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Finding Your Co-Founders

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Re: Finding Your Co-Founders

#31

Post by felipe »

robdor wrote: post #19
holdenc wrote: post #14

I've never understood the purpose of co-founders. If you are a hacker, create your product. Then figure out were you need help and find it. It's hard to overstate the amount that one additional person can dilute the efficiency of a one-person business.

I find "reality checks" to be a great benefit of having a co-founder. The best of us spend time pursuing ideas and tangents for our startups that really don't matter. A co-founder can help identify and keep those incidents to a minimum. Of course this works both ways.

Reality checks are best provided by customers, or potential customers.

Re: Finding Your Co-Founders

#33

Post by arihelgason »

vaksel wrote: post #15
mediaman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only true for a narrow spectrum of startups. There are many highly lucrative niche opportunities (that can still scale to $10mm+ revs) that would be impossible to identify or execute on without an inside industry expert who knows the big players, potential customers, and precise pain points. When referring to "business people with an idea" with some degree of derision, it's productive for us to remember this mostly a…

really? many lucrative niche opportunities? Then surely we'd have heard at least some examples of that on techcrunch. Hell if their other coverage is any indication, they would have made it seem like the norm by now. But hey if your version is correct, then you can find plenty of success stories where a niche business guy, got a programmer partner without having to pay thousands of dollars in the process. I just don'…

We're going after a lucrative niche opportunity that requires significant industry specific knowledge (apparel industry in this case).

I've seen plenty of niche/vertical opportunities like this - mainly because I enjoy interrogating people who work in various sectors about their jobs and pain points.

These opportunities will not be on the radar of someone who doesn't have in depth knowledge of the sector in question. For us, the key was personal experience and knowing potential customers. We worked with them to build the product from the beginning.

As the article says, it's about having a team with complementary skills. That's often a product guy (either a business person or just someone who knows the sector really well) and some tech guys.

Re: Finding Your Co-Founders

#36

Post by req2 »

davidw wrote: post #25
akkartik wrote: post #20

To everyone pointing out sites for networking with potential co-founders: I find them disappointing. They're great places to chat with interesting folks, but if you're like me you've been to them for months without actually getting to first base with anyone. First base isn't exchanging bodily fluids. It's hacking together on a project. Why's it so hard to find people to actually hack with for an evening? We all know…

The description PG gives of 'the ideal cofounder' tends to be someone who you've known for a long time, or have a fairly 'deep' history with - you're good friends or colleagues who get on really well or something like that. If you go by that definition, you simply cannot 'go out and find' someone because it would then take years to reach that level of comradeship.

But that doesn't mean everyone who didn't have a technically inclined college experience and doesn't have a hacking job should give up on the whole concept of cofounders.

Re: Finding Your Co-Founders

#37

Post by tocomment »

vaksel wrote: post #7
chaosprophet wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. At times you just bump into a guy who happens to be exactly what you're looking for. This has happened to me more than once, so I would not make "looking for co-founder" a point of failure. That said, I still think getting to know a person you will be closely involved with well enough before starting out.

how many programmers go out looking for a "business guy with an idea", programmers get pitched the whole "yeah man, I have this idea, it's ultra secret, so I'll need you to sign an NDA first, but basically it's like faceb...." the only way for a "business guy with an idea" to hookup with a programmer, without being lifelong friends, is to bring a crapload of money to the table.

I'm a programmer looking for a business guy with an idea. For some reason I ran out of ideas about a year ago :-(

Plus it would help to have someone marketing the product while I develop it, and giving business feedback about which features are useful, etc.

Re: Finding Your Co-Founders

#38

Post by elai »

jmtame wrote: post #18

I built hndir.com to help solve the challenge of finding technical cofounders at universities. everyone in there is verified and has probably signed up from this site.

And it doesn't accept .ca emails, used by most Canadian universities. Yet another America-centric website.

Re: Finding Your Co-Founders

#39

Post by ABrandt »

wheels wrote: post #9

Reading this, I feel like it may be more relevant to business people starting startups than hackers starting startups. It's hard for a startup that's all business people to get very far. A startup that's all hackers has a decent chance. You need some versatility in your hackers -- and it may well make sense to have a business person onboard at the get-go, but I don't know if having one on average produces better resu…

Although I can't argue whether this article is aimed at the technically inclined or not, I do believe that the advice is equally applicable for both parties.

Just because "business people" can't put together a brilliantly coded working product, does not mean that they can't do anything to get their venture started. Who is to say that setting up a legal entity, researching market trends, and securing sales channels is any less productive activity than programming?

I know that this is not a popular view, but in my eyes there are two distinct sets of tasks in a startup. Yes, one is the tech side and the other is the business side. Both pieces need to be in place to maximize chances for success though. Is a heavily tech-centric startup with a beautiful beta and no business model in any better of a position than a non-tech startup with a well thought out sales strategy and a static landing page as a minimum viable product?

As important as having complimentary skill sets is, I also believe that having some overlap isn't a bad idea either. A hacker who can read a statement of cash flows paired with an MBA who knows an 'if' statement from a 'while' loop will ultimately be able to work better together.

Re: Finding Your Co-Founders

#40

Post by ig1 »

vaksel wrote: post #15
mediaman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only true for a narrow spectrum of startups. There are many highly lucrative niche opportunities (that can still scale to $10mm+ revs) that would be impossible to identify or execute on without an inside industry expert who knows the big players, potential customers, and precise pain points. When referring to "business people with an idea" with some degree of derision, it's productive for us to remember this mostly a…

really? many lucrative niche opportunities? Then surely we'd have heard at least some examples of that on techcrunch. Hell if their other coverage is any indication, they would have made it seem like the norm by now. But hey if your version is correct, then you can find plenty of success stories where a niche business guy, got a programmer partner without having to pay thousands of dollars in the process. I just don'…

Michael Arrington, Anne Wojcicki, Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin. All were business co-founders.

You see business guy founder's companies regularly on techcrunch, how often do you bother to look into the background of founders on news stories ?

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