Mike Kowalchik: Founding Challenges: Co-founders and the problem of the “good idea filter”

 If you are contemplating joining someone you've just met to start a company, there’s a tendency to use a ‘good idea filter’ on them. In many cases I’ve heard potential co-founders describe their meetings as “She was nice, we definitely clicked, I could work with her, but I’m not sure I buy her idea.” It seems like a lot of potential co-founders are looking for the so-obvious, lightning-strike idea and then, and only then, to connect together and start executing. Very few companies begin with such a foundation. Most ideas only seem obvious in hindsight.

• ”Everybody I know is calling me an idiot, what do I do?” and my comment is, well, you thank ‘em, cause if they all thought you were right, you’d be too late.
• - Scott Rafer - CEO Lookery, Venture Voice Show #11

Given the entrepreneurial networking events geared at connecting co-founders, the primary way we try to come together is by pitching. There’s a whole mythology that’s developed around the elevator pitch, and while they have their utility, pitches are not necessarily a good way to evaluate if someone is a good fit as a co-founder (unless, of course, you’re looking for someone who is good at pitching). There are many reasons why initial ideas, and idea pitches, are not a good way to find a potential co-founder.

We are terrible at evaluating startup ideas

What constitutes a successful startup is the product of multiple interrelated unknowns, the quality of the initial idea being only one small element. Once you’re dealing with a complex dynamic like a startup, pure intuition will fail you. Even people who make their living by determining the probability of startup success, early stage venture capitalists, usually don’t list the initial idea as a primary evaluating factor. You’ll hear more about the team and it’s ability toexecute as well as the potential market than the idea. No startup idea survives contact with the enemy. Most startups pivot on the initial idea multiple times before coming to what’s the really good idea. Implicit in this, most startup ideas are inherently flawed. The startup process is not one of executing on an obvious "good idea", it's one of exploring the flaws in an idea, fixing them, and when you can't shifting to a new idea. Another flaw with the 'good idea filter' is that we also tend to filter out people that don’t have a clearly defined product idea or solution. The person who is passionate about attacking an interesting problem can often times be a more interesting potential co-founder than one who is enamored with a particular solution.

We are terrible at pitching.

If the initial idea is even remotely novel and not a meaningless rehash (twitter for dogs!), it’s going to take more than an elevator pitch or a 15 minute conversation to communicate. Hearing an idea over a beer and social conversation means you will likely only absorb about 10% of it. We're being affected by the "curse of knowledge". When listening to pitches to determine if they're "good ideas" what we're really evaluating is the communication of the idea.

• People tend to think that having a great idea is enough, and they think the communication part will come naturally. We are in deep denial about the difficulty of getting a thought out of our own heads and into the heads of others. It’s just not true that, “If you think it, it will stick.” And that brings us to the villain of our book: The Curse of Knowledge. Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators. Think of a lawyer who can’t give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can’t follow. And we’re all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise. Here’s the great cruelty of the Curse of Knowledge: The better we get at generating great ideas—new insights and novel solutions—in our field of expertise, the more unnatural it becomes for us to communicate those ideas clearly. That’s why knowledge is a curse.
• - Chip and Dan Heath - The Stickiness Aptitude Test (SAT) and Ten Questions with Chip and Dan Heath

An inability to communicate an idea in a short pitch is not necessarily a good reason to filter out that potential co-founder. As Chip and Dan Heath explain, often times those with the deepest domain knowledge and most innovative solutions are precisely the worst at pitching. Networking events and short conversations are an extremely inefficient way to communicate true innovation and the possibility for a startup venture.