Problem
I can’t find a co-founder for my startup.
Body
This usually means the founder doesn’t have sufficient domain expertise, and isn’t at the forefront of their field. The startup itself may be in the Fad Ghetto.
Thought leaders all know one another; they form what Randall Collins calls an intellectual network. People who follow that field know who those thought leaders are, and usually want to work with them – if conflict and interpersonal frictions don’t get in the way, of course.
This is the equivalent of very attractive people not having a dating problem.
It also means the startup idea just isn’t very compelling, if you’ve told everyone you know and all you’ve gotten back is polite “how nice that you’re doing a startup, why don’t you let me know when you launch and I’ll definitely download your app and try it out.”
Solution
Co-founder dating events and online forums are organized in an attempt to solve this problem. The idea is that people who want to do a startup, but can’t find a co-founder, can go to these events, and match up. In practice, everybody who goes to such an event thinks their idea is better than everybody else’s, so the events end up being all chiefs and no Indians, and everyone goes home single.
