Ask HN: How do you find a technical cofounder with little experience?

"This makes it hard to just go visit my CS department and hope to find even a shred of entrepreneurial spirit."

Why? They're people over there in the CS department. Real ones, with goals and ambition just like you. If you really have a great idea then there'll be people who'll listen and want to be part of it. This sort of anti-CS prejudice isn't going to help you find a co-founder.

"In addition very few people have the necessary skills (full web stack, primarily code in Python(optional), some experience in creating chats and analytics)."

You're the business guy, you admit you don't have the technical skills, yet you're trying to dictate the choice of tools? Why is that? Non-technical founders have no more place picking the language your software is written in than your developers would have coming up with your business's marketing strategy.

As a fellow "business" guy whose recently broken out of the "stereotype" this is what I can offer:

nobody cares about your idea. They care about your execution.

Most business guys get a bad rep because they think they have a genius idea and expect programmers to make it happen. They don't appreciate or even recognize the amount of difficulties and problems that have to be solved to come anywhere close to a usable product.

Focus on what you can bring to the table. My current focus is mainly about identifying first the market and marketing strategy (and testing it) then about helping the developer come up with a minimum viable product (as in what functions are truly necessary to our potential users that can allow us to better get an idea of our market).

If you can convince a technical co-founder that you can EXECUTE on an idea (with their help) then you'll start gaining some traction. Until then you're just another guy with an idea whose asking someone else to do all the work (this might not be true but by default it's what others will assume unless you explicitly explain what you bring to the table).

Unfortunately the character limit on HN made me cut that paragraph out.

I have researched my idea thoroughly. I have the market, the business model, the validation. I have contacts that I have been trying to cultivate with investors, I have the marketing strategy worked out. I have been reading up on design so that I could craft a basic design for my app. I have read everything that I could get my hands on (HN included) to learn about entrepreneurialism, technology, and start-ups.

How to find? Go to meetups, hang out at engineering clubs at your school, post fliers or find other appropriate means of putting it out there that you are looking for a cofounder. You don't want someone who is going to "learn on the job" if you want a chance at making this successful. So finding CS students at your school won't be that useful unless you can find someone who's published some web sites or apps before. Look for someone with proven ability to start AND finish projects (non-school ones).

Outside of school, attend meetups. Learn to code, but not to build it yourself, but to have an excuse to be around developers. That's a reason to be at meetups. There are also meetups specifically for people who are looking for cofounders.

You can also post online (as you did here), to find co-founders, or on things like craigslist in the jobs section.

Other options are to outsource on e-lance or something like that. People offshore can build stuff pretty cheap, but the quality is terrible once you want to scale or maintain it. That shouldn't matter too much because if that becomes an issue, that means you're succeeding.

Why the most important word of an early stage startup validation is missing here? "Customers". The only thing that matters of your whole paragraph is "validation". Explain this better, somehow I feel that it isn't exactly validating the idea with customers.

The main thing a non-tech founder can bring to the table is customer development. Focus on that, as they are practical things. Don't try so hard to be the "self-taught MBA guy". Just do your customer development very well. If a tech co-founder trust that you know your customers, than you have chance to attract a very good one.