Ask HN: Review IGF, a site to find co-founders and stay motivated

Last year when pg posted his list of 30 ideas, I wrote up full startup ideas for each one on my A Startup A Day blog, one each day for the next 30 days. It was a fun exercise, but thanks in part to some great comments on HN, I learned that for most entrepreneurs ideas are the easy part. The hard parts are meeting the right co-founders and staying motivated to work on something for an extended period of time. Recently I've shifted focus from my blog to building something to help solve those problems, which I call the Italian Graffiti Factory (IGF).

To kick things off, the alpha stage of IGF will be primarily focused on a very specific scenario. I want to bring together potential YC applicants to discuss YC's new RFS proposals (or other ideas) with the goal of finding co-founders, building a prototype, and submitting an application to YC Winter 2010. Along with the site, I'm also planning a series of live online meetups centered around things like co-founder speed-dating, prototype reviews, milestone check-ins, or just open conversations.

Unlike most "Ask HN"-style posts, I'm not necessarily looking for feedback on design and initial first impressions. Instead I would like to hear more generally if you think that these problems are good ones to take on, and if so, what else can be done to help solve those problems more effectively?

Site URL - http://www.igfactory.com

This is a very neat/noble effort. However, I personally would never co-found a company with a person that I essentially found on a 'dating' site.

I see that you "built" this on Ning. Are your plans to actually move it to a more robust platform if it takes off?

Thanks for the feedback. I think of this less as a "dating site", but more of a filter to help bring together like-minded people who are interested in accomplishing the same or similar goals. Similar to how gdgt brings people together based on the gadgets they own/want, I'd like to bring people together based on ideas they have. Things like the speed-dating stuff would just be ways to accelerate some of those connections that would have eventually happened organically.

And yes, Ning is not ideal. But for now, I want to put the maximum effort on having great conversations and getting the right people together rather than having the best technological solution. Depending on the feedback I get and the needs of the users, moving off Ning could definitely be a future move.

Co-founders, like women, are often found randomly.

I found two of mine on Hacker News. They rock.

Yep, it's a Ning thing. I'll see if I can cut out some of the signup options, thanks for the feedback.

EDIT: Just removed b-day, gender, and location. Thanks again, sorry for the poor 1st impression.