Advice for finding a technical co-founder (2021)

Start trying to do the technical work yourself. Contract out particular bits if you need to. A poorly coded and shitty prototype that fits what you want is massively better than a polished application that isn't what you want.

I can hear the "But, but, but..." Wait and hear me out.

There is nothing to give you appreciation for what a technical person brings than trying to walk a mile in their shoes. There is nothing more frustrating than a non-technical cofounder who underestimates what technical work requires. And honestly, the stereotype of "non-technical founder needs technical co-founder" is some asshat with no real clue who will make their partner miserable. Besides, there is a huge imbalance of supply and demand.

But potential technical co-founders are much more receptive to, "Non-technical founder needs technical founder to help turn crappy prototype into product. The idea is good, but I know how much I need your help."

Why are technical people more receptive to that?

- The fact that there is a prototype makes it much more likely that the idea isn't just vague handwaving.

- The non-technical co-founder is willing to put elbow grease in.

- The non-technical co-founder's humility is going to limit unreasonable demands.

So willingness to begin the work yourself makes you MORE attractive.

YC largely only invests in companies with technical founders. The biggest red flag is a non technical founder hiring you as an employee rather than a founder (when nothing has been built or launched yet) or asking for an unequal equity split with zero lines of code written. Such people proposing these unfair arrangements are not trustworthy.

Remember, it is easier for a technical founder to learn business skills than a non technical founder to learn coding.

Hope this comment helps someone.

> When people share equity in a business, it’s like getting married [...]. Date first. See if there are a couple of projects you can work on before jumping in. Offer to pay them something for these, even if it isn’t full market rate.

I think this is getting the dynamic wrong, or at least suboptimal. IMHO, you both should be going into it as equal partners, not one paying the other.

> But if this is someone you just met, you should stay in control with more than 50% of the shares.

Both cofounders should get sufficiently comfortable before committing, and ideally both should see it as equal risk and contributions. Or don't pretend it's a partnership.

> It’s a bit like the product and company is a racecar. The technical founder builds the car, but the CEO drives it. Both are important, but you can often find other car builders once the car is running (to mangle my metaphor a bit).

Or, a whole lot of people can think they could drive a racecar, but a relative few can build a racecar, and the latter is harder to fake. (Sure you want to use the racecar metaphor here?)

Before that bit, I was thinking maybe I was picking up on small oopses in the writing, and the writer actually did intend an equal partnership. But this really does sound like the writer is speaking to someone who thinks of the company as only theirs, and the technical cofounder is an underling and a necessary evil. And further, the technical cofounder is someone who could be discarded once they've served their funding bootstrapping purpose.

Rather than feeding the ego of a solo founder who wants to play the big chief, I hope this implies forming a cofounder team with equal equity.

Nontechnical founders can't be "idea guys", robotic people managers, or too precious to whatever needs doing. They have to be hustlers first, connected, and making fat stacks with potential customers, partners, and the media. And then, with the other founders, responsible for everything that needs doing and prioritizing in the midst of ambiguity. Always be "parkouring" up the market from one meeting or customer to the next while building product just in time.

Technical cofounders need social skills, resourcefulness, and a hint of business acumen. It's never enough to only be technical. UX, design, FE, BE, ops, budgeting, audit/regulations/compliance/security, disaster recovery/business continuity, technical mentoring, and long-term roadmapping are all important areas to address. Initially, there will be a great deal of dev pain due to a lack of common platform services and tooling. It's important that a technical leader be able to eventually scale up a team that can establish (build or buy) standard practices and tools, divide responsibilities, and delegate.

When in doubt, work with someone you already know and trust because too many people don't or can't act cool when real money appears. There's no magic formula, but there are other cool kids with that twinkle in their eye out there. Honesty and obsessive workaholism seem to help.

and then author continued this in his other post

" That person is really a founding engineer. Such a person is a special breed. Like an engineer on a larger team, the founding engineer needs to be able to execute and build product, quickly. They need to be aware of technical debt and when assuming it makes sense. They need to write code that works, is testable and performant. They need to evaluate whether to build or buy or download from Github. They’ll be performing devops tasks as well, such as monitoring the application, troubleshooting performance issues, and making sure deployments and rollbacks happen cleanly.

In addition to all of that, the founding engineer must communicate with non technical folks, both within the organization (including the CEO) and outside of the company. The founding engineer may or may not be doing tier 1 customer support, but will be doing tier 2 support. They also have to be willing and able to drive decisions, especially around technical issues. They need to be able to understand and give feedback on the business strategy at some level, as that will determine technical decisions. The founding engineer also needs to able and willing to take market feedback. This may be filtered through others, and any response should be discussed with the other founders, but market feedback and quick iteration is a strength of a startup. The founding engineer may be doing some product management as well, depending on the other team members’ strengths. They’ll be the de-facto UX designer. They also will be interacting with vendors and contractors. They may review budgets and will hire technical team members. It’s possible they’ll interact with investors if funding is sought.

For all the additional responsibilities, the founding engineer should be compensated, well, like a founder. With not much money and gobs of equity. (Not much money is obviously relative, and depends on market value.) "

I can't imagine what sucker would do all the tasks of CTO + multiple engineers for no pay and 0.1% to 2% equity and title deflation and no board seat.

Essentially the author wants to find a moron who doesn't realize how bad the deal is.

The problem is that the people who make poor decisions like this for themselves, also make such decisions for the company.

This is why SF is a hard place to find a cofounder. There's so many networking events, meetups, matching programs, accelerators. But everyone knows in SF, relationships are transactional. A lot of this manifests as 2 people just parroting language that they read online at each other or doing stupid cofounder matching quizzes. As if that helps you figure out if you have a meaningful connection with that person.

Jobs aren't personal but starting businesses are. Do it with someone that is a good friend.

This also implies that you can't force a business partnership which I think is completely incompatible with how SF works.

Source - I live in the suburbs of SF to avoid actual SF.

If you have a company that primarily relies on some novel technical accomplishment to be viable, it should be something founded by a technical co-founder IMHO.

Impressed or cautious. It's probably OK, so long as the non-technical solo founder doesn't says the words "our MVP" nor "our stack".

This also applies if you used a gig worker for any early demos or experiments. It's in the past, this is your prospective spouse you're talking with now, and the main reason to discuss history of one-night stands is to make sure you aren't starting the relationship with 'tech debt' that doesn't go away with penicillin.

Over time you'll become friends with the ones that are entrepreneurial. Rushing the process is ratcheting up the risk 10X.

I was very naive for a long time about the realities of the world, as I currently see them. There is a wealthy and connected class that exists in the world. There is not some secret cabal that controls who’s in and who’s out, but rather relationships and reputation and references. Having a good family is a very strong signal - a parent who runs a company, a parent who’s a billionaire, a background that can give you legitimacy. As a “new man” you can become part of this class through guile and wit and success, but you are operating on hard mode.

A lot of people in the money class by birth (which are most of them) are not inherently successful. But their connections open so many doors.

The entrepreneur I have hitched my horse to, which has assembled a trusted team of executives and VPs, is part of this class in addition to already being worth tens of millions from successful exits. He is hungry beyond all belief and desires to be a billionaire, and he is quite skilled and hard working despite being born into low-tier wealthy family. His ability to get calls with the rich and successful is absurd. He wanted to speak with Mark Cuban and he got him on the phone to pitch him within days - just one example where I am name dropping someone to illustrate the type of things he can do. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of who knows who, who owns this business and who made this thing, he also knows various people in entertainment and the arts and gets them to vouch and rep his various interests. A famous pop musician tweeted one of his ventures as a favor and drove a lot of users. He networks like you won’t believe and owns property in NYC, LA, Miami, and jet sets around the US / Europe / Dubai as needed for business.

I am pretty sure my children will be similar to how he started in terms of connections based upon my help and the school I send them to. However I started very low in society and used technology skills and hard work as the mechanism to elevate myself and hustle to get to the place I am now.

As tech people on HN we value ourselves so much. Yes we have a lot of skills and are necessary and provide value. But guys like my CEO are key to succeeding in business and without him I couldn’t do my job and succeed in the way I want.

Who you know runs the world. As the technical cofounder we are not the deal makers nor the money people, who truly have the value and upper hand. I’m not trying to depress you, nor say you can’t do it without someone like this. But once you start really seeing how the 90% case works - how this company gets follow on money despite inferior product because some VC owes a favor, how this company gets acquired for more than it’s worth because of some friendly connection, why this company gets a seed easily and yours can’t get anything despite traction. It’s just how stuff works.

I started out imprentation in 2008 as a business co-founder, now i'm the solo founder of fgemm SpA, j published the paper about it n have the provisional patent for the algorithm's implementation on a machine.

You can do it.

Finance is numbers. Coding is numbers.

You can do it.