Ask HN: What would it take to convince a tech cofounder to join your startup?

This answers the question: http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2016/06/how-to-get-hired-as-tec...

At this point you'd be looking to take %50 of the company just by having an idea. The rest (%99 of the job at that point) will have to be handled by your tech co-founder. Plus, you'd be in charge of telling him/her when to deliver and how.

My best recommendation is to start your "CEO" job earlier and to land an appointment with an investor willing to invest in your idea and to include your potential co-founder in that meeting. That would make you worth %50 easily.

If I were that technical (and mature) co-founder, I would look at strong traction, real profits, and no bullshit. I care more about traction and bootstrapping than having investors, except if those investors are top VCs. Very improbable without a technical co-founder.

If the project didn't start yet, I would only take the bet if you have real experience and real companies/champions [1] waiting for your solution.

My company had a lot of startups as customer. Many of them with strong business and technical teams. almost all died. Full stop.

[1] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/champion.html

50% at least. I've worked at a few startups and all you need at the beginning is engineers. To be honest I probably wouldn't take the position at all unless you already had funding.

Would you start a restaurant without ever working in one? A bank with no finance knowledge? If you're not a tech cofounder become one. The reality is that a company with a handful of people needs to have every one of those working on their product or they will be at a massive disadvantage to anyone else that does.

Unless you have good funding or a customer with a pre-sales signed contract, I myself would be very reluctant to even think about it. If your idea is so good to worth it, just hire it.

Sorry but I've received too many promising proposals, and even in some cases, I was asked to sign an NDA that forbid to compete with the "idea" even without knowing what the project was about.

At the beginning what matters are the initial vision / intuition & the ability to deliver the MVP. MVP will be the tech cofounder role. Tech cofounders have numerous opportunities to work for. They have their own ideas and tens of non tech people who want to partner with them. They will join your project if they both think that the vision is interesting and that you as their cofounder have an unfair advantage to turn this project into success. It can be a strong market knowledge, a solid network in this area, a demonstrate ability to launch a project from zero, a strong competence in customer acquisition / marketing, a strong leadership or something else. The idea on its own worth very few to nothing. Your cofounder must be convinced that you will be the relevant person to team up and achieve the vision. Demonstrate that you are this person is I think the best way to convince a tech cofounder to join your startup.

If the business co-founder were to have an MVP built and a little traction but no funding, would you guys join?

It would take fundings and a serious network. Or, a very specific and rare skill like medicine, biotech, Maths, etc.

Nowadays a none tech co-founder is close to useless thanks to companies like YC. They make everything seamless for tech people so why would a tech entrepreneur work for someone else's idea while giving up power and money?

A hard or interesting enough problem.