Ask HN: How to find a non-technical cofounder? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to find a non-technical cofounder?

#11

Post by sarciszewski » Tue, Feb 24, 2015, 8:02 PM UTC

austinhutch wrote: post #10

sarciszewski wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good idea after you've found one, but finding one in the first place is what the OP was asking.

I think asking for help in some of the aforementioned subreddits and websites with a small project like the OP suggested would be a great way to garner interest.

Err, maybe.

> work with them on a small project based on the challenges u are facing

This doesn't really have any of the details you mentioned. "Work with them" implies there's already a "them" to work with.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a non-technical cofounder?

#12

Post by BorisMelnik » Tue, Feb 24, 2015, 9:37 PM UTC

If you are just missing a small piece of the pie, consider being the sole founder and just hiring a commission based sales rep in the beginning. I tried and tried to find a non-tech co-founder and couldn't find one, hired a sales team and never looked back.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a non-technical cofounder?

#13

Post by BorisMelnik » Tue, Feb 24, 2015, 9:37 PM UTC

marketingadvice wrote: post #8

Growthhackers.com Inbound.org reddit.com/r/entrepreneur reddit.com/r/startups Those are most frequented by marketers with /r/entrpreneur + /r/startups also frequented by sales/business focused people. If you post something on any of those communities with some details (I recommend posting to all 4), than you should get some candidates that are well qualified (depending on the project).

all very good resources. the key is to pitch to people without pitching them, and without giving away your idea to the world!

Re: Ask HN: How to find a non-technical cofounder?

#14

Post by snowman0797 » Tue, Feb 24, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

like everything else it just seems that you have to be in the right place at the right time.

I am in the opposite situation and as you said there are a lot of stories on how to find a technical cofounder but its not as easy as it sounds..finding someone who believes what you believe and can stand with you to make it happen is the important part...or you can just hire them which seems to be the easy answer

Re: Ask HN: How to find a non-technical cofounder?

#15

Post by bhayden » Tue, Feb 24, 2015, 10:38 PM UTC

BorisMelnik wrote: post #12

If you are just missing a small piece of the pie, consider being the sole founder and just hiring a commission based sales rep in the beginning. I tried and tried to find a non-tech co-founder and couldn't find one, hired a sales team and never looked back.

Is it feasible to hire a guy and say "I won't pay you anything but you get 20% of the revenue you refer"?

Re: Ask HN: How to find a non-technical cofounder?

#16

Post by guinness74 » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 2:36 AM UTC

marketingadvice wrote: post #8

Growthhackers.com Inbound.org reddit.com/r/entrepreneur reddit.com/r/startups Those are most frequented by marketers with /r/entrpreneur + /r/startups also frequented by sales/business focused people. If you post something on any of those communities with some details (I recommend posting to all 4), than you should get some candidates that are well qualified (depending on the project).

I can vouch for /r/entrepeneur and /r/startups. It's my first time visiting both inbound.org and growthhackers.com, they look like excellent resources too. From a quick poke around they seem to be proprietary CMSes \ community software, anyone know if I'm wrong about that?

Re: Ask HN: How to find a non-technical cofounder?

#17

Post by Gustomaximus » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 5:09 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #5

A lot of the advice is the same as for finding tech cofounders - People with aptitude for business development and marketing and an interest in found tech startups attend the same meetings and hang around in similar forums to developers with similar aspirations, and quite possibly overlap with your personal network. - Personal rapport, the ability to learn quickly and ideas about how to take your product to the next…

> Several years' experience in managing display advertising budgets for a big corp

Absolutely. Large corps, especially respected brands, look great on the CV but typically you're a project manager with a marketing title. With the exception of the incredible comms experience big corps give I would say better to go for someone with small company hands on experience for a start-up. Ideally someone with both.