Ask HN: How do I find a technical cofounder?
7 comments
I've built over a dozen prototypes, spent my own time, money, and energy on them for at least a month in some cases, only to have the non-tech co-founder get cold feet once it's time to market it.
So first off, I want someone who won't do that. Experienced people who have built successful businesses have done that. Normally reliable long term friends and colleagues have done that. People who have more to lose from failure... they're the most likely to back out.
What I like to see is someone dedicated, who really believes in what they're doing. Those who talk only about market and money often back out as soon as an opportunity with a more money comes up... and if they're qualified, they have a non-stop stream of opportunities.
I'd also like to see a somewhat validated business model. Be creative in validating. One of my favourite examples is a friend who wanted to start a car rental business, but before buying the car, he put up ads on the car to check that the market existed.
When someone comes up to me with an idea, I ask them why they haven't built it in a spreadsheet, or WordPress first. One guy did a Airbnb for musician gigs. He had a static site with a profile for each musician with manual payment and people were paying for it.
This doesn't apply to all products, and usually not SaaS. But I want to be able to trust the co-founder to reduce risk, sell, and understand the user/product so I can focus on building stuff. There will also be a lot of pivots. Make sure that the pivots are at least thought out and not too late.
So first off, I want someone who won't do that. Experienced people who have built successful businesses have done that. Normally reliable long term friends and colleagues have done that. People who have more to lose from failure... they're the most likely to back out.
What I like to see is someone dedicated, who really believes in what they're doing. Those who talk only about market and money often back out as soon as an opportunity with a more money comes up... and if they're qualified, they have a non-stop stream of opportunities.
I'd also like to see a somewhat validated business model. Be creative in validating. One of my favourite examples is a friend who wanted to start a car rental business, but before buying the car, he put up ads on the car to check that the market existed.
When someone comes up to me with an idea, I ask them why they haven't built it in a spreadsheet, or WordPress first. One guy did a Airbnb for musician gigs. He had a static site with a profile for each musician with manual payment and people were paying for it.
This doesn't apply to all products, and usually not SaaS. But I want to be able to trust the co-founder to reduce risk, sell, and understand the user/product so I can focus on building stuff. There will also be a lot of pivots. Make sure that the pivots are at least thought out and not too late.
Thanks, that all makes a lot of sense!
You mention you've been working on this for a few years. You might be surprised how quick you can advance your technical knowledge to build out the MVPs yourself. Then you can still work with a technical cofounder but you can work in a feedback loop of one brain.
Netlify is good for simple deploys. Heroku is good too. Digital ocean is ok if you want a server to login to.
For back end python and Django are great! For front end you can build simple but good looking interfaces with Vue.
You might also want to check out a YouTube series like cs50 to round out your knowledge.
The tools are so good today you can barely hack them together and still build some pretty cool stuff.
Finding technical cofounders is hard because like developers, there just aren't that many of them. Good luck!
Netlify is good for simple deploys. Heroku is good too. Digital ocean is ok if you want a server to login to.
For back end python and Django are great! For front end you can build simple but good looking interfaces with Vue.
You might also want to check out a YouTube series like cs50 to round out your knowledge.
The tools are so good today you can barely hack them together and still build some pretty cool stuff.
Finding technical cofounders is hard because like developers, there just aren't that many of them. Good luck!
If you have worked at large enterprises you should a few senior developers. Start talking to them. I'm a founder and I know a few other founders and that's how they all got started with the new startups/ideas.
how are you going to be paying this technical co-founder? with cash and equity or just equity?
Co-founder, by definition, usually is just equity. But they can often negotiate a very large chunk of it; having twice as much as the CEO is not uncommon. I oncegot someone to agree to a 49% share and a junior level minimal salary, but it still wasn't a good enough deal in the end.
It would be equity to begin with, and given the right person I'd be leaning towards an equal split.
My background is in marketing and revenue operations, I am moderately technical but I am not a developer or engineer.
For the last couple of years I have been slowly plugging away at a digital SaaS product aimed at the tattoo industry, I've hired freelance developers to build an MVP but find myself not entirely happy with the speed and quality of the freelancers I've been working with.
Basically, I need help, but I have no idea how and where to find someone technical who would be interested in working on this project with me.
I'd love to hear any recommendations from folks here about how one would go about finding a technical cofounder.