The problem: While there are potentially many great co-founders out there, you have no one to work with. This problem has two parts:<p>A) Not knowing enough people interested in startups.<p>B) Not knowing if people would make good or bad co-founders.<p>So this is certainly a step toward solving part A. The problem is it really does nothing toward solving part B, which is by far the hardest part of the puzzle. <p>I'm sitting here reading news.YC and there are comments from dozens of smart people, some of whom would make great co-founders and some wouldn't. The issue isn't for the most part isn't the fact that I don't know they exist; I know they all exist. The issue is a lack of identity. <p>If you want to solve the co-founder problem, the solution isn't to get a large amount of people interested in starting companies in the same room. The solution comes from getting them to know each other. This comes from two things:<p>A) Identity.<p>B) Interaction.<p>Identity is 10% what we say about ourselves, and 90% what others say about us based on previous actions. To solve the identity problem you need a way to either aggregate what others say about us or else shine light on previous actions. (Previous actions being anything from college degrees to old blog posts.)<p>Interaction comes from objects of sociability. Playing games. Breaking a loaf of fresh bread. Sharing a bottle of wine over dinner. A pot of tea. Solving hard problems together. Solving difficult problems together. etc.<p>Anyway, my point is that the website doesn't solve a problem. At best it is the first 10% of the solution that enables a few people with really good judgement to solve the problem themselves. More likely it encourages people to enter really dangerous territory and potentially get into a lot of trouble with people they barely know.
A few weeks ago there was a thread about starting a free-form way for entrepreneurs to find each other in different cities:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=445<p>...so I decided to try setting one up. Please let me know what you think. There's no ads on it or anything, this is strictly a project to make connections and learn more about web development.
Great name for the site. A couple of suggestions: technical strengths and weaknesses are important, but not necessarily more important than general strengths and weaknesses- at least not for a founder. If it was an employee search that would be one thing but I would possibly relabel those "technical & business strengths" etc.<p>"My dream is to start a company that" should probably be more along the lines of "I have plans and/or interests in the following areas-" I guess I would just step the seriousness up a little bit so you get people who are generally serious partners.<p>Finally, I'm normally against this, but this is one place where you may want to consider having the site invitation-only, either that or password-protect the site and let the password spread among founder-networked people. A lot of garbage profiles would ruin the usefulness of the site.<p>[upd]
oh, and one more thing- maybe one more field where the potential co-founder can write about themselves- "about me" or "unique things about me" or something along those lines. Finding a cofounder is a lot about chemistry and an alignment of personalities, not just matching up needed technical skills. It's not a school project, it's more like a.... marriage, to be honest (nothing weird of course).
I have to say that this concept is unfounded on many levels. Case and point being that the basis of a good partnership is a good friendship. If I meet someone on the Internet, my first thought is that they are not who they say they are.<p>There is no need for social networking to extend to the business concept on this level. If you can not find a founder in your town, in real life, then start a business yourself. Either that, or don't start one at all.<p>Jason Berlinsky
Amazing! I can tell you will be very successful as you have actually done something about the problem - the rest of us (especially myself) sat on our butts bemoaning our fate.
This has been a really interesting 17 hours. I've only posted here and startupping.com and I've received a lot of traffic (a lot for me anyway). One thing I did not anticipate was all of the international visitors. So far there's Sweden, UK, Spain, and Canada. So I am going to add a Country field ASAP. I've never done an international site; are there other things I should keep in mind?
FYI I just now tried to register but kept getting some sort of "something went wrong we've been notified" error. 3:45 pm EST 3/11/07.<p>On the app - when you say technical do you just mean things like programming, hardware, networking? Certainly more than tech skills are required. Is this site only for those with tech skills where someone a bit softer can find someone?
From everything I've read, it's not quite that simple. You don't just pick someone out of a web site to go through thick and thin with, it's a process that takes time. I guess it can't hurt though.
Nice, I was about to make the same site last week until I got buried in work..<p>One thing: should the search really include "Technical Weaknesses" as well?