How to find a technical co-founder | Hacker News Reader

How to find a technical co-founder

jeffreytalajic.com

28 pointsjefftala22 comments

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Taken from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270834, here are a few previous HN threads about this question:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073239 Guide to Finding a Technical Co-Founder

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2056630 Can't Find a Technical Co-Founder? Do It Yourself

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2018618 Non-programmer founders: learn code first, find tech co-founder(s) after?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1983569 Finding co-founders, where and how

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1882090 How to Find a Technical Co-Founder

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1872960 Finding a Technical Co-Founder

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866516 Dont look for a co-founder. Find a Right Hand Man

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1823724 Find Co-Founders, Don't Get Screwed

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1820875 Not in the Valley? How do you find co-founders?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779750 How To REALLY Find A Technical Co-Founder

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779092 How find co-founder online?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1778191 Ask HN: Finding a Co-Founder at a Hackerspace

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1689751 Can't Find a Technical Co-Founder? Do It Yourself

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1677066 Network Launches to Help Entrepreneurs Find Co-founders

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1576186 Last Call: Pitch to find a Co-Founder at The Founder Conference

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1575105 Does "finding co-founders" ever work?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1567469 Ask HN: Where is the best place to find a co-founder?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512715 How to find a co-founder

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511965 Ask HN: How do you find/meet tech co-founders outside of the hotspots?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1509775 Finding the Right Co-Founder for Your Startup

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1373858 Strategies for Finding the Co-Founder of Your Dreams

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1367637 FoodSpotting founder on finding co-founder, marketing & female entrepreneurs

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1347723 Ask HN: How do I find the right co-founder?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1307167 Help a Startup Out - Get feedback, find co-founders, find advisors, etc.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1297382 Ask HN: Where To Find Design Founders

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1294713 Vokle founder: how to find great programmers & making the most from events

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1238947 Ask HN: I'd like to find Co-Founder(s) / Developers

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086852 How to Find the Ideal Co-founder: A Seattle Startup Experiment

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=912667 Find a co-founder with this new MeetUp

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876010 Finding Your Co-Founders

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=849737 Ask HN: Finding Developer/Engineer Co-Founder?

There is no old wisdom, only old people ;-)

Valuable advice, but being technical myself, I'd like to see a post about how to find a business/marketing co-founder.

I actually figure that's harder. There are no shortage of people who "talk the talk", but its hard to see who'd be good at raising money, getting customers, and biz dev based on interviews. At least with techies, you can see if they can build things or not.

It seems that, whether you're looking for a tech or business cofounder, you need to find someone who can get things done. It's really easy to evaluate marketing cofounders for a web startup: You just need to determine if they have a track record of driving traffic. Get the ones who can drive traffic and convert it into sales. Everyone else is a bullshit artist an isn't worth your time.

Valuable advice, but being technical myself, I'd like to see a post about how to find a business/marketing co-founder

Same here. Everybody seems to want to talk about the other scenario, but bring up "finding a sales/marketing/bizdev guy" and you get <crickets />.

I think people you know are the most important resource in terms of finding a business-savvy co-founder. A lot of VCs/angel investors are willing to help smart hackers find co-founders or even interesting projects. Also, going to marketing/product related meetups is a good way to network and meet new potential co-founders.

A lot of VCs/angel investors are willing to help smart hackers find co-founders or even interesting projects.

Good point. I had never really considered VCs being willing to assist a company unless they had already invested (money) in the company, but just Monday I happened to have a chance to chat with some local VCs and they made that same point.

And in hindsight it makes total sense... if they invest a little time helping a company in some small way (finding a co-founder, finding a beta customer, whatever) and then the company grows to the point of wanting outside investment, they already have an established relationship with the company and are probably in a good position to be part of the funding round. So it's a potential win-win scenario, for a fairly small expenditure.

So yeah, talk to VCs, angels, etc. and see what they might be able and willing to do for ya, even if you're not asking for a monetary investment.

About a year ago WePay had an excellent blog entry that discussed this exact problem. Look to item 2 in http://www.wepay.com/blog/2010/03/11/5-things-i-%E2%80%9Ckne... to see what it says about finding a technical co-founder.

The biggest takeaway if you're a non-technical person is that you're facing an uphill battle, and it explains why this is.

Does that link throw a 404 for anyone else?

Yes. This should work: http://www.wepay.com/blog/2010/03/11/5-things-i-%E2%80%9Ckne...

I think it different in each city. I live in New York, and this city is in dying need for more engineering talents to feed its fast-growing startup scene.

Being a hacker, the last thing you wanna hear is some finance dude pitching you an idea they had when they were crunching numbers on an excel spreadsheet at their 2nd year analyst job.

You have be product-savvy, you have to have respect for the hacker community/culture, and you have to be super persistent.

For those who are real risk-adverse, charging an hourly rate to build out someones idea is a win/win (the business guy keeps his company stake, and you get the capital necessary to work on your own projects once the contract is over). If you're not entirely sold on someone's startup but feel like you could do a good job building out their idea, there's really no better place to be than NYC right now. I split my time 25% NYC/75% Boston, and NYC is orders of magnitude hotter (at least from what I've witnessed).

Watch out though, it's real easy to end up billing 40 hours/week, then spending another 30 on unbilled hours on client management on top of that. More than once I've checked my SCM log, wonder why I haven't made a commit in 3 months and realized at the end of the day I just want to knock a beer or two back and watch some basketball.

For fellow NYC-ers I'd recommend this new service Fred Wilson tweeted out today, sounds pretty interesting / useful: http://www.pairupnyc.com/

This is exactly the problem we're trying to solve at Techcofounder.com. We've found that there are a ton of entrepreneurs with great ideas but who might lack a large network of developers. This is especially true for entrepreneurs who don't live in large tech hubs like SF, NYC, Boston, Denver, or Houston.

This is like saying that there are also a ton of old, poor, ugly guys who lack a large network of beautiful 18-year-olds to have sex with.

Oddly, self-described "great ideas" are more common than people actually willing to do the work.

Three months into my own (exhilarating) journey, I think the best answer may be to become one yourself.

You earn a lot more cred with developers if you've started hacking to make your idea come to life.

More than just cred. I've learned to simply not trust founders who weren't motivated enough by their own vision to not at least take a shot at it, if only to get some understanding of what building it actually entails.

I have been taking this approach as well and at the very least have been able to focus and sharpen my ideas.

At the recent StartAtlanta event, I met the founder of TripLingo and we went from concept to prototype in a weekend. We ended up "winning" that event, and have kept moving forward. The great thing about StartAtlanta or similar events is that you get to feel everyone out and decide if you want to pursue the idea, and conversely, keep team members moving forward. It helped greatly that the TripLingo founder and "business dude", Jesse Maddox, was well prepared. He had mockups of the app, spreadsheets with sample data, and a business plan. He had put in 6 months of effort researching, was tech savvy (though not a programmer), and was organized. The point here is that if you're the non-tech-co-founder, putting effort into the things I just mentioned show, and you'll have no problem attracting top geeks to work on your startup.

-p

This is a super common question and there are many events in each city that facilitates this connection. However, Don't go to these events with the sole purpose of 'finding' a technical co-founder. Just build relationships with everyone and anyone. Get involved in non-profit organizations, or just other activities. Heck, even try organizing the events yourself.

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