The best advice I can give is to go out to local industry networking events and turn to groups like HN to join discussions and engage other people. By doing this you're more likely to find someone who is truly like-minded and knowledgeable about the same space you're looking to get into. You're also more likely to find a technical co-founder, which undoubtedly expedites product development because you come from a business background.
Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
#12I found a co-founder by posting on craigslist. We have very different styles: I am improvisational, creative, always willing to try an idea, in love with writing beautiful code, mostly driven by aesthetics and idealism. He is organized, managerial, skeptical, oriented toward business and negotiation and the world of money, good at researching and finding out how other people have solved a problem, though he still enj…
How many people did you interview before you found your current co-founder?
Three.
The ad I placed was not for a co-founder, but for someone to pair-program with me. At my cube-farm day job at the time, I hadn't found anyone willing to try pair-programming. I missed pairing, and I knew from past experience that I'm way more productive when pairing. I figured that with a pair, I would likely get one of my personal projects done. So I placed an ad looking for a student to pair-program with me on my projects. I offered to pay $15/hour, since the main compensation for a student would be the technical know-how he'd pick up from someone with more experience (I've been coding for roughly 20 years).
After about one session or so, though, $15/hour seemed stupid. It made more sense that we would each have a stake in a product. It's been way better to have someone who takes initiative than a student who waits to be told what to do.
Re: Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's exactly the problem I've had. There's 2-3 people I've worked with in the last 3 years I've approached about getting our nuts out of the corporate lock-box, and none of them have any interest. With two of them, you can tell immediately that the thought of leaving a corporate position for their own enterprise has never even crossed their minds. The other one overestimates the risk involved. sigh
You live in Dallas right? Good luck finding anyone here that hasn't been raised to climb the corporate ladder. I'm still in school, but I also find it pretty depressing to be around so many people that don't like thinking big or taking risks.
Yup. It's just in the water, I think. It's starting to get better, particularly in the East parts, like Plano and Richardson. There's an incubator in Richardson, actually - it's called Star Tech Early Ventures (startechev.com). I've been talking with them, but it's not quite the same model as YC, as best I can tell (i.e., their interests are a little more diverse than those of YC, I think - make what you will of that).
Re: Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
#14I'm in a similar boat, in a way. I'm currently playing with the idea of founding a web service-based company but as I research the technology behind my concept (I would be a non-technical founder) I continuously come across accounts of how difficult it is for people in my situation. If you come across an engineer ready to take the leap into the world of start ups, odds are pretty good they intend to work on their own ideas. If you come across an engineer who's already been in the fray and is ready to do it again, (s)he has no interest in talking to someone like me.
I'm a marketing / biz dev / product dev guy and I can spec a project, help lead a project, manage a team, compose great copy for the site / service / collateral, get the word out through a fair network I've built and market the out of it, make use of some contacts to pitch for funding, etc etc. These are the things I've been doing for the past nine years. What I can't do is build the product myself.
It's a tough game, and it's all about networking. I'm talking to friends of friends of friends but little has come of it to this point. So I'll keep at it and be persistent in the hopes that one day soon I'll have a conversation with a skilled engineer looking to lead instead of follow and we'll see eye to eye.
Re: Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
#15If you think it's hard now, just wait until you start the business, it becomes mildly successful, and now you want to bring in someone as a co-founder to help you grow - it's twice as hard then. I'm going through that right now and it's tough . I don't think cofounders need be friends before starting - I think that like-minded people hang around each other so, if you're in an area like the Valley, there are more peop…
A post-founding co-founder?
We just got one. Co-founder isn't about the title, it's about the state of mind.
Our company started with having a local dev firm doing initial coding, then we got him to do some work on the site on nights. Then he decided he really wanted to give it a shot, and I welcomed him with open arms. He gets a ton of equity and is a co-founder in my mind: there are no secrets, no employer/employee relationship. Yes, I spent a ton of my own cash to get the business off the ground, but it only has a chance at success with a full-time partner. So he's a co-founder in my mind, and publicly.
Re: Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
#16Restating your problem: the circles I run in now don't have what I am looking for, how can I find what I am looking for? Simple answer: change the circles you run in. Go to the watering hole for the prey you want to take down -- users groups, coworking facilities, and professional networks like workingwithrails and linkedin. Then, do a small test project, then try a harder project together. Expect to go through many…
+1, Gratuitous Musical Interlude
Re: Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
A post-founding co-founder?
We just got one. Co-founder isn't about the title, it's about the state of mind. Our company started with having a local dev firm doing initial coding, then we got him to do some work on the site on nights. Then he decided he really wanted to give it a shot, and I welcomed him with open arms. He gets a ton of equity and is a co-founder in my mind: there are no secrets, no employer/employee relationship. Yes, I spent…
How do you define tons of equity?
40%? 30%?
Re: Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
#18I'm in a similar boat, in a way. I'm currently playing with the idea of founding a web service-based company but as I research the technology behind my concept (I would be a non-technical founder) I continuously come across accounts of how difficult it is for people in my situation. If you come across an engineer ready to take the leap into the world of start ups, odds are pretty good they intend to work on their own…
Zacharye - Engineer here who might be interested. Send me your email address and we can talk. nick [dot] kleinschmidt [at] gmail.com
Re: Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
#19I'm in the same boat. I am in Product Management and fairly technically oriented, but I wouldn't call myself a real programmer.
Since I have not found people of like mind I have tried to learn enough to try to do something on my own. But not having built a web service in the past, it's not that easy. I would be happy finding a mentor who could point me in the right direction while I learn.
Re: Ask YC: Finding a co-founder(s)
#20My problem is recognising tallent outside of your core compentencies.
If you can recognise tallent, it's easy enough to pick up people who are on the rebound from bad jobs, or who haven't gotten much paid experience yet. I regularly hire friends of friends, but then I hang out with very technical people who have very technical friends. I've picked up a lot of really good technical people with little experience and paid 'em $15/hr to work for me... most of them leave for better pay after a year or so, but if I was compitent at business, I'd be able to pay them more by then.
My big problem is that if you are incompetent at something, you can't reconise compitence. I am an incompitent business person, so I can't recognise a good sales/businessperson. Even with a good solid technical team, you need business compitency to succeed, and there isn't much of that in my social circle, and even if there was, I wouldn't be able to tell the good from the pretenders.
It sounds like I need to get together with someone like you, but who? I mean, I alrealdy said, I can't tell if someone is a compitent businessperson, and having the wrong CEO is much worse, imo, than having no CEO at all.