Cofounder Mode: My tactical guide to finding a cofounder
repromptai.com
repromptai.com
I resonate with the OP because I am in this exact situation that I am building something but I cannot leave my current job now.
When some friends started to build companies in mid-2000/mid-2010 you could code/build something, try to get some traction and you could be received by VCs/angels and occasionally they could write a 25K check for you to work for 3-6 months to build it and perhaps you could get some traction and then scale or go burst.
Now the bar for new products it's absurdly high if you're out of the YC or San Francisco VC circles or if you do not have anyone in the industry; plus most of the VCs prefer to invest in "pedigree founders" than in unknown people, especially if those people are outside of the bay area.
In my first endeavor, I went with a finished product that undercut some big enterprise SaaS vendors, and we lost space for a bunch of non-technical guys with PPTs and one idea.
(Sometimes having a co-founder here helps to answer this question)
I suppose that's if you pursue the "SAAS AI Analytics Crypto Cloud" latest hype where all the low hanging fruit has been picked already.
I'm in EU (Romania) and don't feel the least bit concerned or connected about San Francisco VCs and yet I'm preparing not one but two businesses which could go to 100s of millions (first) or billions (second).
1) First is a plain brick-and-mortar physical product delivery thing. Zero competition from "YC San Francisco VC" crowd who almost exclusively targets computer-only stuff as it's much easier and cleaner to deal with. But if you have the brains for computers (and I've been working as a well paid eastern European software dev for 20+ years), you can most definitely compete in the "physical" world should you identify an opportunity there as I did. This is the businesses that I estimate in the half billion before it reaches saturation or someone steals it from me.
2) Second is online services hence much easier to deliver and to grow hence with the properly polished product (which sells as hot cake in a brick and mortar setting) and target market should have no problem reaching billions. Provided that #1 works well enough to kickstart me into #2.
So ... cofounders. Anyone interested?
If so send me a mail or go on my forum and enter "sunshine" when you register yourself (so I know you're not a spambot, they are this dumb):
The second business should be able to be much bigger AND easier, but you aren't focussing all your efforts on it because you're splitting your time with the first, non-defensible business?
It's good to be optimistic, but balance that with realism. It's easy to build a billion dollar business on paper, much harder in reality.
Reduce your workhours to half day or 80%, spend your evenings and weekends building.
Show your demo around to get more money if your progress is slow.
But technology has never been as accessable as it is today. You have a lptop, a server costs you 50$, a big machine perhaps 100 or 200 / month.
The problem are people who think just having an idea is the main part of creating a product/company.
I have more ideas per day than non technical people and i could make 50% work. Not unicorn work but making enough money for a company money.
Its just a lot nicer to work from mo-fr earning good money and having time for living.
If you have dependents and a stable income is important then by all means, wait for the perfect conditons to arise (they likely won't - or when they do, everyone else will also be taking advantage of such conditons).
Otherwise, take the plunge. Reduce your expenses e.g live in crappy apartment to save money and go all in on your dreams
It was a job interview (50 question homework, 3 day hackathon trial) plus firm requirements and who has the final say is presented. We didn't hear about the different tests and requirements these 100 dates demanded so it appears one sided.
The best way to meet a cofounder is to be interested in something; so interested you explore it and you find something you like someone else is doing and you talk to them about it. You come up with some idea and you reach out to this person and explore it.
Yeah.. or even just learning how to code himself. Could learn a decent amount in 9 months.
If you sepnd 9 months getting a technical co-founder, you likely get a seasoned engineer + thought partner for all decisions going forward.
One is vastly more valuable than the other.
I think it’s valuable to be able to implement your own ideas. Its going to be more productive than trying to explain what you want to someone else. (This isn’t mutually exclusive with having a cofounder as well)
Writing code is not building a business.
That should have taken unbounded time to find someone, not a mere 9 months.
OP is a technical co-founder - ex-Facebook and Stanford computer science, it seems.
I think the goals of having a good match are nevertheless important. Perhaps it is better to communicate these goals to your candidate co-founder and figure out together what the best approach is to verify them.
What’s the highest value company that was started with a method like this? Genuinely curious, can’t think of one.
I'm also pretty partial to "just work on your hobby and meet someone else". But probably a lot of opportunity left on the table that way. Especially if you know you want to build something serious.
"I ran a tight interview process and selected the best match based on vibes and a spreadsheet" isn't super inspiring to customers, employees, investors.
From what I can see, the author is a CTO who is ex-meta and Stanford computer science. They look like a technical co-founder to me.
I know there's this annoying and widely prevalent persona of co-founder dater with only ideas, and no skills to build them, but this author doesn't seem to be that.
Ex-meta doesn't mean anything. As far as i know manager / non technical people work at meta as in any other 'tech' company.
Yes ex-Meta could imply non-technical, but OP is a CTO with a Stanford computer science degree. Their job title and skills are technical.
Combined with him calling himself a non-technical founder it seems pretty on point. He's not looking to be coding and making all the nitty gritty engineering decisions, there are better people for that in his opinion. Which is totally fine.
Honestly the author sounds like they like the idea of doing a startup more than a specific problem they want to solve.
Unfortunately this means you’re an undifferentiated untechnical person trying to attract highly in demand talent to work on your vague idea.
It won’t work because both cofounders will have no vision and no strategy that distinguishes them from the massses.
This strategy might work if the person has a proven track record of leading start ups to success. But if this were true, you would raise money and hire technical people instead.
Bafflingly, the author is technical, the CTO. That makes this course of action even more confusing.
These articles are always written absurdly early, too. Reprompt AI is apparently brand new and pre-seed. It's not a success nor has the founder relationship stood the test of time. This would be much better written in five or ten years.
Let's look at the trade:
"I’m looking for a technical cofounder who is ready to commit in the next 2-3 months and work in-person in San Francisco. I’m looking for them to do Product, Design, and Engineering."
This requires a lead level engineer, say $200k to $500k/year salary in SF. Given that this is a 2~3 month engagement, we'd double that for contractor rate and pro rata. I'd estimate this is $100k to $250k of time.
"I’m committed to healthtech and have a few ideas, but willing to work on other ideas in healthtech."
Great, this is worth about $0.
This doesn't seem like a fair trade.
What's worse is that "Rob Balian" is a CTO with product manager background. Instead of looking for a co-founder to complement his skillset, he's duplicating the skill set.
Some responses that I'll probably also update in the post:
a/ Why not start with people you know or friends?-- This is 100% the best way and I tried it first. Timing is hard and there's only like 7 people I'd want to start companies with. They all had good reasons not to embark on starting a company at this moment.
b/ Vibes is super vague-- I found it really important to get along with a cofounder as friends-- I met my CF's wife early on, we did thanksgiving together, we spent a lot of time together outside of work. We've had actual fun building so far. For some that's important, for others not. It's a great point, I'll clarify.
c/ OP is a non-technical ideas guy looking for his coding ninja-- Nope, sorry. I've never had an eng job but learned to code early in college building random iphone apps. Been building nights and weekends for the past 10 years (including while cofounder searching).
d/ Start building instead of just CF searching- great point. Building out ideas, talking to customers, etc makes your cofounder conversations waaaay more interesting because people can see you get excited about something real. Early on I had too many high-level conversations about "the space" or "starting something" that led nowhere.
e/ These "modes" are total bs-- Totally agree but gotta keep the title interesting : )
Why the push for having cofounder at all? C'mon such person can potentially have bigger impact on certain aspects of your life than a spouse.
...so this guy wants someone in SF to quit their job and work full time while unpaid? This method selects from the bottom of the pool, not from the top.
It _is_ possible to get seed funding for a business if the idea is solid and you bring something valuable to the table, like the right connections and domain knowledge. If a founder doesn't have either, that's bad. The money doesn't have to come from an investor: There's government funding, you can line up pilot customers etc. If they can't raise any seed funding, what does that say about their talent to be a CEO? The job is _all_ about bringing money in.
Asking someone to work with zero cashflow for who knows how long (investments and initial customer acquisition can take months) is just not reasonable. If somebody doesn't _need_ cashflow, chances are they're either comfortably doing nothing, or already working on their own idea.
What you're left with are mostly people who need cashflow, but are for some reason desperate or reckless enough to try and go without. So then your founding team is a naive CTO, and a CEO who can't raise money. Not a winning combination usually.
This is not a task anyone should be experienced enough to be good at.
Just look at the pear AI guys.
What does that mean?
.....probably would be quite useful also?
I have a tip on finding a cofounder. I've been looking for the last 12 months and I tried a lot of things, but the thing that worked best is this: Post a job ad.
That's it. My ad sounded like a normal job in every way, with a title like "Director of X". A couple of specific notes: 1) the first line said "cofounder" in it somewhere, and 2) it specified "part-time to full-time, heavy on equity compensation" somewhere else.
The result: Lots of inappropriate candidates applied. But also, my 2 job posts resulted in three extremely excellent team members: a equity-only cofounder, a mostly-equity cofounder/early hire, and an amazing advisor. I have been working with these folks for months and they are very solid.
I also recommend my vetting process: just like a job. That is, I did a phone screen, a multi-hour interview, a little take-home, and I winnowed down the candidates at each stage. With the chosen few, I kicked off a "let's do this" conversation. My pitch was, "I know it's ridiculous, but let's get business married, we'll set up an offsite and start working together full-time... and, if we really need to, we'll get an annulment". That's what vesting is for!
Hope that helps :)
Did you both do take-homes?
Same stuff, but for 12yos
We've all lost the plot.