How to find your cofounding partner? | Hacker News Reader

How to find your cofounding partner?

6 pointsfempreneur12 comments

There is no doubt that the best partnerships are made between people who have a diverse set of skills. The question is how do you go about to find your perfect technical partner, at a time when everyone is creating their own startups?

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It's a matter between either being lucky or having a compelling enough story/background that people gravitate toward you.

I've heard a lot from the other side as well, technical people asking how to find the perfect business partner at a time when everyone has their own idea.

Ask yourself what qualities would a founder have to have that would make you give up your idea and join theirs. Then strive toward having those qualities.

In my perspective, if I see anyone hustling either by getting together a makeshift MVP or pre-selling to customers, then I know they have the drive to succeed.

I agree with your points. Hustle is key. That's where I am at at this point. Putting together a prototype and working towards a MVP. The struggle is not only finding someone who has the skill set, and the drive, but also someone you want to build something with, and match personality wise. It's like a marriage.

If your hustle muscle is developed enough you could power through without even needing a technical cofounder. Sam Ovens is one great example (of many).

Best option: find someone you worked with before

Second best option: friends of friends

Last resort: some random developer who falls in love with your idea. Just don't sign any paperwork until 1-3 months after you start working together (if so, read https://medium.com/@colunchers/founder-vesting-c214e86c59b0).

Great article! Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, finding someone I have worked with before and I think would be a good fit, isn't an option. I've been asking friends of friends for referrals and starting to look into networking with different developer groups. For now I'm outsourcing a prototype, and hoping I can find someone before I put together an MVP so the developer doesn't inherit someone else's code.

I found my partners in unlikely ways, but how I found them had one thing in common, I had helped them before.

When I met my programmer, we were actual in a startup coworking space, he looked stressed so I chatted to him a bit. He lost his iPad at the venue, so naturally I tried to help him look for it. We exchanged business cards and briefly chatted. Turns out the project that I was doing, was something that he always wanted to do - and, the added bonus, our apartments are within ten minutes driving distance. A perfect match.

On another note:

Does anyone have any suggestions to my team, we have a hustler, a growth hacker and a programmer. All of have strong connections and experience.

We lack in two specific areas: social media marketing/ management and graphic design. Would you look to adding on a 4th member to this team to take care of these roles? Any advice will be appreciated. We will be launching March next year.

Angellist is a good place to start. Meetups are great (depending on your area), coworking spaces (Like WeWork, etc), and even conferences for your niche.

It's very unlikely that you'll personally meet the right person, but actually fairly likely that someone you meet will know the right person. So just talk about your idea with everybody who will listen, get those business cards into people's pockets and see what the universe brings your way.

You'll wanna get facetime with "connectors" (if you've read the Tipping Point, you'll know what I mean). An email intro from one of them to the right person is all you need.

Great advice. Thank you. Angellist is on my list! And love Malcolm Gladwell. I've been reaching out to my network. I'm in LA, and have signed up for a bunch of Meet Ups, just hard to know which ones are worth attending in a city that is so spread out. I noticed you are in LA too, let me know if you know of any worth noting. Thank you!

Oh cool, didn't realize you were in LA. It depends on what you're trying to do, many of the meetups are highly specialized.

JSLA (www.js.la) is one of my favorites. NodeDTLA (meetup.com/NodeDTLA/) is great, and those guys recently spun off a new one: called techDTLA (meetup.com/techDTLA).

Joe Devon (@joedevon on twitter) is a good guy to know. He organizes CTO events in the area, and a PHP meetup (meetup.com/laphpdev).

There are also hackernews meetups, PM meetups, DBA meetups, undirected coding sessions, and lots of others.

Feel free to email me (my username @gmail) if you need anything.

Wow thank you so much Malcolm! I will definitely reach out via email. I'm pretty new to the city, good to meet and network with new people, and I'll check out the ones you listed. Appreciate all your help.

You can also start with going on a lunch with one person at a time and get to know them while using all your 5 senses at a meal! http://LetsLunch.com

University and previous jobs.

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