Ask HN: Can we brainstorm a better way to find a co-founder?

I was a developer that partnered with a stranger. He&#x27;s an MBA with a purely business background. I&#x27;m the full stack + product guy. I&#x27;m never co-founding a business with a stranger ever again.<p>We failed probably because of not what you&#x27;re thinking. My business co-founder brought more to the table than I could imagine. I&#x27;ve gained a lot of respect for the hard work of sales, marketing, fundraising, and the people that make these tasks seem so easy.<p>We got hundreds of customers, made $10k revenue per month, and had a staff of 5 at one time. All bootstrapped over the course of 12 months.<p>The thing is, we were not happy working with each other. When shit hits the fan (which happens often in a new business), we just get on each other&#x27;s nerves. On paper, we have perfectly complimentary skill set. He&#x27;s a charming people person. I&#x27;m a proficient developer. In reality, the fact that we&#x27;re so opposite means that we&#x27;re always seeing and doings things differently. When we&#x27;re in a grind, he wants to hi-fives to boost morale and I want to put my head down to ship faster.<p>If I were to do it again. I&#x27;d find a smart, hardworking person that brings me energy and that I&#x27;d bring them energy when the shit hits the fan. I wouldn&#x27;t care if they&#x27;re a CEO, CTO, C-whatever-O. I&#x27;d look for someone that I&#x27;d enjoy working with above all else.

&gt;For me, I want to meet a CTO.<p>You have to realize that it&#x27;s harder for a &quot;business&quot; guy to attract a technical cofounder rather than for a programmer whiz to attract a business guy. It&#x27;s definitely a handicap. The programmer can <i>build</i> something and that can jumpstart the cascade of people (including business people) to join the cause.<p>As a non-tech person, what do you offer potential tech cofounders? If you give off vibes that <i>&quot;I&#x27;m the idea man!&quot;</i> or <i>&quot;I&#x27;m the guy with the big vision!&quot;</i>, it will not impress quality programmers.<p>Therefore, you have to play up your strengths if you have notable ones. For example, perhaps you can call up some friends &amp; family and raise $750,000 in cash to launch your product idea. A lot of programmers don&#x27;t have the contacts to raise funds like that. Or maybe you want to create a digital music distribution website and you have Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga&#x27;s personal cell phone #s on your speed dial as potential first wave of customers. Again, the typical programmer isn&#x27;t going to have social connections like that.

It&#x27;s like asking if we can brainstorm on a better way to find a spouse. Do you really want to find a spouse quickly? Or would you be more comfortable marrying your high-school sweetheart?<p>The YC folks will say founder breakups are the most common reason for start up failures. So what I&#x27;d want to see is a highly granular failure analysis of founder break ups. It&#x27;s psychology, right? So something like the actual stories of 100 randomly selected startup failures would inform us as to the most common causes. Could be working styles, asymmetric effort, personality disorders, personal&#x2F;family issues, health,... Once you have a histogram, find a way to test for those failure modes before getting hitched to a co-founder.

I gave a presentation on &quot;how to find a co-founder&quot; several times. Guess what: by slide 2, I give away the answer: the best co-founder is someone you already worked with. Not helpful? That&#x27;s the truth.<p>Instead of trying to find a co-founder quickly, find a good contributor to your project. They may grow into becoming a co-founder over time, or they may &quot;just&quot; be your first employee. No one can really tell until time passes. So give it time, resist labels, and keep making progress.<p>From the perspective of the potential co-founder, the co-founder title is earned. &quot;Be so good they can&#x27;t ignore you&quot; is exactly the mantra you want to become a co-founder. Make your contribution to the startup so significant that everyone will think of you as one of the founders.<p>Don&#x27;t be that &quot;paper co-founder&quot; who negotiated the title but never put in the effort.

The explanation for why there&#x27;s no good answer is because the people who most want a co-founder are the people who least deserve a co-founder. People who are easily able to find a co-founder just do it instead of asking questions on the Internet. This is intensely frustrating to the people asking because they feel like life owes them a co-founder somehow and if they only found the right hacks, one would magically appear. Instead, the answer is simply to be more impressive and tell more people how impressive you are and things by and largely fall into place.<p>I&#x27;m also highly skeptical of any marketplace solution like Founder Dating. The median outcome of a startups failure so a median quality co-founder will almost certainly result in failure. You need to find people on the extreme end of the bell curve for success to be likely. Those people are highly unlikely to frequent marketplaces since they have more demand than supply. To the extent that any successful startups get formed from Founder Dating, I wager it&#x27;s more accident than engineered.

If you&#x27;re technical looking for a cofounder, you should have a prototype built already in order to attract good business &#x2F; operations people and you should understand that you must own everything and toil for endless hours to get that product built.<p>If you&#x27;re business &#x2F; operations looking for a cofounder, you should have some money raised already and you should understand that you must always be raising. It doesn&#x27;t stop. Ever. Just as building the product doesn&#x27;t stop. Ever.<p>Operations focused people should be really fucking good at sieving hires. Heart, skill, engagement, and team coordination are critical in an early stage startup and hiring one grumpy butt or that intern you think is smart but cheap could really screw you badly.<p>(just a few thoughts on my numerous lessons learned over building four startups)

My approach is the following: 1. Learn to code 2. Build the prototype 3. Try to sell the prototype to verify the market 4. Bootstrap the business 5. Get the business going then people (co-founder, investor,etc...) will show up

I would stop focusing on finding a co-founder and focus instead on starting a business. A CTO isn&#x27;t the solution to wanting something developed and not having money to pay someone. Find something you can do by yourself. If you&#x27;re capable you will find and hire a CTO later.

Why is a co-founder needed? What are you expecting a co-founder to bring that an employee won&#x27;t? Is the real question here &quot;how do I find someone with the needed skills, willing to work for peanuts in exchange for shares in the new business?&quot;

There is no such a thing as &quot;technical co-founder&quot;. A developer can start and test a project faster alone. Smart &quot;business&quot; guys with money sometimes meet with someone that could do it alone and find a way to share the ride. If you want to develop something, I&#x27;d suggest you to learn how to develop. Or spend enough money to hire someone to do so. But for free, as a &quot;co-founder&quot;, it&#x27;ll always be hard and when it happens, usually it don&#x27;t last long. And the fault is on the &quot;business&quot; side. Technology is not about business. If you start a free&#x2F;open source project with a great purpose, you&#x27;ll find tons of developers willing to help your endeavour.

You just don&#x27;t &quot;search and find&quot; for a co-founder. I think it&#x27;s rather that you already know him but you don&#x27;t know he will be your co-founder sometime soon.<p>Engage in a lot of side-projects, it doesn&#x27;t matter if you are in high school, college or a full-time job. You&#x27;ll know what people you like working with, but most importantly, like as a person.<p>Now, the question is: Once you have a group of talented and smart people which you have a background working with and who you like their personality, how do you choose just 1 or 2 of them? That&#x27;s a hard question. The good thing is that you&#x27;re scratching your head not because you have a potential co-founder deficit, but rather a surplus.

If a business founder is looking for a CTO to double staff from one to two, it&#x27;s already a bit of a lost cause. The title doesn&#x27;t add value and suggests a mindset that isn&#x27;t focused on whatever it takes to get things done. Instead it emphasizes a tendency toward bureaucratic partitioning.<p>If I were a technical person, the primary trait I&#x27;d want in a co-founder is a willingness to do whatever needs to be done, and an aversion to structures that allow &quot;it&#x27;s your job, not mine&quot; discussions. There&#x27;s a difference between complementary skills and specialization. At 30 people specialization becomes hard to avoid, at two people both need to own everything.<p>Good luck.

Imho:<p>Get traction with whatever you got at your hands.<p>There is nothing more trustworthy and attractive than traction.<p>Not being engineer has never been an excuse not to get traction. Not in the last hundred generations and wont be in the next.<p>Business != Building != Engineering<p>Good luck!

Those two articles you linked to were spot on, but I don&#x27;t think you really took to heart what they were saying. I&#x27;ll make it explicit (and know that this comes from a place of tough love): The reason it&#x27;s hard to find a technical co-founder is that you don&#x27;t bring much value, if any, to a startup.<p>You don&#x27;t have a proven track record running technical companies, because if you did, you wouldn&#x27;t have this problem.<p>You don&#x27;t have a programming background, so you won&#x27;t understand the implications of your decisions on the product (basic programming won&#x27;t help you here, I&#x27;m afraid, though it&#x27;s a good start, and I absolutely encourage you to continue).<p>You can&#x27;t make hiring decisions for technical staff, because you can&#x27;t evaluate their skills.<p>Perhaps you have some great idea. But great ideas are a dime a dozen. The moment you gain any momentum, a dozen clones will pop up. Execution is what matters, and that&#x27;s up to the CTO to deliver, for the most part.<p>A CTO could just hire you as a strategy consultant, salesperson and&#x2F;or market analyst, just for a salary. You need to be able to say why you merit equity and decision-making authority if you want to be CEO. Could you answer that question if you were being totally honest with them? If you can&#x27;t, perhaps you <i>should</i> look for work outside of the C-suite for now.

The real question here is what you bring to the table in an early stage startup. You can put yourself around the type of people you need to meet, but at the end of the day they are not going to be your co-founder unless you bring something to the table. Why do they absolutely need you in order to succeed? Maybe:<p>- You are a sales or marketing wizard<p>- You have domain specific knowledge and experience<p>- You have critical connections<p>- You have funding<p>You probably need several of these to be an attractive co-founder. Another way of saying it is: what will you be working on every day that will cause the startup to succeed? The technical co-founder is going to work on building the product every day. Without that you can&#x27;t succeed. Why does he need you to succeed? That is what you need to communicate to potential co-founders.<p>If you have a good way to convince potential co-founders that they need you, then how to find them? It could be that you are successful with founder dating programs but starting a startup is a huge commitment. Do you really want to do that with a stranger? I think it makes a lot more sense to do it with a college friend or a former colleague.

While at it, its important not to forget the amount of founder disputes which kills the company as often as any other factor. Going solo can be hard but its not impossible. If your vision is clear as a business guy, you can hire freelancers to get a prototype, and market it yourself to get the early validation. Worrying about co-founders before that would be a waste of time in my opinion.

I don&#x27;t know if there is a good answer to this question simply because I don&#x27;t think we&#x27;re looking at it the right way.<p>In my mind, a product&#x2F;business&#x2F;whathaveyou should be a collaboration between two or three individuals, who, should the project grow, become cofounders.<p>I don&#x27;t think the process should be:<p><pre><code> 1) create idea 2) idea becomes business 3) &quot;oh shit who will help me cofound this co.?&quot; 4) find cofounder through means described in this thread 5) run successful business </code></pre> ...rather, the process should be:<p><pre><code> 1) with friends, create idea 2) develop idea 3) create profitable business, with the aforementioned friends as cofounders. </code></pre> In my mind, the later described process works with a high success rate since you have essentially &quot;vetted&quot; your friends in step 1. However, I don&#x27;t know if you really can vet your friends against the challenges described in step 3, but perhaps that is what dooms a large percentage of startups.<p>Who knows.

Maybe you&#x27;re looking for me?<p>If you&#x27;re interested in becoming co-founder of a growing, cash-flow positive business in a giant market, please reach out.<p>In short, Forkable is &quot;Pandora for Lunch&quot;. AngelList profile: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;angel.co&#x2F;forkable" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;angel.co&#x2F;forkable</a><p>My email can be guessed from my first name, &quot;Joe&quot;

You&#x27;re not going to find a better way than founderdating (already established), LinkedIn (already established), and networking events in person.<p>You&#x27;re not going to tick off some company-optimized checklist and magically fall into the lap of your perfect co founder.<p>People work for months or even years with a co founder only to realize they aren&#x27;t a match.<p>You even said it yourself:<p>&gt;I want to meet a CTO. However, instead of rushing the process I am simply looking to meet people as determined to build a company as myself.<p>Networking events, Linkedin, Founderdating, Angel.co etc. Your facebook group is tiers worse than the above listings so I&#x27;m not sure why you posted at all if your &quot;solution&quot; is a facebook group.<p>Sorry to be a dick but this doesn&#x27;t remotely solve the problem. You just made Facebook group #1857126126.

I don&#x27;t think this is actually broken. The traits needed for quality cofounders are actually pretty rare and even more so for founders who get along well enough to make a great company.<p>I see this the same way as I do looking for a spouse. You can&#x27;t shortcut this process and founder &quot;dating&quot; sites or mixers will have the same problems as dating ones. You have to make sure you are bringing to the table the skills needed to fill the roles you will be playing. In this regard it&#x27;s a bit more straight forward than dating because you should be able to point to a history of accomplishments that prove you can fill those roles.<p>Beyond that though it&#x27;s just a series of interactions that make the other person feel comfortable partnering with you.

I think one key is to find someone who has the same motivations as you - are you aiming for the same goal? Do you have the same drive? Why are you looking in the first place?<p>But I also don&#x27;t frequently see this drive to &quot;find a co-founder&quot; outside of discussions tied to YC. For YC, yes, having a co-founding team is a key component. But outside of YC, if you want to start a company, you just do it. Maybe you have other people involved, maybe not. Circumstances vary. Finding a co-founder is an option, and maybe even a good idea, but is not a road-blocking milestone.

For people who have absolutely no technical skill and are extremmely business oriented, who want to build a high-tech concept but don&#x27;t have the time to acquire the skills, I&#x27;d recommend to outsource the development of an MVP and start monetizing. If a technical co-founder sees that he is more likely to join.

If you are non-technical invest your time into learning how to build, or paying someone to build MVPs. Once a product has some traction, bringing in talent will be easier and certainly cheaper (equity-wise).<p>If you are a technical founder, invest your time into learning marketing. It really only takes trial and error.

I&#x27;m not looking to found a startup, but I have spent some time thinking about how to network effectively. I agree with others here that there are no shortcuts, but I&#x27;ve had success with some of these tactics:<p>1. Do put yourself out there. Go to a lot of events, accept invitations, make it known that you&#x27;re interested in meeting more people (encourage friends to make introductions).<p>2. Don&#x27;t let social events fatigue you: get in, get what you want, get out. However, once somebody opens up to you, i.e. invites you for dinner or drinks after an event, you need to switch modes: put in the time, treat them well, even if it compromises other parts of your life. If you&#x27;re not giving something up, you&#x27;re not giving anything.<p>3. Make friends in different cities or countries, then travel and stay with them. They will introduce you to their friends, who may then introduce you to <i>their</i> friends, etc. (Best, of course, if you&#x27;re invited.)<p>4. You must actually be worth meeting, so be sure you&#x27;ve already put in the work and thought out a narrative that ties your past accomplishments into a story building toward future success.<p>5. Be interesting. Read, think, write, have a point of view.<p>6. Be interested. If you talk too much, you reveal that nobody wants to listen to you. If you show authentic interest in other people, doors magically open.<p>7. The best &quot;hack&quot; I can think of is to make use of the Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn social graphs. Pay attention to the suggested friends &#x2F; follow feeds. For people you particularly like, go through who they follow and identify potential friends, allies, collaborators, social gateways, etc. After you have a list of people you might like to meet, you can start to be strategic about framing yourself and putting yourself in the right places to meet (and interest) them.<p>8. Remember that meeting one person is an opportunity to meet their friends and anyone they think you should know. After you&#x27;ve gotten to know somebody a little bit, it&#x27;s ok to ask if they know anyone you should meet. Or you may not have to ask: if you get an invite to an event, always accept it – you never know who you might meet.<p>9. Think in terms of building a social graph. Read a bit about the study of social networks including &quot;social capital&quot;, the roles of different nodes in the network, strong ties vs. weak ties, etc.<p>10. There&#x27;s no excuse for bad social skills. Learn good manners and be prepared to adapt to new cultural expectations.<p>Again, as others have emphasized, there&#x27;s no easy way. High value people are already overwhelmed by demand. As a friend once advised me in regard to dating, &quot;be the flower to the bee.&quot;