How to pick a co-founder 🔑 (StartupWatching #78)

Imagine being able to retarget anybody who clicks on your links. With PixelMe your dreams can finally be turned into a reality! You’ll be able to serve specific ads on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn & Adwords to everyone who clicked on a link. As easy as adding a retargeting pixel to your links! 🙌

Product guru Julie Zhuo shares that, to find ideas, you have to find problems. To find problems, you have to talk to people. Products that succeed solve real problems faced by real people. Whether they cause huge shifts that disrupt markets, or simply provide small conveniences, they need to be needed.

You could make something right now. If you wanted to stop reading, grab a sheet of butcher’s paper and brainstorm ideas, you could probably come up with half a dozen ideas for apps, books or products. Ideas aren’t the hard part, after all . Where things get tough is when you’re trying to make something that people genuinely give a shit about. Great piece by Jon Westenberg.

Too many startup pitches follow a flawed formula. They start with a grand vision rather than simple explanation. Steli Efti shares how you can learn how to make your pitches more effective.

Classic post by @naval @nivi of @angellist on why picking a co-founder is your most important decision when starting a company. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors. The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building products and the other is good at selling them. Think Jobs and Wozniak, Allen and Gates, Ellison and Lane, Hewlett and Packard, Larry and Sergei, Yang and Filo, Omidyar and Skoll.