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Ask HN: My startup just received seed funding, tips on building out tech team?

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Ask HN: My startup just received seed funding, tips on building out tech team?

#1
Hi all,

My startup just got accepted into an incubator program (can't tell you guys which one yet), and along with that received a decent chunk of seed funding. Myself and my co-founder are not "tech" people, though I've been actively trying to learn (proud to say I'm almost done with Shaw's LPTHW :)).

One of our challenges now is to recruit someone with strong tech capabilities full-time. We've been working with a couple of kids from college who've been great, but definitely need some full-time help now. In terms of where our product is, our website has a solid prototype up, and we want to build out a mobile app as well which is still in early concept (aka nothing) stage.

I know it's impossible to find someone with Python/Ruby/iOS/Android/everything experience, so I'd love to get everyone's thoughts on how you'd proceed in my situation. We've tried posting on university job boards in the location of the incubator, but haven't made a whole lot of progress. I also understand that with only seed funding we can't have the "ideal" tech team hired, but we're looking for people that can at least get us to a solid beta on mobile at least (since our site is just about in beta stage).

Thanks for any and all suggestions/help!

Re: Ask HN: My startup just received seed funding, tips on building out tech team?

#4
congrats on the funding. i noticed that you mentioned you posted on university job boards. Personally at this stage for your startup, I would target a more experienced candidate compared to university grads. The college interns that helped with putting up your prototype is great but now that funding is there, you need an experienced engineer that can take your product to the next level technically and put in place a strategy and plan as far as technical details are concerned.

as mentioned above, the "jobs" threads on HN are amazing since you find very very good talent in them.

Re: Ask HN: My startup just received seed funding, tips on building out tech team?

#6
post #3

I would love it if you guys would at some point elucidate about how 2 non "tech" people a) found some techies to help you with your project and b) got seed funding. Both of these seem to fly in the face of established start up culture.

We both have a very strong business background, and I actually launched a small socially minded enterprise internationally last year; also, we were able to prove that we can get stuff done as we had a prototype available by the time of our interview for the program.

Also, the incubator we are accepted into is industry-specific and not a general "tech" incubator like YCombinator (not that one is better than the other, YCombinator is awesome obviously, just that this was a better fit for us). Feel free to ask for more details if you'd like.

Re: Ask HN: My startup just received seed funding, tips on building out tech team?

#7
post #2

On the first of each month here on HN there is a 'jobs' thread and a 'freelancer/freelancing' thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3181796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3181801

Excellent - I had seen this threads around, didn't realize there was a methodology to them (1st of every month). I will definitely be posting on the 1st, thanks for the suggestion.

Re: Ask HN: My startup just received seed funding, tips on building out tech team?

#9
Depends on what you are looking for.

If you are looking for a cofounder, then a post on HN explaining the problem domain, the background of the current team, and other details will help you find one from this community. S ince you are experienced entrepreneurs now would be a good time to tap your network and approach the people who helped you with your past successes.

If you are just looking for someone to crank out a beta, I'd put out some RFPs to contractors, again HN may be able to help here.

If you are looking for a technical cofounder, I'd be interested to hear more. Email in profile.

Re: Ask HN: My startup just received seed funding, tips on building out tech team?

#10

Depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for a cofounder, then a post on HN explaining the problem domain, the background of the current team, and other details will help you find one from this community. S ince you are experienced entrepreneurs now would be a good time to tap your network and approach the people who helped you with your past successes. If you are just looking for someone to crank out…

Just e-mailed, thanks for the advice.
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