So it’s an often discussed topic on Hacker News but the discussion is usually from the point of view of non-technical person looking for a technical cofounder asking for advice from this technical crowd.<p>As a technically inclined person myself, I get these offers from time to time and I usually can find a recent article on HN to send to that person to read before we speak any further.<p>The situation brought to mind some questions I thought I would pose to the community though.<p>Not looking for any real formal structure in the answers, just in general<p>- Where are some places to send them to read some good discussion on the topic?<p>- What kinds of things do you look for when you get these requests?<p>- What are some good resources on how to respond?<p>- Red flags? (i.e. NDAs?)<p>- How do you say you aren’t interested?<p>- What if you are interested? What would you say then?<p>- Anything else?<p>I've recently been asked to join more groups as the technical cofounder/ person and I'm wondering what kinds of things people say. Just interested in the thought processes of other HNers
Many successful startups have been founded by teams of 2 or 3 people and often one of them is a non-technical person. Heck Steve Jobs is no coder himself - <a href="http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2006/10/5672.ars" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2006/10/5672.ars</a>. Even when you just get started, there are plenty of things for a non-programmer to do - as Spencer Fry has elegantly laid out - <a href="http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do" rel="nofollow">http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do</a><p>I think the value is in finding someone with complementary skill sets, so that you two can "fight back to back" as I like to say. If you're introverted, you want someone who can sell to customers, investors and talk to the press. If you're disorganized, you want someone who can keep all the numbers together and keep projects moving forward. If you've got no design sense, it would help to find someone who can push pixels and has a sense of artistry.<p>In general, I'd focus on finding a legit person, rather than finding someone who has a "good idea".
For your first question, as a non-tech person myself, I personally thought this place was a pretty good overview of all the options available for eventually attracting a tech cofounder:<p><a href="http://viniciusvacanti.com/becoming-your-own-technical-co-founder/" rel="nofollow">http://viniciusvacanti.com/becoming-your-own-technical-co-fo...</a><p>To sum up the key points from that blog, it's basically:
1) Go work at a start-up
2) Become a key member of the tech community
3) Blog about your idea
4) Hire a programmer (to at least build a prototype)
5) Roll the dice on a stranger
6) Build your own prototype<p>Since what I was trying to build is not technically intensive, my personal choice was to learn some coding and build a rough prototype first.