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How to interview a technical co-founder

chrisloy.net

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Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#21

Post by dominotw »

codingdave wrote: post #17

As an experienced developer, who spent the summer exploring options after my last company was sold, I had many approaches from non-technical founders. Most of them completely skipped vetting me, and just were hungry for someone who could code. One I worked with part-time for a few months, with the explicit agreement that it was a test run on small projects to decide if we wanted to move forward together. The last one…

> Most of them completely skipped vetting me, and just were hungry for someone who could code.

How did these people find you?

I am ready to quit my stable job and do something fun for a while. Where do you I find people in the same boat.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#22

Post by codingdave »

dominotw wrote: post #21
codingdave wrote: post #17

As an experienced developer, who spent the summer exploring options after my last company was sold, I had many approaches from non-technical founders. Most of them completely skipped vetting me, and just were hungry for someone who could code. One I worked with part-time for a few months, with the explicit agreement that it was a test run on small projects to decide if we wanted to move forward together. The last one…

> Most of them completely skipped vetting me, and just were hungry for someone who could code. How did these people find you? I am ready to quit my stable job and do something fun for a while. Where do you I find people in the same boat.

Networking. All of my consulting contracts came from people I already knew, who either hired me directly or introduced me to someone who needed help. And those contacts and clients then introduced me to other people who were looking to found something new. FYI, I found zero value in meetups or other networking events, because the people who are working hard on good ideas are too busy (in general) to attend such things.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#23

Post by dhbradshaw »

bpizzi wrote: post #7

I've got a problem with mixing 'co-founder' and 'hiring' terms: to me they look mutually exclusive. If you're searching for someone for 'co-founding' your startup, then you're asking for a partner. If you're trying to 'hire' someone, then you're asking for an employee. Partners are not to be interviewed, at least not with a 'coding test'. Think of the reversed situation: you're a 'business guy' (whatever that means),…

I've now helped two successful companies get off the ground. In both cases, it wasn't Excel skills that made it happen. It wasn't my code either, although that helped. It was B2B sales. And I don't mean that just in terms of bringing in the money; the people doing the selling also learned what we needed to build to do that selling.

So although I would never administer a test saying "please find the formula errors" to a potential cofounder, I do have a basic pass or fail test: "Can you lead product through sales?" If you can, I can build it and we'll get rich. If not, I'm not sure what value you can bring. I can build projects on spec all by myself.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#24

Post by mozumder »

baddox wrote: post #13
bpizzi wrote: post #7

I've got a problem with mixing 'co-founder' and 'hiring' terms: to me they look mutually exclusive. If you're searching for someone for 'co-founding' your startup, then you're asking for a partner. If you're trying to 'hire' someone, then you're asking for an employee. Partners are not to be interviewed, at least not with a 'coding test'. Think of the reversed situation: you're a 'business guy' (whatever that means),…

So how do you find a business partner? It sounds like you’re suggesting that you need to already have been personally close to and trusting of your partner for a long time, or perhaps find a partner based on recommendations from very close and trusted friends or colleagues. That’s probably how it happens most of the time. Is that the only viable way to choose a partner?

Go with recommendations, seek them out personally, or just take the person most willing to partner with you and use your gut feeling in how they interact with you.

There is no “easy mode” in finding a partner. You will have to take some risk here as well.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#25

Post by ryandrake »

I guess this is a terminology question: If you already have founded a company, how can you be looking for a co-founder? Isn't it already founded?

As a technical person and potential co-founder, I would be very wary of the "Company with non-technical founders looking to get their product built" scenario. First, it looks like they're looking for an employee, not a founder (see above) and second, I would want to vet that product idea front-to-back in terms of technical feasibility and schedule.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#26

Post by mathgeek »

ryandrake wrote: post #25

I guess this is a terminology question: If you already have founded a company, how can you be looking for a co-founder? Isn't it already founded? As a technical person and potential co-founder, I would be very wary of the "Company with non-technical founders looking to get their product built" scenario. First, it looks like they're looking for an employee, not a founder (see above) and second, I would want to vet tha…

The "founder" title carries prestiege, which can fool some folks into thinking they are really founders. The important part, if you really want to be a cofounder in more than title, is to make sure you have equal share and control with all other cofounders. Otherwise you are indeed just an employee (which can be fine as well if you are satisfied with it).

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#27

Post by chrisbennet »

dirtyaura wrote: post #5

If you are going to build a company, not a team of 2, the core skill of CTO is to ability to hire talented technical people to the correct positions. This is hard. Most people can't do this well. Most of the early stage teams are better off to avoid using C-titles and talk this through from the get-go. The founders and first employees might be great builders, but not necessarily great CTOs when you start to grow the…

That probably goes for the non-technical founder as well right? I.e. bring in someone more experienced to grow the business once the founders proves the market exists.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#28

Post by afarrell »

mozumder wrote: post #24
baddox wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you find a business partner? It sounds like you’re suggesting that you need to already have been personally close to and trusting of your partner for a long time, or perhaps find a partner based on recommendations from very close and trusted friends or colleagues. That’s probably how it happens most of the time. Is that the only viable way to choose a partner?

Go with recommendations, seek them out personally, or just take the person most willing to partner with you and use your gut feeling in how they interact with you. There is no “easy mode” in finding a partner. You will have to take some risk here as well.

> use your gut feeling in how they interact with you.

The problem here is that intuition (gut feeling) is best trained in environments where you have:

1) The opportunity for lots of repeated trials.

2) Rapid feedback which results from the data you currently observe rather than from

So if you're predicting tomorrow's weather, intuition is useful: your prediction can't change the weather, you can do this 365 times in a year, and you'll get feedback the next day.

Picking a founder (or heck, uni project partner) is unlike this in that you don't have many opportunities to do it and the feedback only comes months later. So, its better to think through a more deliberative and explicit thought process.

That deliberative process might involve a difficult, awkward conversation like "Hey, so if we jump into this, we are going to have to really trust each other for a lot of things. I think its best if we explicitly come up with ways to prove to ourselves and each other that we have the skills to tackle the known challenges we're going to have to face."

I don't know where "easy mode" comes into it at all.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#29

Post by amorphid »

pm wrote: post #3
hobofan wrote: post #2

My advice: Ignore all points except the last one. I've seen a lot of startups trying to hire a technical co-founder on their own, even following advice similar to point 1-5, but still ending up with a co-founder that was a bad technical fit ~80% of the time. With the involvement of a technical person in the interview process, usually either referring the candidate or having an additional technical interview with them…

Honestly, even that's a crapshoot. In fact this article presumes that it should be an interview, when it should really be a conversation. If a non-technical founder wanted to "interview" me, I'd tell them to shove it. If they wanted to have a conversation about how we could bring our complementary skills together to solve a problem, then I'd certainly be much more interested.

As a technical person, if I wanted to hire a technical co-founder, I'd probably:

- get started on my own without them

- if I was lucky enough to find someone I actually wanted to partner with, I'd make sure we'd be able & willing to own code both of us had written

- not get too attached to my pre-founder code (probably a good idea in general)

- offer them a nominal hourly rate for a week or two just to validate skills & compatibility while they decide for themselves if they really wanna do a startup with me

- when they fully committed, offer them the same comp package I offered myself, including number of shares

- hope it all works out!

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#30

Post by adambyrtek »

amorphid wrote: post #29
pm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, even that's a crapshoot. In fact this article presumes that it should be an interview, when it should really be a conversation. If a non-technical founder wanted to "interview" me, I'd tell them to shove it. If they wanted to have a conversation about how we could bring our complementary skills together to solve a problem, then I'd certainly be much more interested.

As a technical person, if I wanted to hire a technical co-founder, I'd probably: - get started on my own without them - if I was lucky enough to find someone I actually wanted to partner with, I'd make sure we'd be able & willing to own code both of us had written - not get too attached to my pre-founder code (probably a good idea in general) - offer them a nominal hourly rate for a week or two just to validate skill…

You said yourself that you're a "technical person", so probably not the target audience of this article.
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