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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

#31

Post by rmah »

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?

You partner with someone whom you 1) respect and 2) have worked with well in the past. I really don't understand how anyone could possibly partner with a stranger no matter how stellar their resume or how skilled they are.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#32

Post by cabaalis »

I think the reliance on open source work is too heavy. Plenty of amazing engineers have done work at organizations serving millions of customers but have not made contributions to open source. A portfolio is mentioned but is at the bottom of the list of importance, and even noted as such. The author mentions company blogs. At decent sized organizations these could be written by the marketing departments, little regard to the engineers.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#33

Post by pbiggar »

I agree with all of this (caveat, downplay the "interviewing" angle a bit), and let me add some more things I found helpful in my recent cofounder search:

- the most important thing for an early stage startup is that they can validate. That means building incomplete and imperfect prototypes quickly and repeatedly. "Getting the architecture right", "clean code", etc, are usually the wrong skills for a super-early-stage startup, and your CTO shouldn't prioritize them.

- more important is that you get on well with the cofounder. You're going to be working together for a long time. Make sure your personalities mesh, that you can spend a large amount of time together, and that you can discuss/argue constructively.

- Having the same values and goals for the company are paramount. When finding a cofounder recently, I wrote a questionnaire with 40 open-ended "values" questions for cofounders to answer (and then I sent them my answers). It was very apparent when I met someone with values overlap and when I didn't.

Ended up with a great cofounder, have been working together for 6 months now: http://ellenandpaulsnewstartup.com

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#34

Post by dheera »

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 agree. Co-founders are by definition not hired. They should not have to "prove themselves" over the span of a week. Rather, you should already have the proof and conviction based on months to years of prior experience that they are the right person with the right skills.

Moreover, please do not be the silly business person who walks up to some engineer and be like: "I have this great idea, it's going to be great! Can you build it for me? Oh and by the way, because I guess it looks like you're going to be the technical one, I guess I'll have to be the CEO, and I'll take 80% of the equity [despite you doing all the work]." I've had enough of those stupid conversations before.

Good technical co-founders build what they want to build. Not what you want to build. Thus, you need to align as people, and build what you collectively want to build together. Technical co-founders work for themselves, not for you.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#35

Post by TimPC »

hobofan wrote: post #10
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.

I mostly agree. A co-founder interview should be more of a conversation rather than a traditional "company vs. employee" interview. Nevertheless, if it is already a running project, there is an imbalance of trust and skin in the game, similar to a job interview. So going through a technical screening can be a very easy way for the candidate to close that trust gap. Also, the popular perception between technical co-fo…

If you're joining 3 months into what's often a 7+-year mission (where if you're successful you'll be underpaid for a long-time and make your money on stock) and you expect a 90-10 distribution of shares you better be getting something like a salary (co-founder in name only). These kind of distributions are part of why yCombinator discourages unequal co-founder distributions. You're asking for the company to implode over co-founder issues if you think your 3 months at the start is worth a 90-10 distribution in shares especially when as a non-technical founder hiring a technical co-founder the technical co-founder generally has bigger opportunity costs financially.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#36

Post by uladzislau »

cabaalis wrote: post #32

I think the reliance on open source work is too heavy. Plenty of amazing engineers have done work at organizations serving millions of customers but have not made contributions to open source. A portfolio is mentioned but is at the bottom of the list of importance, and even noted as such. The author mentions company blogs. At decent sized organizations these could be written by the marketing departments, little regar…

Open source contributions shouldn't be a deciding factor as I've seen a few very active open source devs unable to do the commercial work on the proper level. On the other hand, lack of open source meaningful activity is a red flag.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#37

Post by wpietri »

I would suggest people double down on point 6, "Find someone to help". If you don't have anybody in your network, pay somebody.

Why? Well, there are two abilities that are only partly correlated: coding and talking about coding. A non-technical founder can only ever evaluate the talking part. My approach to interviewing involves both chatting and pair programming. A surprising number of people are pretty good talkers and pretty terrible doers. Indeed, some of the best talkers are the worst doers, because they've had to become extremely good at talking to keep getting hired.

(As an aside, some of the best coders are pretty bad talkers, but those are not the people you want for a tech cofounder.)

So please, non-tech founders, borrow or hire an expert. There are plenty of people who sell their time by the hour, including former tech leads and tech founders. Like accounting or lawyering, interviewing programmers is a skill not easily acquired. When you need it, it's worth paying for.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#38

Post by cirgue »

afarrell wrote: post #28
mozumder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The problem here is that intuition (gut feeling) is best trained...

You have had an entire lifetime of trial and feedback in understanding the character, talents, and ambitions of other people. If you don't have that, or if you can't trust it, you probably should not be a founder yet. Wait until you actually have those skills because they're critical for everything else in running a business.

Re: How to interview a technical co-founder

#39

Post by atomashpolskiy »

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.

Same story here. Quit my job a few weeks ago, and now looking for some fun stuff to do. If I don't find something by myself soon, probably will have to resort to spamming/broadcasting in LinkedIn like the next commenter advised :)
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