Many people have heard the story of how the Mac user interface was born: Steve Jobs toured Xerox PARC and was shown some basic window-based computer. It was a short demo. When he went home, he tried to reproduce what he had seen. Except he hadn’t noticed the limitations, such as the fact that windows can’t overlap. And so Apple went on to create the GUI we all know today.

On a smaller scale, I had a similar experience. One day (this is the late 90s), my boss told me to drop whatever I was doing and start working on building some fancy debug system for hardware designers.

I was a pretty junior engineer and didn’t know any better. So I assumed I was really supposed to build such a system. I didn’t know it was impossible and didn’t make any sense at all.

It wasn’t easy, but I eventually figured a way. After a few weeks, I had a prototype. It worked! I showed it to my boss. And my first patent was born (the story of what happened to that patent after that is better left for another day).

What did I learn from that experience? In the startup world, there is a lot of love for young founders, because many believe only they can be disruptive and come up with innovative startups. As I get older, I should resent such a preconception, but I agree with it.

And now I understand why it is so: the more experience I gain, the better I am at knowing right away if something is going to work or not. But what I gain in efficiency, I lose in innovation.

How many ideas did I not pursue because I knew they didn’t make sense? I would pass on a 140-character messaging system, but it may be fun enough for kids to build. Who am I to judge.

Q: I just met someone who looks like a potential co-founder for me. What should I ask to tell if he is the right co-founder for me?

A: It’s actually quite simple. Good co-founders are all about doing, not talking. So here’s the one-month plan to find out.

Week 1

Meet for coffee and pitch your idea in more details. Does the other person want to meet again that same week? That’s a good sign. At coffee meeting #2, expect the other person to contribute some ideas. If he just shows up but offers no twist on your project, something is wrong. It means he hasn’t obsessed about it.

Week 2

By week 2, you should be brainstorming and exchanging random thoughts on instant messenger. That’s when you settle on a first goal together.

Week 3 & 4

The rest of the first month, you actually work on accomplishing whatever milestone you came up with.

At the end of the first month, you know if you have a co-founder or not. If you do, bring them on board with equity (don’t forget vesting).

Decision Point

Common mistakes I have seen too often: at the end of the first month, no work was done, but you heard plenty of very convincing excuses. It’s so tempting to be nice and give the other person the benefit of the doubt.

Don’t.

You’ll become more and more miserable over many months before you eventually pull the trigger, and it will be very painful for everyone. Just don’t.

A frequent topic of conversation came up: the misunderstood entrepreneur. When you start a startup, even your own family doesn’t understand why you didn’t keep a “real job.”

It is extremely frustrating.

Entrepreneurs try to reason with the rest of the clueless world. They use logical arguments, explain the upside of stock-options, or how the freedom they now enjoy is worth more than the salary they gave up.

It doesn’t work.

Your mother still doesn’t get it. After one more long argument, she sheepishly asks if maybe you need money.

One day I found how to settle the discussion: “I’m OK, Mon. I bought a Porsche.”

That worked like a charm. No more concerns for my future. True story(*).

(*) minor details have been modified to protect the innocent

The rules are simple: you give your best elevator pitch, in less than 1 minute, as if you were pitching an angel investor or a VC. You think you did a pretty good job. You are proud of yourself. And then Adeo tells you what an investor really hears, and how bad your pitch really is. It’s tough, but that’s the best way to learn.

Adeo’s strength is in being able to analyze and deconstruct a pitch instantaneously. Believe me, investors think the same way. The difference is that they don’t tell you what they think. Instead, consider yourself lucky if all you get is an “Hum, interesting…”.

But enough talking, judge for yourself and watch the video!

Here is my favorite excerpt of the panel on getting PR. I was dying to find out: “does PR 2.0 really work?”. Listen to the panel answer. I’m hearing a strong “NO”.

The panelists (from left to right):

• Anthony Ha, VentureBeat
• Ryan Singel, Wired
• Chris O’Brien, San Jose Mercury News
• Hooman Khalili, Alice FM

Should you join an incubator such as Y-Combinator, the Founder Institute or TechStars? Or just go out on your own and raise money like Brian Wong (Kiip) just did at the sweet age of 19? That was the topic of the Incubator panel at the Founder Conference, with Ivan Kirigin of TipJoy (YCombinator Alumni), Lecole Cole of Skydera (Founder Institute Graduate) and Emily Olson of Foodzie (TechStars Alumni).

Beyond discussing underage drinking and how good the food is, we covered more serious topics such as: is giving away equity worth the experience, what you are really gaining in return, and more.

Enjoy the 45 minutes of open discussion.

More videos of the Founder Conference coming soon.

When I put together the Founder Conference (August 17th in Silicon Valley, in case you haven’t heard yet), securing a line-up of great speakers was very important. I am trying to help as many aspiring entrepreneurs build the best startups possible. If you are like most entrepreneurs, you’ll be focused on what is being said on stage. There is great insight to learn that way.

Waiting in line at WWDC

However, you almost certainly make a very common mistake: you’ll ignore the other people in the room, asusming that they are not as interesting as the famous speakers on stage.

You’d be wrong. If I told you Steve Jobs was sitting next to you, I bet you’d have a heart attack. Transport yourself back to 1980 (virtually of course). Steve Jobs was around. He just wasn’t famous yet. But I’m sure he was just as smart as he is today.

Conferences for entrepeneurs self-select their attendance: everyone in the room has the passion and the ambition to build something great. 5 years from now, the newbies of today will be the stars. Why wait? Get to know them today, genuinely, for who they are, before they become famous. You will learn just as much as watching the stage.

I have met many people like this, who at the time I liked, and were nobodies. It’s not about gaming the system and networking for the sake of networking. You should genuinely be interested in the other attendees: after all, they share your passion.

This is what starting a company really means: e-mailing 100 strangers a day, every day. For the foreseeable future.

That’s it. Of course, there will also be coding involved, but as most founders are programmers, you already know what that looks like. It’s the CEO part that sounds mysterious and fun, when really it’s just contacting people you don’t know to ask/beg for favors. Asking the press to cover you. Asking bloggers to link to your new site. Asking middle managers in larger companies to agree to meet with you.

The stressful part for first-time founders is asking strangers. People you don’t know. That’s quite uncomfortable at first. But you get used to it. Quickly, you’ll learn that sending the e-mail doesn’t actually cost you anything. If you don’t ask, for sure you’ll never get what you want. So eventually rather than wondering “should I send an e-mail to XYZ”, you just do it.

Again and again. Hundreds of times a day.

That’s how you earn your CEO wings.

PS: this post stemmed from a discussion with a recent Founder Institute grad.

He finally asked: “why do you put so much emphasis on market size? The team, and surely other aspects must be equally important to a startup success.”

He was right: we are putting a lot of emphasis on the market size. It dawned on me that we hadn’t clearly explained why. Maybe because we took it for granted. So I said it: “VCs can fix your team by injecting more money, but they can’t fix your market”.

“Oh, of course!”. That was all the explanation he needed. When you are a bootstrapped entrepreneur, you think of money as something real hard to get, a very expensive commodity. And you lose sight of the fact that on the other side of the table, VCs see money as the cheap commodity, and good startups as the rare one.

If your technology is not quite as good as you thought, your VCs will put more money on the table and hire a bunch of Ph.Ds to make it work. But if your market turns out to be non-existent, there is nothing the VCs can do to fix it. That’s why despite all the claims about backing teams first, it’s so important to target a huge market.

Ideally, VCs want to back great teams targeting great markets. But given the choice, they’ll settle for a somewhat weaker team.

Not a smaller market.

Here’s how you do it in one tweet:

@joe I expect this co-founder position to be worth ~30% equity. My goal is to incorporate in about a month, let’s see how it goes by then.

Really, that’s all there is to it. Now if you are curious to know why this is the right way to do it, read on.

You must commit to a number upfront

You need to make the potential co-founder a promise. Something tangible that clearly spells out how much of the company they’ll be getting. You can’t avoid a discussion with a specific number. Am I getting 30% or 5%? That makes a huge difference. By putting it in “writing” (a tweet), you are giving enough rope for the co-founder to sue you if you completely abuse the situation.

You’d be amazed by how many startups I coach that tell me they haven’t discussed equity split yet, although they have been coding along for 6 months or more… The longer you wait to have that discussion, the worse it gets. Be upfront.

You need a way out

Frankly, you should not sign a definitive co-founder agreement with someone you haven’t work with yet. In my experience (confirmed by talking to many entrepreneurs facing the same situation), it takes about a month to know whether it’s going to work out or not. So work together informally for a month, and decide then. Follow your instincts. If after one month, the only contribution of the co-founder are excuses and delay, just stop, don’t try to save the situation and hope that it will get better. It doesn’t.

You need to be fair

While you committed in writing to an equity split, a tweet is clearly not as strong as a legal contract, so in case where the relationship doesn’t work out, there is no additional paperwork needed.

But if you ripped-off the co-founder, the tweet gives them a (small) basis for a lawsuit. So it forces you to do the right thing. It’s a good trade-off, fair for both sides, without getting all lawyerly.

After the one month, if everyone is happy and super-excited about the startup, incorporate. That will make the tweet official. That’s it!

PS: did I mention that if you construe this post as legal advice, you deserve the mess you’ll get into? Of course you should talk to a real lawyer. Just do your own research as well.

I’ll happily take comments from lawyers and others about whether this approach is sound or not.