I have been self employed for 17 years as a 1-man consulting shop, and enjoy working alone.
I have just started a product activity (making things and selling them to end-users) and can do the work by myself (I design, and then the actual making is done by factories) -- but for the first time I miss someone to talk to, someone with which to explore business ideas and options.
Maybe a co-founder wouldn't help much because they would have a vested interest in the discussion, though.
Thank you; I had never heard the term mastermind in that context before. Is it a well-known concept? The second result when googling "startup mastermind" is the post you mention, and the first one is... a reddit thread pointing to that same post.
But the idea is exactly what I would need, so thanks!!
Glad to help. I've been in one for about a year or so, and can't recommend it enough.
Not sure how known the concept is, but I think it is fairly well known, especially if you run a bootstrapped startup. And if you're listening to the podcast Startups For the Rest Of Us (recommended!), I'd say it's probably close to 100 percent. One way of finding people for your mastermind is to visit the MicroConf conference, run by the same people as the podcast. (It's a lot easier getting a ticket for the European conference than the US one.)
I have found that spending time with clients (users in the trenches especially) is enough conversational stimulation I need. I know I'm encouraging the idea of seeing trees instead of the big picture forest ... but as a lone workhorse resource, you want to avoid non-actionable ideas like the plague.
I have just started a product activity (making things and selling them to end-users) and can do the work by myself (I design, and then the actual making is done by factories) -- but for the first time I miss someone to talk to, someone with which to explore business ideas and options.
Maybe a co-founder wouldn't help much because they would have a vested interest in the discussion, though.