Ask HN: How did you meet your co-founder(s)?

I used to work for eDonkey as their support minion, a file sharing program of yesteryear. We had forums, and a user there was far more helpful to all the newbs than I was. We started chatting from time to time, then more often, he even came up to meet me while I was down in NYC for the summer.

We kept in touch, he helped me manage a dedicated server I'd bought somewhere. I felt bad because he was managing it and I wasn't paying him, he felt bad because he was using it and not paying for it.

Then I started https://wonderproxy.com/ he was a natural choice for co-founder, and we've been growing ever since.

Met one of my two co-founders during a project. In a room full of argumentative type-A personalities, she was the only one building bridges and moving the project forward. That really stood out for me as a huge asset in any team.

The other co-founder and I met in a hallway at a database conference, then tried our first startup a few months later. It failed - but it was so much fun failing with him that I figured we should keep trying on other projects because at least failing wouldn't feel bad.

I met my cofounder for Cyph in kindergarten.

It was immediately apparent that Josh and I were destined for great things when we attempted to plant the world's first pizza tree (by burying pizza crust near the school playground).

Blogging.

We both blogged in the same niche for many years and exchanged a few emails, cross-posts and that kind of thing. Last year, I realised I was never going to make a successful business by myself and started to look for a non-technical co-founder - I emailed Geoff because I knew that he knew his stuff in our niche and he seemed like a good bloke.

My email was something along the lines of, "I'm thinking of building something, no idea what, fancy it?", the time was right for him and we have been profitable almost from day one.

On /r/startups

It's been 1.5 yrs, have been through hell and back with him, can't imagine a better co-founder. We'll start companies together until we die.

I recognize this is not the recommended way of finding a co-founder; statistically the chances of it turning out like it did are very low. But it worked out, so I don't care.

Prison.

Matt and I were intern at Apple in 2006. We shared the same apartment in corporate housing in Cupertino. After that summer, we never talked again for 7 years.

I ended up joining Apple for 4 years in California. He decided to stay in the midwest, eventually got married and settled down in Minneapolis. About 7 years later we reconnected over Twitter and we started working together.

Today we do http://astropad.com

One little question to the posters here: Did you every doubt that your best smart buddy, might not have the same level of dedication?, might not pull through?

At a team day at eBay (Germany). While working there as a frontend dev, I had attended a "team day" which involved stunt driving, and was placed on a team with this new frontend guy who had just started. He told me about his (at the time, free) image optimization API, which is known today as https://kraken.io

We became friends, having frequent discussions about how such a service could be monetized. Three weeks later, he offered me a 50% split. Shortly afterwards, we founded a company and started serious work on Kraken Image Optimizer, without ever looking back.

College. We did a finance case competition and we won, so we thought it'd be a good idea to work together. We wrote/edited a book "Words of the Music Masters" (failed), then we coached a few seminars for college students/recent graduates (failed!) and finally some consulting (sucked). That was 6 years ago. We both took jobs, now we're back. It's really interesting, we've failed miserably together and starved, we're kinda bulletproof now. Besides, being hungry but not alone made us closer, we're like brothers now. seriously.

LinkedIn, they sent a mysterious message saying they were looking for someone for a "project". Wouldn't normally answer anyone on LinkedIn but it turned out to be one of the best decisions ever.

He's a friend, met him through is brother who is the same age as I, ~6 years ago. So we spend our weeks and weekends, on and off work, together.

On a Kloofing trip. I invited a friend who invited her boyfriend who invited my cofounder. My friend never showed up, but her guests did.

I met mine at a swing dance event in Pittsburgh, a location more then 7 hours apart from our home cities. Later happened to run into him while we were both at a dance event in Chicago. Started working together 1 week after Chicago.

It may be worth noting that I am not co-founder, but was rather hired on with partial ownership when his side project went to business?

Church. She was a teenager and I was in my early 20s. Fast forward 14 years, and we find ourselves starting a company together.

One through a warm intro from a mutual professional acquaintance. And another through an awesome project they posted to HN.

My SO brought me to a planning meeting for a non-profit, and I met their founder there. We hit it off, and founded a startup together several months later when the time was right. I think it was good to start off being friends first. And having a shared network of friends and business associates helped speed things up.

First-first: Friend-of-a-Friend (FoaF). (I didn't have enough of the right kind of friends...)

First-rebooted: Snagged from first/large customer

Second: Snagged from the Series A VC team mid-transaction (that was weird)

Everything else: sometimes my accumulated acquaintance list, sometimes FoaF, and often from a planning-stage target-market customer.

I've had 3 cofounders over the years. 1. school 2. hired them a few times and added them to the team a couple years later 3. lean startup and tech event

All in all, I recommend picking someone you have known for a few years. Can be friends but usually best when it is first a business relationship.

At a hackathon, we won together. On another one, she pitched her project to me and I decided to join her.

I looked through some of the technically minded sub-reddits for people who had posted interesting technology or demonstrations that they had built.

Just so happened that my now co-founder home brewed an in home AR game with a laptop backpack and AR glasses and had put up the demo video.

First startup: high-school classmates.

Second startup: they were looking for a technical co-founder and talked to mutual friends of ours (who put us in touch)

Third and current startup: former engineering-school acquaintances, reconnected via LinkedIn when they started looking for a CTO.

The founder met me when he was doing some freelance job in a startup where I was working. We are a perfect fit, he is the guy doing Design + Marketing and I am doing everything related to coding.

We founded: nusii.com (Web proposal software)

College roommate. We named our two-man agency after our old college apartment.

First ones I met in school, next through business partners, none worked out good.

Now I am alone doing much better, starting to see what I did wrong and I am getting ready to consider partnering with others again.

University — became best friends in junior year and realised our complementary skillsets (strategy/design, coding) could be put to good use fleshing out whatever startup ideas we had!

Still looking.

On the school bus; We've been best friends for about a decade.

Was scrolling pages after pages of friends in facebook, found a friend who was my junior in college days, we then went on to create www.grepslash.com .

One thing facebook is useful for.

At university. Although we rarely interacted in the university, but happened to work on a project about 5 years later and realized we shared passion for startups.

He was my first boss when I was a junior out of college. 14+ years later we are starting a venture together. Also my wife who I met when I was in college.

A friend of a friend is the CEO, he is a really creative guy and I wanted to work on a new project, the other cofounder was her girlfriend.

We hacked the network of our school :). BTW, we have now founded a Cybersecurity company.

online, through a job listing website, to start making a prototype. that was 2.5yrs ago!

At a tech networking event.

High school - he was my friend, now he is my brother-in-law - go figure

Previous workplace.

via Twitter for a challenge.gov challenge. We ended up winning and turning the software into a company and got a government contract.

Univercity

at our day job

College.

Reddit.

School

in a bar