more market-share for its own ends, which would make sense if they were selling their browser but that too is not the case, so why? I mean, the ultimate aim of all companies are to grow and profit, but the playing field is neither infinite nor the audience stupid, so they should take care not to keep damaging their reputation.

<comment><USER15> > marketing is doing engineering a disservice

I've never seen a company where both marketing and engineering agree on something. Marketing thinks we are a bunch of nerds and we think marketing floors have a much less density regarding neurons per square meter (so, in way we are both right).

By the way, marketing always win. They are closer to upper levels, the credit for success is (supposedly) theirs. They suggest all the bad tactics, technically and commercially. I can bet that a move like Chrome suggesting to ditch Edge is purely their idea, approved by upper levels and executed by engineers that can't say no.

<comment><USER16> Do they even know that Edge is Chrome based?

<comment><USER15> Good question. Probably all they know is that Microsoft released a competing browser and just asked the engineering team to do them a tool for showing annoying messages to the users based on the browser. I am sure marketing doesn't know/care if it was done with Chromium, 1994 Mosaic or matchsticks.

<comment><USER17> This is Google we are talking about. I would imagine they started working on competing strategies even well before Microsoft announced officially they are going to use Chromium.

You people seriously undermine the tech awareness of marketing teams, of Google no less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> PSA: if you are not already using it, and you care about the future of humanity, then give Firefox a(nother) go. Its actually quite good these days.

<comment><USER19> Firefox does 'gah! your tab just crashed' on my amazon tabs at a rate of about 1 in every 4 times. Once it decides to do that on a particular tab, no amount of refresh or reopen, or restart-firefox fixes it.

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04, and this has been happening consistently for the last 5+ years.

Every. single. goshdarn. effing. firefox. release.

(sorry just wanted to vent. I've tried every solution I could find on askubuntu, stackoverflow, what not. Nothing fixes it. I know I should be filing a bug report, and/or upgrading my OS, but I don't have the time, patience to deal with that. I need to finish school first.).

<comment><USER20> > I'm using Ubuntu 14.04, and this has been happening consistently for the > last 5+ years.

Might help updating to a modern version of Ubuntu with a modern kernel and modern (and less buggy) GPU drivers?

Browsers are increasingly using GPU-acceleration these days. If your GPU drivers are buggy, that can probably cause a whole lot of "fun".

<comment><USER19> Or I could be a happy camper of Chrome/Chromium for as long as I like.

<comment><USER21> Ubuntu 14.04 is no longer supported by Canonical. No security patches etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Microsoft do the same tricks to push users to switch back from Firefox/Chrome to Edge : [https://twitter.com/WindowsLatest/status/1226184938552098817](https://twitter.com/WindowsLatest/status/1226184938552098817)

<comment><USER23> We kind of expect this from Microsoft. But we're still in denial about Google

<comment><USER24> Also the effects are worse when the actor doing those ads has more than 30%, 50%, 70% market share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Healthy check and balance Microsoft is performing. Strategically this has been a master move, not paying for the engineering costs while profiting from labor fruits. It is admirable for a company to admit the technology of the main competitor is superior and the only way forward is improving their output. Sets a great example for everybody.

<comment><USER26> I don't think engineering costs are an issue for msft.

Empirically, the source of msft's quality issues seem to be managerial / organizational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Back when Google Chrome came out I switched from Firefox to Google Chrome because the scrolling felt better and more responsive.

Microsoft Edge with Chromium engine has better scrolling in my opinion: it is relative to size of window. If I have smaller window it scrolls less. I switched to Microsoft Edge.

It's about the product for me, although I have turned all the knobs to prevent trackers etc.

<comment><USER28> I agree. While I'm primarily a Firefox user, Edge Beta is the best experience on my Windows machine. I'm surprised that it seems faster than Chrome when they're utilizing the same rendering engine (probably the built-in tracker blocking?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> They're probably just user agent sniffing for non-Chrome browsers. I see this plenty when using Firefox or Safari. That said I wonder if all the State and DoJ investigations about anti-competitive behavior will force Google to stop promoting their own browser on their properties.

<comment><USER30> The sad thing is when Google websites refuse to work on Edge Chromium. Switch your user agent to match Chrome's, you're all set.

<comment><USER13> Out of curiosity, which sites are these? Do they also similarly break with Firefox or other non-Chrome browsers or only MS Edge?

<comment><USER30> Non-Chromium derivatives are blocked as well, yes, but neo-Edge is a Chromium derivative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm honestly surprised people still tolerate Google. Just stop using shitty software from a shitty company that treats its users like shit. I did and so can you.

</comment><comment><USER32> Microsoft may experience firsthand what can happen when you build your business on competitors platform. I'm exaggerating of course but essentially it may happen. The good news is that MS is probably the only company which can actually maintain its own browser in a case if Google goes completely hostile on them. Then this mythical thing called Chromium may materialize as an independent entity from Google, making different decisions and implementing different core features (which is not true today).

<comment><USER33> They did maintain their own browser. It was called Edge.

<comment><USER32> That was my point - they have real experience creating and maintaining browsers, unlike most other corporations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Remember when Google deprecated an API used by uBlock Origin in Chrome, does anybody know if this same API is deprecated in the new Chromium based Edge as well?

If it isn't, I'd actually choose Edge over Chrome on Windows as my daily driver.

<comment><USER35> The author said that the best platform to run ublock origin is Firefox, why not use it ?

I only use Chrome for Goggle related stuff anyway, all my browsing goes through Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Microsoft has turned Google's own weapon against them, crazy. Once they bundle it with W10, it's really going to take off. It's smart they changed the logo too.

</comment><comment><USER37> YouTube and Google Maps are much slower for me in Firefox versus Chrome. Many times the page basically freezes for half a second, and then suddenly continues. It looks like they intentionally are doing something to make this happen, I can't think of any other site where I've seen this obvious difference.

</comment><comment><USER23> The hardest part of leaving Google is admitting: I was wrong about Google, but it's OK, everybody makes mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER38> I really really hope Microsoft can push for a sort of Chromium-foundation.

Google owning the chromium development is what is going to make any sort of protocol-level privacy impossible, while Microsoft doesn't care much about internet add revenue.

It's really really concerning to have an internet ad company have this much control over the web.

</comment><comment><USER39> I switched to the new Edge because of Google's abusive practices such as logging me into the browser when I log in to Gmail. There is a settings option to prevent this, but it is FAKE. It doesn't change anything.

</comment><comment><USER40> A comparable behaviour can be seen for years now on iOS. Chrome for iOS is advertised where possible, even if you would like to open a hyperlink from the show notes of a YouTube movie: You are offered to open this link with Chrome ("download"), Google App ("download"), or even with Safari ("open"). There's no real use for the user having Chrome on iOS as long as it has to use WebKit as a rendering engine, the same engine Safari uses. But there is surely a usage for Google, monetizing the user's browsing profiles.

</comment><comment><USER41> Let's remember that you still can't make Google Hangouts calls from Firefox.

<comment><USER42> Google fixed Hangouts to work now in Firefox.

<comment><USER43> Let's remember that you can't attend Google Meet calls from any browser besides Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft is also not cool to be honest their product skype still don't work on firefox. Both are bad players to me . Slowing down youtube and google product on firefox, not allowing skype on firefox are cheap strategy used by both company.

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't see a problem with advertising your product, and clearly laptopmag doesn't see a problem with advertisements either.

</comment><comment><USER45> Right now Microsoft is the lesser evil.

Reducing Chrome market share is something we all should strive to achieve.

I personally use and recommend Firefox to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER46> Couldn't edge just turn on "ad blocking"?

</comment><comment><USER47> As an user I am pissed of about these actions from Google but I can't really switch otherwise I would fall in the same oopses traps.

Is there a way to use Firefox and have some add-on or something that fixes those oopses? I suppose it's not only a matter of masking up user-agent strings.

</comment><comment><USER48> How is the default ad blocking on Edge? I imagine that's the leverage Google fears.

<comment><USER7> Edge has tracking protection like Firefox and Safari do. Chrome is the only major browser without it on by default.

<comment><USER49> Tracking prevention as it is implemented in Safari helps Google. It does not block first party cookies. If Google implemented that, it would face antitrust investigations.

Firefox and Edge have tracking prevention that harms Google. Edge implements the same default ad blocking as Chrome, which helps Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Since Edge is using chromium, Googl would be using user agent to sniff the browser.

As such, wouldn't it be smarter for edge to use impersonate chromium to bypass the checks?

As shady as it sounds, this approach has tremendous precedent

</comment><comment><USER51> For anyone who remembers the IE vs Netscape browser wars, it is funny to think the positions of Google and Microsoft are now reversed. Google is using some of MS's own historical tactics against it.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've been using Edge on macOS since Beta and I really like it.

</comment><comment><USER53> I can't imagine this will play well in court in the seemingly inevitable antitrust case. Microsoft's lawyers will point out that Edge is literally the same

</comment><comment> globular-toast Is this new? Isn't this what they did to get all their users in the first place? Surely people haven't forgotten?

</comment><comment><USER54> As far as I remember, this has always been the case. I don't see anything new in this story.

</comment><comment><USER55> I am confused with this article. google does this with every browser not just edge.

</comment><comment><USER56> Somewhat related but: has anyone heard of/ used the Brave browser?

<comment><USER57> I've been using it for a while now. I like it, but they're starting to get a little too pushy with their Brave Rewards program for my liking. But for now, it's great.

<comment><USER58> Batting aside "Brave Rewards" is a minuscule amount of work compared to the cognitive work that Brave reduces by blocking ads. I've been using Brave for ~6 months and I've only had to bat "Brave Rewards" aside ~4 times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Someone call the Justice Department

</comment><comment><USER6> google has always been disappointing except the source code they give to opensource lol. Long live firefox .

</comment><comment><USER60> Do you remember when Google used to have the motto "don't be evil"? Those were the days.

</comment><comment><USER61> FF f'd up when they banned Dissenter extension and with their welcome screen full of google tracking. Not to mention a ton of "metric" requests FF is doing in the background.

As we've learnt, Chrome has a ton of google-specific code built into it(most notably the tracking id on youtube that was exposed few weeks ago) and a ton of background requests.

MS Edge is not that different. Sure it is cleaner Chrome but MS is the big daddy of tracking, just like google. they just call it "telemetry" instead of spying. their edge won't be any different.

Any other web browser out there is essentially derived from chrome. So I put zero trust in any of them. If mozilla would make FF into OS work that others could use to build web browsers off of, like chrome, it would be much better environment because there are no options left. Webkit has been superseded by chrome these days, gecko is slow and outdated(is it even public?) and so on. So the only way to sort of safely use your god damn web browser these days is to filter all the traffic manually(pihole, host file or advanced firewall) and use a ton of adblocking extensions that allow you to spoof referrer header and clean up headers and cookies altogether(google cdn, google captcha, google analytics, goodle dns, google this and google that).... even then google has so much data that just by ip address they have your persona pinpointed to a byte.

If you look at how much external resources the websites pull in these days, most if it has some sort of tracking in it, even if you do not see it directly(mostly cdn stuff).

tl;dr they are all bad. if it is free, you are the product. it's as simple as that. and they will make opting out so impossible that you just give up.

<comment><USER55> but they can't be ALL bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> There are people using Microsoft Edge with Google Docs? What sort of logic puts one in this position?

<comment><USER63> You ARE aware that a world of users outside of tech exists, right?

<comment><USER64> I'm a user in tech who uses Edge with Google Docs. I don't use the offline feature, so to me, the user experience is no different than it was with Chrome.

<comment><USER65> I'm often using Google Docs with Edge for Android (in DeX), and while everything works, every tab gets a "your browser is not supported" nag dialog</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Taxes and Consulting - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I do not usually consult for pay outside of my full-time job; however, I helped out a buddy this year and did a little contract work (web development) on the side.  Thus, this is all new for me (consulting/taxes).
I got paid in checks directly from the company with no tax withholding (federal, social security, etc.).
What's the protocol for handling taxes in this case?  Should I contact the company to get their tax ID and file myself, or are they supposed to or required to create a W-2 for me?  Are there any additional IRS forms needed (federal level)?
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> You should get a 1099-MISC from them if the amount you earned was over $600. They should have requested that you fill out a W-9 prior to this which is a form that gives them your social security number (or federal ID number if you've got a company entity).

However, it is possible you might not get a 1099 even if you're supposed to receive one, and, you're still responsible for reporting it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very helpful. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am not an accountant, but I recommend including a schedule C listing the income in your return. Just treat your business as a sole proprietorship. It will probably take about 15 minutes using TurboTax.

Although, the company is required to File a 1099 with the IRS, if you don't get a copy they don't suffer a penalty based on my research in 2003 (again I am not an accountant).

</comment><comment><USER4> AFAIK, whatever income you get you are responsible for declaring it. You could either declare it as Misc Income in your return or if this is a continued relationship with the said company, they can issue a 1099 for you as a consultant.

There is plenty of information on the IRS website regarding this.

I hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it does. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I completely forgot about the 1099-MISC. Thanks folks!</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for building a JavaScript lib to integrate with React? - <AUTHOR> I'm building a UI component library (similar to jQuery UI) that provides vanilla JS components as an API to manipulate the DOM. All well and good.
However...
I'm also wanting to write it such that a modern UI library / framework (e.g. React) can extend this library as a wrapper, and in essence, 'recreate' the same component library API out of React components instead of raw JS ones. So there's this vanilla JS library doing most of the work, but a React wrapper on top as well to help those on a React stack.
I've read the React docs[1] on how to integrate React with a plugin that you can't control - which were very helpful- however, I'm looking for best practices on how to build a plugin (obviously that I can control) that plays as nicely as possible with React.
I realize this is pretty high-level stuff, but any resources, tips from experience, or examples of JS libraries like this (that is, created with framework integration in mind from the start) that you've seen or worked on / with would really help!
[1] https://reactjs.org/docs/integrating-with-other-libraries.html#integrating-with-dom-manipulation-plugins <comment><USER2> I do not question if it is high-level as much as I do its practicality. jQuery manipulates the DOM, React manipulates a virtual DOM pushing the changes to the client. That's about as vanilla as it gets.

Could you be a little more descriptive? If you're talking about creating a more visually appealing UI/UX experience, are you talking about creating a framework that more effectively handles UI component state?

Maybe I'm missing something and am way off base.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question. So sorry for the confusion- I only used jQuery UI as an example, but perhaps it wasn't the best one. I'm trying to create a UI component library in vanilla JS/CSS that can be extended for use in React.

So I'm looking to create something very similar to Material Design, a vanilla JS/CSS library ([https://material.io/components/web/](https://material.io/components/web/)), which is extended and used in Material UI, a React component library ([http://www.material-ui.com/](http://www.material-ui.com/)).

I guess I'm essentially asking: if I were to build Material Design, knowing full well I'd use it later to create something like Material UI, are there any recommendations out there for building the vanilla lib to make sure I don't shoot myself in the foot integrating that vanilla lib into the React lib?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What service or product you are willing to pay for? - <AUTHOR> Name service or product you miss and how much you are willing to pay for it. <comment><USER2> A streaming service where I pay 5€-10€/month and see whatever I want (live TV, series, films, sport events)

No geo restrictions, no censored content.

Is that too much?

The unique service until now that works perfectly is Kodi with add-ons.

<comment><USER3> I would also pay 5€-10€ for something currently priced at many multiples of that nominal amount. I think you've missed the point.</comment></comment>


There are 2.4 billion people on the Internet. We should get to know each other. - <AUTHOR> http://twopointfourbillion.com

<comment><USER2> [meta] Why is this not on the frontpage? I see links with less than 10 points from an hour ago there, but not this link with more than 10 points from less than half an hour ago. Not that I care that much for this particular link, but it seems strange.

 _Edit:_ seems to be there now (approx. 20 minutes later). Maybe there was some change in the ranking algorithm recently? I don't believe I saw it acting like this before.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea. Some feedback: I started filling out the form but once I realised there was ~10 input fields and not ~2 I just quit. Also, something tells me that you're more likely to actually deliver good matches if you make everything simpler. Not only will you be able to handle the data in a good way but you'll probably have more people join.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. A similar idea had been buzzing around in my head for the last couple of months - you enter some attributes about yourself and on the other end get 1 match per week with whom you should connect with. Great way to meet new people. You guys beat me to it! Would love to see how this evolves.

EDIT:

After filling out the form, I think some things can be combined/simplified to make it easier to parse: \- Many twitter users I follow tend to be the authors of the blogs I read as well. Maybe just connect with Twitter and get a listing of all the people I follow? \- Also what format should the songs be listed in? or maybe just keep that limited to artists & bands. \- Utilize Facebook Graph to pre-populate interests, music, movies.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well it definitely provided some mental projections into how wonderful would it be to have more people around me that are interested in achieving the same things. Filling out those forms felt nice and regardless of the results, I feel strangely satisfied.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. I had a similar reaction.

There must be something to the idea, even if this isn't an ideal implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It says "Anonymous and secure", but I don't see HTTPS in the URL. When I prefix <https://> Firefox complains about untrusted certificate. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> Sorry about that! I think the "Secure" copy is a bit misleading. We'll take that down.

What we meant to communicate with "Anonymous and Secure" is, "Feel free to be completely honest because we won't show this information to anyone else, and we won't even ask for your name or identity!"

It was a weekend project finished on little sleep. Sorry abou the "secure" bit.

<comment><USER9> You can get free https certificates at <https://startssl.com>

On a first glance they don't look too high-tech and trustworthy, but for example <https://lucb1e.com> seems to be valid in all browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to have some way to add more interests after the fact, because I immediately realized I wanted to add one more thing after I hit submit. Maybe just even resubmit the form with the same email. Or enter your email and it'll bring up a profile. Something like that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Are you going to update the domain name to keep up with Internet growth? That might be expensive...

<comment><USER12> They could buy domain names in advance so they can get them cheaper because they are not yet relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Didn't look at the website yet, but just from the link: Try Google+. I don't know most people that I circled there. Not that I have Facebook, but when I look at Facebook with others it's more like talking to people you already know. With Google+' trending topics (I don't think Facebook has that, nor is Facebook as content-oriented as Google+) it's easy to see others posting about a popular subject, see their profile and posts, and circle them. And of course exploring topics you like with the Google+ search.

Edit: Submitted. Let's see where this goes :)

</comment><comment><USER13> The button isn't working for me (Tested in Firefox 18 and Chrome 24), could anyone explain what the output looks like?

</comment><comment><USER14> Are you planning multilingual support?

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this yet another social network?

<comment><USER12> It seems only to connect people and let them figure communicating together.</comment></comment>


Why the U.S. Navy's new $362M ship broke down - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-navy-uss-milwaukee-broke-down-2015-12 <comment><USER2> Stuff failing right out of the gate should be no surprise if you're familiar with the Bathtub curve concept. In particular when it is marketably different from what came before.

It might have redundant systems, but if the same manufacturing fault existed in both then that doesn't really help you much. That's why there is something to be said from taking secondary components from different manufacturing runs or even entirely different manufacturers, so that failures aren't synchronized.

As an aside: Are ship engines not tested externally before installation into the hull?

<comment><USER3> I know it's only tangentially related to your comment, but you reminded me of something Walter Bright discussed about two years ago on the design of the 757:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6639097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6639097)

Relevant portion applicable to your comment:

"The computer control systems were dual, meaning two independent computer boards. The boards were designed independently, had different CPU architectures on board, were programmed in different languages, were developed by different teams, the algorithms used were different, and a third group would check that there was no inadvertent similarity."

I realize that the liability fear of failure in commercial aircraft (or perhaps regulatory oversight) is probably a strong motivator, but you'd think that combat systems might be equally well-motivated toward redundancy given the nature of their purpose...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This Business Insider article is making incorrect speculations. gCaptain (a website focusing on maritime issues) has a more accurate reporting [0].

If this were to occur during a critical mission, they could continue, but at the cost of further damage and a lengthy dry dock afterwards.

This was probably caused by misalignment or a piece of debris (which would cause damage and thus create more debris) left in the system during the installation process, not by something inherently wrong with the design.

The Navy statement in the gCaptain article mentions locking the port shaft, so this not a problem with an engine (which can be decoupled from the shaft by a clutch).

[0] [http://gcaptain.com/u-s-navys-new-lcs-towed-to-port-after- br...](http://gcaptain.com/u-s-navys-new-lcs-towed-to-port-after-breaking- down-off-virginia/)

(I'm a licensed marine engineer, now working in a different industry.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Always amazed that the folks who buy military gear don't get that when you build entirely new systems they break in ways you didn't know they could break. Often they compare them to the current reliability of 20 - 30 year old technology.

<comment><USER6> It would be wholly unacceptable for a commercial ship to break a week after entering service.

<comment><USER4> Former marine engineer here. Not really. Usually a tech rep sails with the ship to work out any kinks. In this instance, this isn't something you can work out at sea.

A ship I was on had its shafts pulled during a dry dock evolution. When we went out to sea, we discovered that one of the shafts was off-center and moving the line shaft bearing around causing cracks in its foundation. We had to lock that shaft in place and continue underway on just the other shaft.

Having to lock the shaft in place isn't a normal occurance, but it is a contingency that is prepared for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      Reporting of a complete loss of propulsion [..] is
      deeply alarming, particularly given this ship was
      commissioned just 20 days ago

It would be deeply alarming if it happened twice a year for every year to come. This is hopefully only a startup problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can they not put a magnetic stub on the oil drain plug like motorcycles? ;)

Or is the engine made from aluminum?

<comment><USER9> It's not that the metallic debris has caused the failure, but rather it indicates a serious failure has occurred inside the engine.

<comment><USER8> Some debris is completely normal when the engine is first being started and breaking in. This is true for all internal combustion engines. That's why some designs use magnets to capture the debris and shavings.

That said, this debris was probably more substantial than shavings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aside from the painfully obvious hyperbole...

Having a brand new model of a ship break down during an exercise is the 'best case' scenario for failure. There are important aspects of this that should be taken into account. First, nobody died. Second, the fault didn't occur during combat.

Yes, there are some projects that waste insane amounts of funding with underwhelming results like the Army's 5 billion UCP (Universal Camouflage Pattern) and Air Force's F35 programs. Cases like those usually occur due to personality-driven leadership.

Imagine you have an officer with a lifetime of domain-specific knowledge but little/no experience with product development. Give him an objective, a line of funding, and the responsibility to draft a contract to make it happen. This is the usual case.

Things can go south for a few reasons. The officers in charge don't reach out for outside feedback/advice, and default to relying solely on the advice of the contractors. Poor assumptions are made or requirements are overlooked, delaying production. The procurement process takes such a ridiculously amount of time that COTS equipment goes obsolete and/or can't be sourced by the time it's required for implementation.

To make matters worse, contracting guidelines dictate that projects follow a waterfall design model. The specification process all happens up-front. Lots of bureaucracy, lots of documentation, lots of steps where mistakes and bad assumptions can/will be made on a tight time schedule. There are exceptions to the rule but generally field testing doesn't take place until after launch.

People wonder why the military spends billions of dollars training and 'playing war' every year. They do it to iron out the kinks in their equipment, organization, and processes. If the services do their job (which most do very well) they will identify, report, and correct problems before they're put to the test in a wartime environment.

In software development terms, prototype with a waterfall and iterate over time. The difference being, on software projects iterations happen on the scale of weeks/months. On military projects, iterations happen on a scale of years (ex 3 or 5).

The news will jump on any sign of weakness chanting 'muh taxpayer dollars'; oldschool politicians like McCain will sponge up the public attention calling for 'the good old days of big iron' (aka sitting ducks); and, none of that matters because war changes and the tools of war need to adapt to overcome those changes.

All I can say is, I respect the fortitude of the service members who do this type of work. It's truly a miserable, thankless job, fraught with unbelievable obstacles and little support.

Source: I used to work on a contract under MARCORSYSCOM, which is basically the product development division of the US Marines.

</comment><comment><USER11> Like the F35 debacle, trying to make something that's good at everything, you end up with something fit for nothing. There's a lot to be said for simpler, fit for specialized purpose designs. The same applies in computer software. Oracle attempts to be a one size fits all database, but as a row store it can never compete with column stores for analytics. As a disk-based, latching, locking, logging database, it can never compete with in memory stores that avoid those overheads. Really just an expensive pile of bytes that claims to solve all your problems, but is fit for nothing.</comment>


Breaking a myth: Data shows you don't actually need a co-founder - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional <comment><USER3> I've cofounded 4 different startups. All were good ideas that bled cash or time and flopped, largely due to infighting or founder differences. One cofounder of one of the companies got really nasty about trying to leave with the rights to the company and we other two cofounders just let him have it. He sold the rights and it's now a successful venture-backed startup with soaring profits (two cofounders). Good for that team.

Since then, I've managed my own single-founder startup. We're profitable, growing, and valued at about $2.2 million. We're implementing a lot more over the course of this year and next, and I will look to exit in early 2018, once our valuation is closer to the $10 million or $20 million range.

I have a lot of other companies I want to start after. I will bring on talented people in executive roles who can complement me and make up for my own weaknesses, but I won't cofound again. I'd rather keep the smart, business-oriented people I know in masterminds where we can compare ideas and bounce thoughts off each other, than wade into business situations where our differences turn us into enemies and destroy the company.

The general wisdom on picking cofounders is pick a behind-the-scenes guy if you're a visionary, or make sure you're comfortable as the behind-the-scenes guy if you're partnering with a visionary. The problem I find (and one I've seen in a lot of cofounder groups) is that most of the people who want to start startups are visionaries.

<comment><USER4> Interesting data point. However, we're happily chugging along with 6 co- founders, bootstrapped to currently 30 mln us$ valuation and we've only just begun.

Then again, your point about "visionaries" (with which you probably mean high- ego people needing a lot of approval) rings true to me. We're all pretty low- key hard-working people with a lot of self-reflection and humility - also it helps it's not the usual failing friends, family or uni buddies combo but we're really more of a casting band with a team mixed and matched from industry professionals by our main founder.

In this very setup, it's actually very enjoyable with a lot of pros: Scaling is much faster and easier with invested veterans at the helm, all important departments are headed by founders, also having same-level people in the same company helps enormously with the more difficult decisions and just professional exchange, growing as leaders and 1-1 mentoring. If - and only if - the base of trust is there and continuously honed through communication, this is an amazing way to work and learn.

10/10 would do it again.

<comment><USER5> Almost all people overestimate their knowledge of human nature.

I only know a few people who are truly able to judge people right. Most people with good relations are simply lucky.

<comment><USER6> As someone who actively works researching personality psychology, I can fully attest to this.

There actually seems to be somewhat of a Dunning-Kruger like effect when it comes to people evaluation skills. Generally, those who appear the most confident about their people judgements, also seem to be those who are wildly speculative and inaccurate about what other people are thinking.

<comment><USER7> 'Not knowing what someone else is thinking' \- is completely different from 'knowing human nature'.

For example, people tend to be a little lazy, or tend towards 'doing less'. If one could get 100K for sitting on one's butt - most people would take the offer. Some people would rather work, or do something more creative.

This is different from being able to 'read' people.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but unfortunately people tend to make a lot of critical decisions based around what they interpret other people's _motives_ to be; leaving out that bit of human behavior from the equation can be a big deal.

One ceo may may look at a worker exhibiting stereotypical output of a "lazy" person and decide this person must not care about their work and thus should be fired. Meanwhile another may see this as a symptom of burnout from caring about their work too much and decide the worker should get some time off to relax. Regardless of who's interpretation is correct, it is a decision than can have a big impact on a person.

The behavioural economics approach is definitely worth keeping in mind regardless of people-reading ability, but we should be weary of interpreting such things as being too 'directly applicable' in anything other than very generalized circumstances. Unfortunately, I've seen my fair share of cases like the example I stated above, so it is worth remembering that there is no such thing as "the average person". Not to say there aren't definite patterns of behavior of course, but that's a whole other conversation.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I am weary of the slobby fat guy with bad manners being perceived as 'lazy' \- those guys can be just as much the opposite of that as any other.

I agree with most of what you say, but I disagree that there isn't such a thing as the 'average person', or rather, we are animals, somewhat predictable, not that unique.

<comment><USER6> > _we are animals, somewhat predictable, not that unique._

Oh I agree completely, didn't mean to give the impression I advocate the "special snowflake" view of the world either. My apologies! My entire field of research is practically based around our predictability ;)

What I meant to say rather, was that while there are definite behavioural patterns, they tend to cluster into discrete groupings, rather than being broad and generally applicable traits that can be used on everyone across the board in aggregate (i.e. a _singular_ "average person"). There are certainly many 'trivial' human traits we all share in common of course, but I've found those to be less helpful in personal decision making situations than more specific correlated traits. But then again, I might be a bit bias given that's my area of expertise :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The question that most people are interested in is

      P(Success | Number of Founders)

but what the article has answered is

      P(Number of Founders | Success)

for a couple of different metrics of "success".

They are not the same question! In particular, the average number of founders for a successful startup might be low, but the chances could still be better with more founders.

<comment><USER9> Isn't the second one just a subset of the first (post-event and excluding the failures)?

<comment><USER10> All startups are successful if you ignore the ones which fail. True, but not very interesting.

 _Not_ excluding the failures is the point of the exercise. One cannot choose to succeed, one can only choose the number of founders. The question is how many founders leads to the greatest probability of success.

Although approximately 50% of successes have one founder, it does not follow that approximately 50% of startups with one founder succeed. If 70% of startups have one founder, then those startups are under-represented amongst the winners. OTOH, if 20% of startups have two founders then, with 30% of winners having two founders, they are over-represented.

If the numbers I just made up were accurate, then it would be better to have two founders than one, even though most successful startups have one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty bad article because it focuses on # of funded startups, not # of attempted startups. What if 99.999% of startups attempted were attempted by solo founders? It would make you expect that the # of funded startups should also tilt towards solo founders - if all other odds were even, you'd expect 99.999% of funded startups to be solo founders, and it would not mean much.

<comment><USER12> Is the goal to get funded is the goal to succeed?

Success is the metric you want to measure, which is usually exit if not profitability.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't matter which success metric is used, the point still stands. If you only measure the ratio of solo-founder companies that are successful, you haven't measured anything at all about how likely a solo-founder company is to succeed. We need to know how many of each type failed as well.

<comment><USER12> Yes and no.

This is not scientifically sound without the full data, you are right. But I don't think that is the point. If you had all the data and parsed it.. and it told you that as a solo founder you had a 21% chance to exit, and as a group founder you had a 23% chance to exit.. so should you do a group founding as your next project despite not knowing anyone to found with?

I don't think it works like that. Some people naturally do better solo. Some people already have a group on a hot idea. I think you should go with what is working. What the point of this story is, in my mind, is to say "look - a lot of articles say solo founders are bad. Here is some data that it isn't that bad, and perhaps solo founding is a valid way to run a business"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> After failure of my startup's first iteration, investigation and data made it clear my cofounder was at fault:

\- deals that made a loss \- poor relationship management \- investing way too much in blaming the team around her

This ended up with a company seriously in the red, heading to liquidation and a completely fucked reputation.

Iteration two: flying solo, small team and 18 months in, we are in profit and I've fixed most of the relationships that needed some help.

I have a department head who I can trust and points out my blindspots but never wanted to be a founder, which is fine.

Be very careful your cofounder isn't just saying the right things in the hope of a payday.

<comment><USER15> Even if your cofounder has absolutely the best intentions, not everyone is cut out for it. It's very easy to be "Saying the right things" and not even aware they they aren't being honest.

In fact, I'd argue that %50 of the "co-founders" of YC startups are not actually ready to be founders, and I suspect that the number who are still with the startup 3 years after are very small. (and that a large number of the YC companies that don't exist after 3 years don't exist because of a bad choice in co-founder.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If anything, this analysis under-represents the success of solo founders. Because VCs don't like solo founders, it's less likely they go for a VC path. There must be plenty of successes that are bootstrapped. And these solo founders may not even bother adding their company to Crunchbase.

I'm one of those.

<comment><USER17> What if, because they are not liked the choosing criteria are stricter and therefore it's more likely that the successful ones will be picked?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Sooooo… You can start a company alone. Should you?

Only if you are young and without dependents _or_ if you can afford to write the effort off.

Success is one metric, but another metric is the stress levels. Having been through both single- and multi-founder startups I can certainly confirm that former is incomparably more stressful than the latter. Assuming of course you are trying to build a functional company and not just play with it.

<comment><USER19> Totally agree.

I remember a beautiful family vacation that went wrong because as a solo founder everything that happened got routed to me.

If you decide to go solo, you will start hiring very soon just to make stuff happening before you run out of bandwidth.

And you'll need _really high quality_ hires... wich need a lot of bandwidth to acquire so plan accordingly (if you can ;-).

<comment><USER20> Shouldn't they be considered founders too?

<comment><USER21> I am the first "technical" hire of a startup. I think my contribution to both business capabilities and building the product is significant, maybe as much as a co-founder, but I would never call myself a founder. I founded an other company in the past that I kept running for 9 years, and I can tell the emotional and caring is very different regardless your impact and effort, even if it is 24/7\. It is feel like being a stepfather. Maybe the best one, behaving and treated like a real one, but still…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Success _rate_ is what matters when you are weighing co-founding or investing, not just the number of successful companies.

It's as if the article discovered that fifty percent of those in American prisons are black, and came to the conclusion that there's no difference in crime and poverty beacause that's roughly half. That's meaningless. Base populations matter.

What percentage of new startups are single founder?

<comment><USER23> ... But then you would have to count the bias against single founders and all the investments they didn't get thanks to that bias. And also count all the accelerators than discarded them for this issue.

Plus, there is also the "fake co-founder" tactic some people use in order to avoid this bias from others; so you would have to count those as well, but that data is not public. So yeah, I think you are trying to count the uncountable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article would be a lot more interesting if the number of successful startups could be compared to the number of unsuccessful ones, depending on the number of founders.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is likely putting too much faith in the Crunchbase data.

In my experience, Crunchbase very frequently leaves out some founders. Often, only the most prominent founder will be reported, thus underreporting the instances of having 2+ founders.

<comment><USER26> But then again how many of these companies with cofounders, really only had cofounders-in-name-only? Where one person really drove everything but at some point thought - oh shit, if I'm going to be successful, I need a cofounder!

Given the dogmatic advice "YOU NEED A COFOUNDER", I'm sure a lot of it's title inflation - what would normally be first employees are elevated to founder status to look good for the pitch deck or just to follow the advice. That said, they're still going to be quality people - less met at a find-a- technical-cofounder event, more Biz Stone style "can my title be cofounder lol?"

<comment><USER25> That doesn't really disprove the point though.

Probably the vast majority of startups have a dominant cofounder. You might call them cofounders-in-name-only, but that still validates the notion that you're better off finding a cofounder (even if they're not as central).

<comment><USER26> Yeah it's just another perspective

I don't think it validates it - if their not as central why not make them an employee with less equity / control

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reflexive question from reading the title: Suppose lots of people have been told that you shouldn't start a startup by yourself, and people are inclined to heed that. Some people will disobey this advice. These will disproportionately be people who have strong reasons to believe they'll succeed. If their judgment is at all accurate, then we might well get the result that single-founder startups are generally _more_ successful, even if the single-founder status is always and everywhere mildly detrimental to the business. The question is, did someone mention this possibility?

And it turns out the article doesn't even mention the relative success ratios (i.e. percentage of startups that succeeded out of startups that were started, broken down by founder count), AFAICT. D'oh. I guess it's valuable information that there are a _lot_ of successful single-founder companies. But "data shows" sounds like a lot more than what is shown.

</comment><comment><USER28> How many founders did the average startup have that failed? (survivorship bias!!)

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't think the article proves the point it claims to make (you don't need a founder), or disproves the message from YC: having a co-founder increases the likelihood that your startup will survive.

First of all, most startups fail when they are least funded, before they ever get past friends and family money. When you have close to zero money, mountains of work, and no traction or social proof, there's only one way to convince someone to do the important stuff that you can't do yourself, and that's by giving them a lot of equity. Founders: People satisfied with paper and an idea. (If you're already wealthy, sure, you can hire all the help you need. But that's not most people or most startups.)

The advice YC gives to co-found a startup with someone you can depend on addresses several early-stage startup problems: 1) Most people have severe limits to what they can do. Those limits come in terms of time and talent. Maybe they can code but they can't handle logistics or paperwork. Maybe they can sell an idea to investors and customers, but they can't build software. Startups require much more than one person can give. 2) Early-stage startups should be in a very active conversation with the world about what to build. The startup needs to be taking in a lot of information, reflecting on it deeply, and acting on it intelligently. With the right co-founder, you gather more information, think about it in ways you wouldn't have alone, and execute better and faster with the extra mind and hands.

To wrap this up, a brief list:

* Jobs and Wozniak

* Allen and Gates

* Page and Brin

* Hewlett and Packard

* Noyce and Moore

* Chesky, Gebbia and Blecharczyk

* Camp and Kalanick

</comment><comment><USER30> The whole reason starting a startup is so stressful, and why you need co- founders, is because of the need for rocket growth to satisfy investors. Take out investors and you take out the need for ridiculous growth and the stress and the need for co-founders.

<comment><USER31> True, but that's not really building a "startup" anymore. That's just starting a business.

<comment><USER15> No it's still a startup. It can be a very high growth startup, shooting to a $100M valuation.

It's just not the wannabe unicorn that VCs want.

There's a HUGE gap between what VC wants and a "lifestyle business" (I hate that term, thanks for not using it.)

Redefining startup to be this very, very narrow set of "businesses that will be over $1B in valuation within 5 years" is wrong, it's silly, and it's getting worse.

9 years ago on Hacker News the difference between "lifestyle" and "startup" was "businesses that will reach over $100M valuation in 10 years."

</comment></comment></comment><comment>=

Reply to @danieltillett because HN won't let me submit 4 posts in an hour!

Put another way, I would take a %10 chance of having a $100M business over a %0.1 chance of having a $1B business. (assume in both cases you end owning %5 of the stock at exit, though realistically without VC money you'd likely own more equity percentage at $100M than at $1B)

VCs generally want you to take the second bet, even though the statistical value is 1/10th as much for you!

Worse, you can only found one business at a time, while the VCs can invest in dozens at the same time. So your risk is much higher (not even mentioning that they are investing OPM)

VCs interests are not aligned with founders.

<comment><USER32> Your numbers are tautological. Everyone including your straw man vc would take 10% of 100 instead of 0.1% of 1000. 10 > 1, qed, but you don't get any points for that observation.

(yes, there are situations where taking investor capital leads to divergent interests between investors and managing founders. But not gross arithmetic differences.)

Obviously if the expected value of the smaller sized business is greater, you choose that one. The only time these questions (whether to take capital/shoot the moon) is when the expected value of the larger business is greater. So to refactor your example, what about 10% chance at 100, or a 1% chance at 2000? Now you have more of a real question on your hands.

Much more interesting when contemplating whether to go big or stay small is the notion that there are invariant personal "fixed costs" regardless of the size of the opportunity you're pursuing. Meaning, you can overwork yourself and burn out on a $100k/year business as surely as a 100 M/ year business. So if you are going to give something your all, just make sure the expected payoff is worth it.

<comment><USER15> That's my point. You should invest your _life_ in something where the value is higher. VCs would rather take a much lower chance at a higher payoff because they spread their risk around more, you cannot do so.

My numbers are hypothetical, but they are not tautological. That's my point- the VCs will take the lower expected payout, whether this is because they are bad at estimating risk or not I cannot say. I can say this is how they operate, because I've seen it, in every single startup that took VC investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I resigned from the company I started with two other co-founders. Building a new firm now as a single founder. I expect many things will be harder though few will be insurmountable if at any at all.

Building my first company, to the second largest deep learning firm in Tokyo was exciting. But if I had to break down my time so much was wasted driving consensus where none was really required.

I know most investors hate a single founder. Traction though solves all problems.

<comment><USER34> Traction does solve all the problems. This is known.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> A cofounder is very helpful in pointing out your blind spots. Also the journey is just way more fun with a partner you like and respect.

<comment><USER36> Here's the key. I'm sole-founding my current startup, and I know I am having less fun than if I had a cofounder.

<comment><USER26> Now you're having less fun, but I feel like we have this idyllic fantasy of cofounder - not unlike a romantic partner. It sounds exciting and exhilarating, but what are the odds that it ends in divorce (liquidation)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> When I see research like this my immediate reaction is "name the single founder companies". The data is apparently public, why not share it?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Starting companies is much easier with a cofounder. There's more momentum and pace with somebody together. Especially with first time founders, a team _is_ the driving force when starting a venture.

But unfortunetaly every relationship changes or ends at some point--always. Then, it's about a quick and smooth separation without briging the company in danger. But this rarely happens, the separation is usually a tedious process over many months till the company breaks.

So yes, solo founding is better in the long run but in most cases there will be no founding at all because of momentum lacking.

</comment><comment><USER38> Finding a compatible and complementary business partner is as hard as starting your business, if not harder.

</comment><comment><USER39> The data could be biased by early exits (Series A) of several SaaS or mobile app startups. Those tend to have less need for a co-founder.

Try building a scalable, enterprise IT business on your own...

<comment><USER40> That's a good point. Startups are not about exits, but big exits.

I wonder if the $$ stack up, and where the sweet spot is, given 2 founders need twice the money from an exit.

<comment><USER39> Usually a tech and a non-tech co-founder partnership works really well because you cannot scale up if the person building the technology/product is also building the marketing and sales machinery.

Single co-founders only work in domains where either of those two - technology/product and sales/marketing - are much less resource consuming than the other so that one person is able to focus on both. That model breaks at scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> In Fire Someone Today: And Other Surprising Tactics for Making Your Business a Success [1] by Bob Pritchett, cofounder of Logos Research Systems, Inc., chapter 4: There Can Be Only One—Plan for Your Partner's Departure covers the issue of cofounders. I highly enjoyed and recommend this book.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning the chapter:

When I was a teenager, I toured a factory and met its owner. Dreaming of having my own business, I asked him for the best advice he could give me. His response was two words: "No partners." When I started the business I run today, I did not take his advice—I started it with one partner and soon added another. Starting a business is hard work, and having a partner made it a fun adventure rather than a lonely quest. We did everything together, from the paperwork to set up the business to sales calls to taking all of our meals together so we could work on the business every waking hour. We became best friends and worked well together for years. When the day came that my original partner decided to leave the business, though, we realized that our lack of planning had endangered the multiyear investment we had all made and had changed the nature of our personal relationships. There is no way I could have started the business or seen it grow the way it did without my partners. As much as I now believe that "no partners" was great advice, I know that a partnership is sometimes the only way you can launch and build a business. But if that is the case, you need to make planning the end of your partnership part of planning the start of it.

[1] [http://amzn.to/2blPmmT](http://amzn.to/2blPmmT) (affiliate link)

<comment><USER42> Are affiliate links allowed on HN? I thought they were banned

<comment><USER43> They should be if not. It's dumb and probably against Amazon ToS.

<comment><USER41> They are not and it is not against Amazon ToS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Forget co-founders or not. The greater the number of valuable, diverse inputs the greater the likelihood for success. This depends entirely on the founder's or cofounder's ability to manage those inputs.

This is why there is a preference for founding teams over solo founders, but it's also why a singular vision and solo founder's ability to distill and manage those inputs may perform better than a team.

<comment><USER26> > The greater the number of valuable, diverse inputs the greater the > likelihood for success

But is that really true? Seems like more of an unsubstantiated platitude. "The more colors you use in a painting, the more beautiful it is!" Until you get a brown mess

<comment><USER44> Yes, it is. I think the sentence that follows the one you quoted provides the required context. It's up to the founder or cofounder to determine and prioritize the value of inputs. This is why such an emphasis is put on the people (often over the idea itself) in startups.

To be clear, I didn't say the greater the number of inputs, i.e. use all of the colors until they are a brown mess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> You don't need a co-founder, but you shouldn't do it alone.

Every founder will have days where an investor or employee is driving you nuts, or worse - you're struggling to keep the business afloat. At these junctures, an outside coach (not linked to your funding so you're truly open and honest) can be a lifesaver, helping you work through the complex journey of growing a business.

-Single founder, 6 years 20+ employees

</comment><comment><USER46> Co-founders or not, the underlining reasons are alike for people (entities) with different personalities (characteristics) working together.

Only one person in charge will always do, if he or she has a very strong personality and also has appropriate supporting subordinates.

Two person founding team will be great if their personalities are complementary, thus one plus one is bigger than two. There are many very successful enterprises in this group, such as Apple, HP, etc.

In initial phases of founding companies, projects, etc., always avoid groups of three strong personalities at all costs. Trinity is a very special case that will ensure endless internal fighting/competition, low efficiency and sustained tensions. However, trinity is good for long lasting (market) competition and ensuring all parties will not be easily wiped out. Example cases: a) US-Russia-China relations; b) President-Congress-Senate structure. c) Firefox-Chrome-Edge browsers;

For groups bigger than three, if the number of prominent members with strong personalities is less than four, see previous cases. Otherwise, avoid at all costs.

</comment><comment><USER47> Can't tell if you excluded startups where the founder had a previous successful startup (solo or otherwise) but it doesn't look like it?

I think this would massively distort your results. Founders with a history of success are vastly more likely to succeed in a new venture for numerous reasons, but most people who are interested in these stats (both founders and investors) are interested in the pre-big-win founder case.

Also, I suspect far more 'startups' have a single founder, purely because it's so incredibly easy to 'start' something alone. Having a cofounder implies a certain level of organization and commitment - it doesn't really work with that pet project you dabble with occasionally. If solo dabblers far outnumber 'team' dabblers then you'd expect them to be over represented in successes even if their success rate was much lower.

</comment><comment><USER48> The data isn't well-presented (52.3% of exits would be a negative if 68% of the companies considered had only 1 founder, as that would mean less received an exit than would be expected), but if you normalize the percentage of exits with the percentage funded, you roughly see that the author's original claim is likely true.

1: 52.3 / 45.9 = 1.1394

2: 30.1 / 31.9 = -1.0598

3: 12.5 / 15.0 = -1.2000

4: 3.7 / 5.3 = -1.4324

5: 1.4 / 1.9 = -1.3571

Maybe the idea is that a single founder situation is preferred, but as creating a startup can be stressful, trying, and involved, maybe doing so with a single partner (that complements your skillset) is a compromise?

I had never considered creating a business with a partner/co-founder. There would just be too many issues. People have a difficult time understanding what I'm trying to do even when I explain it in plain English, so I shudder to think what it would be like if I were doing something completely new/groundbreaking/different.

I can't deal with someone nagging, draining, or getting in the way as I try to do what I'm doing. It's always been fairly clear to me that the route I should take is to found a company solo, then bootstrap it to profitability, while keeping the employee count low (43-73, or 259-585). Then not go public. That is, I should avoid dealing with a co-founder, investors, or the overhead/inefficiency/bureaucracy/politics that comes with having more than a certain number of employees.

Also, it became clear (especially in the world today with so many service- oriented companies to contract out to) that it's entirely possible to do almost anything with 42+me employees (which is the "ideal" number of employees (1 CEO/founder + 6 leads/executives/managers + 6 individual contributors per lead/manager/executive), as there's only one layer of "management").

<comment><USER49> It's evidence investors discriminate against single founders... What isn't really news, is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> > _We are often told that starting a startup on your own is madness._

That statement remains true. It's a trade-off.

As a solo founder, maintaining both motivation and momentum becomes far more difficult. The upshot is you at least have a singular, unified vision and (hopefully) less drama.

Of course, you're also stuck with all of the work.

</comment><comment><USER51> what bugs me about the startup community is how things like raising 10M in funding or exiting by IPO are considered success.

neither of those things have anything to do with building or running a successful business. they are not even desirable imo.

<comment><USER10> A lot of people aren't interested in running a successful business except as a means to their actual goal: being independently wealthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Makes me think of the survivor bias episode of Veritaseum [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w) or the french caster ScienceEtonnante on the Simpson Paradox [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs_Zzf_vL2I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs_Zzf_vL2I) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER53> I couldn't really proceed without a business co-founder. I enjoy building stuff from the idea to a shipped product, but at that point and before it I would totally need support from a co-founder who is good at business, marketing and other magic stuff I find boring and tedious.

You can't just build an universal rule like the title suggests, data is meaningless in individual cases. "Data shows people can live underwater" ;)

</comment><comment><USER54> I am a solo founder as well, and can attest to this fact. I raised from billionaires Tim Draper and Marc Benioff of Salesforce for an Open Source database [http://gun.js.org/](http://gun.js.org/) (like Firebase).

Been trying to write up a blog post on my experience over the last 2 years, and will hopefully post it. Hit me up if anybody has any questions though.

</comment><comment><USER55> In summary, number of co-founders doesn't necessarily matter. What does is (in no real order): the ability to raise cash, the ability to produce something that has value, and the ability of however many co-founders you have to get along.

Could have been a much shorter article since the data are so full of confounding factors as to be meaningless. It does make for a nice headline though.

</comment><comment><USER56> I've been saying this for years...even wrote a book on the subject (The Smart Startup: [https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Startup-Without-Falling- Venture...](https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Startup-Without-Falling- Venture/dp/069246512X/))

</comment><comment><USER20> But what is a co-founder exactly? I can't imagine a startup being started, built and brought to an exit by a single person -- every employee contributes to some extent, and in my view an early employee who contributed a great deal should in all fairness be considered a (minority) founder.

<comment><USER57> Being an early employee doesn't make you a founder, no matter your effort.

<comment><USER20> That is exactly my question -- what differentiates the two?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I think investor preference for multiple founders is almost entirely because it makes it easier to make voting control of the company not be in the hands of a single founder they might disagree with. Two founders provides twice the opportunity to take control.

</comment><comment><USER59> > To ensure that I had the most useful and well-reported data, I limited my > research to "successful" startups.

So, in other words, the author didn't consider the failed % of startups based on founder? As in, at all, if the article is anything to go by?

</comment><comment><USER60> For getting investment via VC or angel investor. Does having a co-founder increase the chances of investment vs being a solo-preneur.

Interested to hear in solo-preneurs getting investment and what their timeline and experience was.

</comment><comment><USER61> Sure, as long as you're skilled in both the technical side and the business side, and have enough free time to do both.

Seems to me that very few people can check all three of those boxes.

</comment><comment><USER62> i guess the data presented might not say not having a cofounder is better; but they perhaps at least show that its not obligatory.

i reckon not having a co founder might be quite lonely though.

</comment><comment><USER63> I think it all comes down to how you gel well\manage with your co-founder and also team.

Nothing like a company how have one co-founder as a tech genius and other as sales\marketing expert

</comment><comment><USER64> It only gets easier to build, launch and sell stuff.

</comment><comment><USER57> The data shows that solo founders have no problem securing investment, yet the author concludes exactly the opposite.

<comment><USER65> However, based on my experience, VCs do prefer startup with at least two co- founders in case one is, unlikely but possible, deceased.

<comment><USER66> I've heard of startups, even those with more than one founder, taking out key person insurance for the company to mitigate this.

It's basically a life and disability insurance policy on the founder(s).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Well, I would say that the metrics that Techrunch uses to measure success are not quite correct. Raising money is not a proof of success, neither is exiting.

I would say, more like creating a sustainable long lasting company with good culture, cutting edge technologies, and people that love coming to work at the morning.

</comment><comment><USER68> The why _requires_ YC a co-founder to be eligible? Honest question !

</comment><comment><USER69> It's always been pretty obvious to me that the desire to have multiple cofounders in a venture backed startup is to derisk investment, divide & conquer, etc.

Simply put, most investors prefer that there are cofounders for the reasons stated above.

</comment><comment><USER70> I started several projects, most of them I would not even call startups. Most of them unfinished, some failed, some successful.

I have tried several times to start something with a buddy from university, with him it's always the same: We talk about it, like the idea, I start to build it, he does not really join in and I lose motivation myself.

The one product which is the most profitable (or profitable at all if you factor in your own hours) is a rather lame one: A sitebuilder for small businesses. I buildt it while still in uni, lived off of it and literally put customers in one by one. Very stressful.

Another one I started after that with a an economics student, who had the initial idea. It was a dating app for students, when Tinder was on the rise in the US and had not gotten to Europe yet. I could not care less about that space, but I knew it was coming and I just wanted to start _a real thing with a cofounder_ , which was totally different, so we did it. Collected a few hundred users from the local universities, ultimately failed, but I learned a few valuable lessons. It was nice having the cofounder around, but he could not really help at that point. He helped a bit with some guerilla marketing and started to work on our investment. I did the main work. That feeling of unfairness - even though you know that it is not on purpose, was really bad.

After that several other people approached me and I said no several times. I really wanted to build something in a team and have it play out. The feeling to fail alone is not good, but cofounders come with a different set of bad feelings. The failed attempts are costly, because you can only endure so much, before you need a success.

So I decided to approach my consulting as a startup and see the company with it's processes involved as the product. Have several employees and work with freelancers. I meet really interesting founders, I can learn from. I get approached to cofound all the time. I did not think that this would be enough, but really I already have the social interactions I was looking for in a cofounder. I just prefer to always have money exchanged for services. You can still be a good partners and maybe join in later, but I am a huge fan to simplify the relationship with payments. I even did some projects with the uni buddy, which work out great all the time.

The sitebuilder is still profitably tucking along. I know see it less as a lame project, which needs so much work, but as an asset and investment potential. Over the years it has brought in several nice opportunities.

To conclude: My solution sounds one-dimensional, but it really is "have a bit of money and success first". The more you have of it, the more interesting the conversations get. It is a nice filter, because people who have it are more likely to be successful again, plus they have the option to just pay you to build their ideas. You become able to do that yourself with yours. The relationships with your partners are just so much easier, you don't depend on the one perfect match, but different people can fulfil different roles, without the risk associated with a cofounder. Even your own projects appear in a better light and look nicer, when your time becomes more valuable.

<comment><USER71> _> It was nice having the cofounder around, but he could not really help at that point. He helped a bit with some guerilla marketing and started to work on our investment. I did the main work. That feeling of unfairness - <USER2> though you know that it is not on purpose, was really bad._

Could not agree more. I hate this feeling and realize that IN THE FUTURE the nontechnical/sales/marketing cofounder could absolutely have a longer lasting effect on the success of the business. However, those first months where you're building the product and he/she isn't really doing much or isn't proactive in finding ways to contribute are very tough.

In the future, I'm thinking I'll start out solo building the MVP and trying to get traction, then when there's enough, find a nontechnical cofounder whose equity is based around hitting users/sales/funding milestones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> After decades as an employee and cofounder, and seeing many startups fail first hand (so smaller data set, but much richer information) I agree that the stigma against single founders is in error.

The number one and two causes of startup failure in my experience are fights between the founders and VCs forcing the startup to do the wrong thing (which often causes fights between the founders with one saying "we know the market better than those guys" and the other saying "but think of the signal if we don't pivot into widgets for baby monkeys and they decline to pro-rata our B round???!")

But the bottom line is, if you don't know someone you can cofound with, you shouldn't jeopardize the future of the company by just picking one. I don't think you can pick a good co-founder with less than a year of experience with them. Founding a company strains previously good relationships by greatly raising the stakes for every decision and disagreement, compared to your previous relationship with each other. PG forcing Dropbox's founder to get a cofounder seems shockingly dangerous (unless that cofounder was really always going to be number 2 in authority).

If you know someone you've worked with for 4-6 years and they work their butts off, then that's a great potential co-founder. I had one of those, but we got divorced. :-) Still on good terms, but I am not going to start a company with him.

But if you don't have anyone like that- you're ADDING relationship risk to your Startup Risk. And you're unlikely to be reducing your startup risk by the same amount. That co-founder could be hired with a significant opportunity to earn equity, at about the same time, and be just as successful at reducing startup risk without adding the relationship risk by being an "employee". The difference is in control.

So, my plan is to be the Founder, and then get a set of co-founders who get founder stock[1] but don't have the authority to overrule me, even if they all gang up (eg not an equal equity split). Hopefully this will be acceptable to TechStars. This will show others are willing to work on my idea at least- which is the claimed reason for a cofounder cause it's early social proof (also a really silly signal).

[1] I don't believe in multiple classes of stock. A dollar put in by an employee from under market salary is just as valuable as a dollar put in by a VC firm, and the employee is taking more risk- they can only "invest" in one job at a time.

<comment><USER26> The "just a warm body, any warm body!" mentality is what's so detrimental about the co-founder craze. Both financially (~50% of equity!) and in terms of more risk. It's a bad idea unless they're at least as talented and motivated as you (preferably in an area that complements you), and even then it's dangerous because you give up a lot of control.

If it's your idea and your vision, why not build the prototype, get some traction, then bring on a talented employee for 5% equity? Much better than 50% with someone you met at a "find a tech-cofounder" event

<comment><USER66> Are there perhaps political reasons for it? Do investors prefer having two or more founders they can divide if necessary? Does it increase "bus factor" or otherwise derisk the venture?

My opinion: two or more founders who are really invested and work well together > single founder > forced cofounder relationship. I say this as a single founder.

The hardest thing about being a single founder is cognitive load. I don't necessarily mean time. There are usually enough hours, but switching between at least five hats really strains the brain. It can also be hard to maintain energy. I find groups with other founders and working in a good startup oriented coworking space very helpful.

<comment><USER15> There are absolutely political reasons for it. Both the dividing founders reason you mentioned, plus the fact that single founders are more likely to be technical while when two people found one of them is likely to be a business founder. VCs feel they can control the business founder (or replace him if needed) much easier than the engineer, because VCs are not engineers. (and they are not entrepreneurs in my experience either, though they seem to think they are and are happy to trot out the "exits" they were vaguely involved in, usually via friends and family equity.)

I agree with your priority- a pair of fully dedicated good founders is ideal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>