Ask HN: Where can I find technical co-founders?

You don't sound like a traditional start-up, so most of the advice form startup school may not apply to you. You probably don't need someone who actually writes code day to day. I would get someone with high level expertise in building and running technical teams who can start from one developer and scale up. That person will lay out your technical infrastructure while you focus on the business side of things. This is definitely not an easy find, and is harder than finding some smart student who wants to play with latest technology x that does not fit well with your business plan.

I'm @shaded2 on twitter if you want to chat more

Hi Nick -

I can speak for myself. I am a primarily technical, sole founder of a 3+ years profitable company who had to develop the business know-how along the way.

With the ability to see both sides, what I've found is the business-side components are equally as important as the technical components; that is, neither can live without the other. But here's the rub: The technical side is a thousand times more laborious to become proficient at, and there's not even a comparison.

If you're able to take that with more than a grain of salt, it implies while your contributions are equally as important as a technical co-founders to the overall business' success - the technical co-founder is not likely to see it that way because they won't be looking at things in terms of value (which is what matters most from the business man's point of view) but in terms of value + effort.

The way you can make developers feel good about working with you is to emphasize something aside from money (risk) to contribute which shows you will be putting in a substantial amount of effort which then has tangible, measurable results. For example, if you are a good writer and willing to write lots of content for SEO.

You say you are a sales and marketing focused person, so really stress what it is you will be doing work-wise that will compel the technical co-founder to want to work with you. Will you be cold-calling 100 people with a 5 percent conversion rate every day? Will you be spending 4 hours a day using X, Y, and Z tool to come up with keyword permutations for AdWords campaigns? Will you be reaching out to a minimum of 3 potential affiliate / rev-share partners a day to maximize those types of relationships? Show what makes you good at what you do and the effort you will be putting forth to achieve your results.

There's no real reason why anyone you find that can provide you with that service can't be your co-founder, but realistically speaking most of the people you meet won't be terribly interested in becoming a founder. It's a hell of a lot of hard work and it's very risky.

If you can convince him to take an equity stake, by all means hammer out an agreement, but you can get from zero to one even if he doesn't, simply by paying him for a clear set of deliverables.

In the UK it means the same as revenue in the US.