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Ask HN: How to find co-founders

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Re: Ask HN: How to find co-founders

#31

Post by swah »

alimoeeny wrote: post #27
swah wrote: post #8

Sad to say, but I'll probably go alone when I try to create another business. The first time I tried to start with best friends, they jumped off after a couple months and I hated them for it.

Sir, Why did you do that. I am sorry to hear that. As other's have said, finding a co-founder is like finding a wife, you just don't assume your best friend will be a good life partner. and you can ruin your friendship this way.

Its been a few years, but I probably believed that we could trust each other and that was pretty important.

Re: Ask HN: How to find co-founders

#33

Post by valarauca1 »

taksintik wrote: post #30

Finance / biz development guy here. It's real hard talking long term monetization strategy with some developers. I've tried cofounders meetings but been unable to find a The right type of hungry. I think it may be the fact that i live in Thailand. A country rich in programming drifters.

Most programmers (in the USA, let alone developing country I assume) are heavily philosophically influenced by the free software movement.

The idea of selling a lot of software for money is kinda foreign to developers who learned their trained purely from the internet. Even me I'd rather make an open source project and sell support rather then just sell black box software.

Re: Ask HN: How to find co-founders

#34

Post by bjones53 »

mgirdley wrote: post #14

I went through a similar experience recently. My solution: 1) Find a place where startup people hang out (in San Antonio, there's a co-working space designed for this called Geekdom). Startup people are rarely found in big companies. 2) Find ways to get involved in the startup community by volunteering or just helping others. You'll determine very quickly who are the quality people and who you'll like working with. 3…

I agree, the startup community can be a great place to meet potential partners.

To extend on something you mentioned, I suggest that you look for volunteer opportunities outside the startup community. The startup community is great, but volunteering with different organizations exposes you to people with diverse backgrounds and different skill sets. Volunteering is great for building a network of people with skills that compliment yours; it allows you to develop genuine relationships with likeminded individuals.

Re: Ask HN: How to find co-founders

#35

Post by bbulkow »

JSeymourATL wrote: post #19

Don't underestimate your own abilities to develop a business, network, find & manage money. Conversely, it's easy to overestimate those skills in others.

+1 on this, big time.

As a technical guy who became funded & CEO now CTO, getting a business plan both is, and isn't, rocket science.

Ask yourself: what would an investor want to know?

They want to know how expensive to develop, time horizon, risks, possible positive outcomes.

That's all a business plan is. If you haven't answered this for yourself, or it's just a "feeling" not backed up by data, then you don't really know it.

Run this past your friends, people who will give you a straight answer.

The entrepreneurial spirit is taking the bull by the horns and wrestling, not saying "I'm not a business guy." Try it yourself.

If you try it yourself, and "fail", you'll learn the kind of business guy who adds value, then you can look intelligently and correctly.

If you try and succeed, well, there you are.

Re: Ask HN: How to find co-founders

#36

Post by bbulkow »

jonnathanson wrote: post #7

There's a mental hack I would use in situations like these. Essentially, stop looking for a "cofounder" and start looking for a "collaborator." Right now you don't have a business, per se. You have a concept. It's an interesting concept, but it doesn't need a cofounder just yet. Turn the concept into a project. Work on any bits and pieces of the project that you can. Go to meetups, bring your idea to a hackathon, and…

I also use the "turn it into a project" mental hack. Use your engineering mentality to "break it down" and do one step at a time.

Don't shirk the "who can I sell it to for how much" question, though. That's the common fear/concern of technical guys.

Re: Ask HN: How to find co-founders

#37

Post by exelius »

So you're software guy and you can build things. You even have an idea of what to build.

The "business/money" part of things is easy. If you get big enough, you can hire an accountant to do most of that for you. The "networking" thing is pretty easy too: you can hire salespeople for that.

What you need is someone who knows this industry from a strategic standpoint: who are your competitors, who are your customers, and how do you sell to them? What do they even want? What value does your product give them over a more generic data warehousing solution?

I can tell you right now that your idea is neither novel nor particularly valuable (if your customers are big multinational companies, it's just a little custom reporting code on top of their enterprise data warehousing platform). Until you turn it into a product that serves some customer's needs, it will remain without value. But what you need is someone who understands the market enough to be able to tell you these things.

I would say your best option would be to find someone in the industry and say "Hey, I have a business idea I'd like to bounce off of you". Don't worry about people stealing your idea -- if it's worth doing, someone has probably already done it. That doesn't mean there's not an opportunity though, and you just need to find someone qualified to judge that.

Re: Ask HN: How to find co-founders

#38

Post by dzink »

A good way to increase your chances of finding one is to do a lot of small projects with different people who complement your skills. You have to work with someone first to know if you are a good fit for something bigger (think of it as dating before marriage). This is easier when you are on a campus environment (which is why facebook and google started on campuses), and harder once you're out of school.

We created http://www.doerhub.com as a free tool to fix that. People from different disciplines (from surgery, to hacking, AI, business, law, 3d printing and human rights ) post what they are working on/passionate about and anyone who likes their project can contribute by joining, advising, becoming a beta user, doing a task etc. They collaborate right on the site or outside of it. You can share areas you are advanced in and learning in so you can discover complementary people easily http://peoplesearch-doerhub.herokuapp.com/viz/ and do private or public projects.

Other than individual SV doers, UChicago was first full organization in our beta http://www.doerhub.com/at/uchicago (1/3rd of the finalists and both winners of their New Venture Challenge and Social New Venture Challenge were using the site). And now we are opening it for free to other universities, hackathons, hack clubs and organizations who want people to get stuff done with others, instead of just talking about it.

When I (a hacker) posted this drone project http://www.doerhub.com/for/personaldrone a pilot with military experience and a VC I didn't know ended up joining me. Here are some other doerhub-powered teams:

http://www.doerhub.com/for/kikisauceco

http://www.doerhub.com/for/whichvc

http://www.doerhub.com/for/bluetooth-sensor

http://www.doerhub.com/for/robopaint

http://www.doerhub.com/for/qcare

http://www.doerhub.com/for/surgery-boards-app

Re: Ask HN: How to find co-founders

#39

Post by meowface »

bbulkow wrote: post #36
jonnathanson wrote: post #7

There's a mental hack I would use in situations like these. Essentially, stop looking for a "cofounder" and start looking for a "collaborator." Right now you don't have a business, per se. You have a concept. It's an interesting concept, but it doesn't need a cofounder just yet. Turn the concept into a project. Work on any bits and pieces of the project that you can. Go to meetups, bring your idea to a hackathon, and…

I also use the "turn it into a project" mental hack. Use your engineering mentality to "break it down" and do one step at a time. Don't shirk the "who can I sell it to for how much" question, though. That's the common fear/concern of technical guys.

I suspect the majority of people who see their startups as a "business" before they see them as a "project" tend to fail, or at least not be very successful.

Re: Ask HN: How to find co-founders

#40

Post by taksintik »

valarauca1 wrote: post #33
taksintik wrote: post #30

Finance / biz development guy here. It's real hard talking long term monetization strategy with some developers. I've tried cofounders meetings but been unable to find a The right type of hungry. I think it may be the fact that i live in Thailand. A country rich in programming drifters.

Most programmers (in the USA, let alone developing country I assume) are heavily philosophically influenced by the free software movement. The idea of selling a lot of software for money is kinda foreign to developers who learned their trained purely from the internet. Even me I'd rather make an open source project and sell support rather then just sell black box software.

I hear what your saying but I just don't get it. It's all how we view things I guess. From my perspective Making money while solving problems is good thing. No reason to be shy about it.
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