This article rings very true to me. I applied to YC in Summer 2010 with two fellow grad students I picked by sending out a "founders wanted" email, then meeting each of them for lunch. We got invited to interview, but weren't accepted. So we went with another accelerator, Betaspring, and proceeded to fall apart almost immediately.
The biggest problem was that we didn't really have a template for making decisions. Up to that point, our only goal had been getting into an accelerator, which we somehow expected to solve all our problems. And I'd already decided that I'd rather lead a startup than get a PhD, so I was very focused on that goal, while they were more focused on schoolwork. So the way decisions were made before the summer was that I'd say "I did some research, and think we should do this" and they'd say "OK." It was very unilateral. Once we started working together full-time, though, that wasn't tenable, and there was a very fine line I had to walk, to provide both autonomy and a sense of direction. And we never could come to an arrangement that made everyone happy.
That's not to say that I would have been more successful as a single founder—I had pretty minimal dev experience at the time—but there's a very good reason that one of the YC application questions is "Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or work, that two or more of you created together." If you don't have a good answer for that, my advice is to hold off on doing YC and just figure out something substantial that you can build together.
The biggest problem was that we didn't really have a template for making decisions. Up to that point, our only goal had been getting into an accelerator, which we somehow expected to solve all our problems. And I'd already decided that I'd rather lead a startup than get a PhD, so I was very focused on that goal, while they were more focused on schoolwork. So the way decisions were made before the summer was that I'd say "I did some research, and think we should do this" and they'd say "OK." It was very unilateral. Once we started working together full-time, though, that wasn't tenable, and there was a very fine line I had to walk, to provide both autonomy and a sense of direction. And we never could come to an arrangement that made everyone happy.
That's not to say that I would have been more successful as a single founder—I had pretty minimal dev experience at the time—but there's a very good reason that one of the YC application questions is "Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or work, that two or more of you created together." If you don't have a good answer for that, my advice is to hold off on doing YC and just figure out something substantial that you can build together.