Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
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Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
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Re: Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
#2One thing that irritates the hell out of me every time is meeting a 'business' guy with the world's best idea, who is prepared to let a lucky developer have 10% of the venture in return for building the damn thing.
I am yet to meet a developer who has not had this very same experience.
Re: Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
#3One thing that irritates the hell out of me every time is meeting a 'business' guy with the world's best idea, who is prepared to let a lucky developer have 10% of the venture in return for building the damn thing. I am yet to meet a developer who has not had this very same experience.
Agree completely. Was a business or rather "non-tech" guy - taught myself HTML4-5/CSS2-3/jQuery + basic C# - coded the entire design, UI etc [and still do it] - and do basically every server install, git, software setup etc etc. This effort was enough to find me my other technical co-founders who wanted to be involved. You've got to put in the effort otherwise you don't get respect in my opinion.
I've always held the view that any business venture you go in - you need to understand it from the ground up. If you're in tech - learn tech. If you're in construction - learn how to build 'something' [house etc]. If you're in finance - learn finance. Understand that "build a twitter script for me" - can't happen in 2 days [I think this comment is on "par" with the original poster's question. I smile now when "non-tech" people say to me they are building a web startup "exactly like twitter in scale in 5 days using NoSQL and the latest caching techniques" .... right ... haha]
I find the concept "strange" of "i have an idea but I don't have technical skills - but because of this idea that gives me the right to own 99.9% of the company". There isn't an " i " in the word "team". If you're a co-founder - it's an inherent facet of the word that you "co-found". The only exception I can see is that unless someones invested a whole heap of cash and others haven't - this is what changes the equity split. But that's up to the team to figure out.
Call me old fashioned - but thanks Henry Ford
"Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."
And thanks Thomas Alva
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
The list goes on. You get the gist.
Re: Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
#4I think you de-stress the 'having an idea' too much. Having a truly great idea -will- attract a co-founder. Well, if they hear it. It's not a magic spell.
Also, being the 'idea guy' might be over-rated, but being the 'vision guy' is definitely the bee's knees.
At a previous company, 1 man was the vision behind the entire product. I can't tell you how many hour-long meetings were ended in 5 minutes when he showed up and made it all clear. (This was after things got really busy and cloning him started to seem like a good solution.) You could bring any question about the direction of the product to him and he would have a good, clear answer.
Without him, I really doubt the company would have been a success.
Re: Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
#5Good post.
Speaking as a technical guy, my default position is to be turned off by co-founding with a business guy unless they have an amazing track record. I like the advice of earning a technical co-founder.
I just wish more business guys realized their ideas aren't that special, aren't a magic way of printing money and just coming up with the idea doesn't entitle you to 75% of a two-man venture. It doesn't even really entitle you to an extra 10%.
In the beginning, your job is probably going to be to find a place to work, deal with the guy who's installing the Internet line, buying computers, buying food, buying and assembling furniture and generally just making things work. That's all very unglamorous work but, depending on the venture, it's quite likely your (alleged) business skills will be of very little value (while you're building a PoC/PoS/MVP).
I don't think I'm alone (as a technical guy) in generally finding business guys to have an inflated sense of self-importance who often want to treat technical people as an exchangeable/replaceable commodity.
Re: Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
#6I think you de-stress the 'having an idea' too much. Having a truly great idea -will- attract a co-founder. Well, if they hear it. It's not a magic spell. Also, being the 'idea guy' might be over-rated, but being the 'vision guy' is definitely the bee's knees. At a previous company, 1 man was the vision behind the entire product. I can't tell you how many hour-long meetings were ended in 5 minutes when he showed up a…
Thanks for your comment wccrawford. The other day I was thinking very hard about why I admired a former colleague of mine so much but couldn't pin it down to something concrete. Reading your comment made it suddenly all clear - it was the vision. Just like how you described it having the "vision guy" in any meeting cuts out a lot of unnecessary crap and made the team focused. It's very hard to understand or even describe how powerful this is unless one has experienced it first hand. Lucky me!
Re: Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
#7One thing that irritates the hell out of me every time is meeting a 'business' guy with the world's best idea, who is prepared to let a lucky developer have 10% of the venture in return for building the damn thing. I am yet to meet a developer who has not had this very same experience.
You've probably not met good business people but "idea guys" that, as you say, have the greatest idea since sliced bread and want you to build it for 5% equity. These people are a dime a dozen and generally worthless.
The thing is that good business people are exactly like good hackers: Very rare. Good business people will never approach you with a good idea, they'll approach you with a thought-out strategy, proof of concept, money and customers. The idea guys are like people that have once made a wordpress theme and know basic HTML calling themselves hackers.
business people get a bad rep because everyone thinks they can be one if they can come up with a decent idea and wave their arms around a bit.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Re: Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
#8Having an idea to fit a vision is your starting altitude. Great execution takes it to the stars.
The starting altitude does matter.
It's really honestly all about teamwork - not some tit-for-tat, we are better than you. So don't perpetuate it.
Re: Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
#9Can't catch a fish unless you go fishing.
Hustlers should stop asking the community how to get a technical cofounder, but it doesn't mean they should stop asking technical cofounders to be a... cofounder.
Only way you're going to find one is to put your idea on the line and prove you've got the chops to support each other.
Re: Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder.
#10Good post. Speaking as a technical guy, my default position is to be turned off by co-founding with a business guy unless they have an amazing track record. I like the advice of earning a technical co-founder. I just wish more business guys realized their ideas aren't that special, aren't a magic way of printing money and just coming up with the idea doesn't entitle you to 75% of a two-man venture. It doesn't even re…
> It doesn't even really entitle you to an extra 10%.
Depends on the capabilities of the business guy. The best idea in the world, with the best technical execution in the world, is worth precisely $0 without the capability to bring it to market: to build sales channels and drive growing revenues.
This is a real skill, often over-looked by gung-ho coders with a neat idea. If you don't have the contacts and the experience of engineering a proper bis dev strategy, you ain't going anywhere.