Ask HN: How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup?

38 pointsfilofa29 comments

I am a business guy. I have worked at large companies and managed big businesses. I have started tech and non-tech companies as a founder and an early employee. I have raised money. I have written specs. I have sold stuff to big companies and consumers.I have cut deals with big companies and big brands. Some of these deals have panned out. Some have not. Some of these ventures have been successful. Some have been cluster f*cks.

I am ready to do another tech business. I want to find a tech partner who is hungry, smart, interested in contributing to all aspects of the business and humble. Ideally I would like to find someone in the Seattle area. How should I do this?

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Finding a techie cofounder off the street at the idea stage is next to impossible. Because if someone really has the entrepreneurial spirit they are already doing their own startup.

You gotta hire. Then at the end of the project, if the guy works out, you can offer him cofounder role. As a "business guy" get ready to pretty much cover all the bills while the other guy codes, no matter if he is a hire or a cofounder. Better to hire and see how the guy works out before you start giving away equity.

The dollar bill & the economist.

vaksel is right. I've seen recommendations on here before about different sites to find tech co-founders and seen the "go to tech meetups" advice. But the real problem is that the programmer you want probably already has his own pet projects. If you want a tech cofounder, you should pay him to develop a prototype.

As a business co-founder you're probably not doing much in the early stages. You come with an idea, which is essentially worthless without the tech guy. So it's only fair that you pay him for the prototype. At that point, both of you will be more comfortable teaming up.

Also, I would make sure you have the tech guy assign any and all IP ahead of time. You'll need this assignment if you want to raise money in the future.

"cofounder" and "first employee" are very different roles. Cofounder takes risks, participates in the whole company development, etc.

What you're talking about is a first employee that is also paid with equity.

And, by the way, there is a way to offer an equity right from the beginning — stock options that vest over time.

Great hackers for the most part are not what you'd describe as humble. They're not arrogant pricks (necessarily), but they're appropriately proud of their skills. If you do find one that you'd describe as humble, it's vastly more likely that they're shy or just not that interested in bothering to open up to you.

If you set that aside and just want great hackers, as an outsider, the best you're going to be able to do is to talk to the people you know, who know great coders who might be tied to their positions at Amazon or Microsoft, but those guys invariably know others who aren't yet handcuffed to the stock packages, are underwater on their options and don't yet have families and huge mortgages, etc.

At the end of the day, it's about networking. You won't be able to personally judge precisely the technical abilities of a potential new hire; get tech experts to help you do that.

(Side note: I've also done most of what you described, with the exception of starting a non-tech company. It's not all that uncommon or special, so at the same time you're downplaying your search for a humble tech partner, you might want to work on your own a bit so as to not come across as arrogant MBA prick to your potential tech partner. Coming across that way won't turn off the truly hungry, but it will turn off the truly great.)

Whatever you do, don't say (or give the impression that) you have an amazing idea and "all" you need is a developer.

You just took the first step. The second step is to figure out what you want to do. If you don't have ideas of your own, ask them to come forward with their own. Use hackers to find other hackers; too many times I found a guy or a gal with a good business brain between their ears, but things fell apart because they're surrounded with too many of their college buddies and frat-brothers who all want a cut in the deal.

Take care of your people. It is easy for a hacker to put in 18 hour days if he knows you're out there taking care of his bills. The simple act of paying a guy on time can make a world of difference. Even if he is working for equity, don't hesitate to find a grand or two from somewhere, anywhere, and cut him a check on the 26th of the month. Many hackers would be more than happy to work on the startup AND take on side-gigs, it's up to you to go out there and find the gigs, if you can't raise the money yourself.

Try to think very small. Most of us are not out there to grab your money and go. It's much easier for me to bring along two laptops and "settle" in a corner, somewhere in your basement. I will run a few cables around, replace your DSL router with something beefier, and I can stay there until very late at night and come back as soon as I open my eyes. YOU, on the other hand, need to be aware of my expenses; I spend gas driving to you. I go away to eat out twice while I'm at your home or office. If I'm meeting you and your investor buddies in pubs and cafes, I'm probably spending more money than I usually do. Feel free to reimburse me at the first opportunity.

Think of yourself as the manager of a band. The musicians make the music, sure, but they're completely dysfunctional without you. They can keep your commission and do the business side of things themselves, but multitasking is VERY expensive and taxing mentally. You can safely keep a band of musicians in your basement for weeks, even months, and they will do great work, as long as you're catering to their peripheral needs and staying out of their way. What you can't do is treat them as employees who you must micromanage and watch them do "tangible", measurable work.

[Edit: Sometimes people asked me to work with them on a startup, but they already had a draconian work process. Some guy had a quota of the number of e-mails I must send him a day. Where I should store source code, graphic assets and other stuff, and in the end told me I must install a VNC client so he can connect to my desktop. Had to dump him. If he told me I could use his home server to store things, I would have setup the version control and an ftp server myself.

Try to be nurturing and kind and you will juice the most productivity and loyalty out of anyone. Be honest and open. You don't need to give me the minutia of our financial status, if you think you can meet a budget gap by getting another client, go ahead and get that client and let me focus on the work. Don't introduce unnecessary uncertainty in our stability. OTOH, if you think we're tanking, it would be nice of you to give me a heads up.]

Wow. With all the MBA bashing lately (more so on reddit), younger programmers like myself really begin to fear them like the plague. This is the first truly convincing argument as to why I would want to work with them. Heck, I couldn't see myself wanting to work without this treatment. Where do I sign up?

I'm looking for Common Lisp programmers with Hunchentoot, SBCL, JavaScript and nginx skills, and also graphic designers who can do excellent corporate branding and identity.

It's for an online targeted ad delivery platform. The personal email is in my profile.

I will try to be for you the boss I never had.

I will try to be for you the boss I never had.

:) :)

You make software engineers sound like children. We're adults. You embarrass me.

We're all adults, but many of us start in the industry as professionally child-like. I started hacking out of high school.

By the time we mature, we probably wont fall for an enthusiastic "business guy"; we know both computing and business better than anyone. I wasn't out to embarrass you, all I wanted was to help your younger self, or others its age.

I find it sad that you think that only children should be well looked after. What should we do with adults, kick them in the teeth?

The comment you responded to made the valid point that unstressed secure people can offer you more. If you are not interested in more and just want enough, that is another issue.

Are you asking where to find them or how to recognise them?

Great question. I'm sure you will get some good answers. There will also be a lot of good stuff that is not on the front page.

Searchyc:http://searchyc.com/find+hackers

I am getting tired of seeing this question every week. There needs to be some sort of Hacker News FAQ.

How about somebody build it and register the domain name hnfaq.com. We can just post the link to it every time someone asks a common question. The hnfaq.com site would list the commonly asked questions, and give links to threads addressing the topic.

(I assume PG is not interested in this, otherwise it would exist already.)

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

Are you funded? If you are, ask your angel/VC to get some recommendations for top people who can deliver in a startup environment.

What are you paying? Some people will work for options, others won't. Some people will work a 9 to 6 job but will refuse to do the high pressure always on call thing.

How much control do you (or anyone else in your company) wish to have about the technology choices -- what programming language, servers, SCM, etc. Some developers are quite opinionated on this stuff and so you have to be ready to sacrifice some control and to trust the developer's judgement.

I'd be wary of someone who obviously spends a ton of time primping his/her reputation in the community. Such people tend to be huge egos who are more excited about fame than they are about engineering. Better to get someone who truly loves technology. Lots of developers have a side project that they would love to work on full time -- check out github and if you find such a project that looks like your company could leverage it, send a message to the people working on it to discuss the project and your business....

Check out the Seattle scene for a large group of people in this area: http://www.seattletechstartups.com/

Also, I suggest job ads in places like seattle20.com and Joel's job board.

Do you already have an idea what you are going to do? It would help to get the general technical area on the table - hackers have their pet areas of interest.

You could start by providing your email address so people can contact you.

Make available what problems one would work with as "your" hacker. If your problems require hackers, then hackers will apply (and the other way around).

It seems to me that someone with your resume would know how to proceed better than anyone else I could imagine.

I just realized that being a hacker hasn't necessarily made me an expert on hacker psychology since I haven't had to, uh, hire any.

So ... well there's a point somewhere

I'm curious as to what you have. How should I get a hold of you?

start earning their respect, become one of them.

First of all forget the "humble" requirment. Anyone that is senior and has crew knows what his value is and is not going to be impressed with a suit.

Second, if you have a M$FT based idea then you're in the right place. If not you need to look at California. That's where the rest of the talent is.

Lastly, avoid the offshore crowd. They will pick your pocket as sure as if you where there in person. There is no such thing as a $10/hour software engineer

Agree on dropping the 'humble' part. Obviously you don't want to work with an egotistical jerk, but you definitely want someone who knows his/her worth and isn't a pushover.

Your tech partner should be a partner, that requires mutual respect.

That's a load of crap. There's plenty of Linux & FOSS talent outside of California. I'm actually overwhelmed with how much of it is here in Atlanta, since I had a similar prejudice initially.

> I am a business guy. I have worked at large companies and managed big businesses. I have started tech and non-tech companies as a founder and an early employee. I have raised money. I have written specs. I have sold stuff to big companies and consumers.I have cut deals with big companies and big brands. Some of these deals have panned out. Some have not. Some of these ventures have been successful. Some have been cluster fucks.

A good co-founding engineer will have done all this and more. You need to give him 35% or more and have a stellar track record to boot.

If that's not the equity ballpark you're playing in, and you can't bring more to the table than "well I've started a couple of businesses and I can do sales", you're looking for the wrong type of person. What you want is a freelance developer that takes $10k and makes a prototype for you. That way you can keep 100% of your equity.

You might think you got lucky if you find some young kid in his early 20s to do most of the work for very little equity and almost no cash, but think about what happens to your business when he decides you're an asshole 6 months later and quits. Just use your imagination to think about how ugly that can get. Especially since he's the one running your entire tech infrastructure.

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