[HN Gopher] Cofounder Mode: My tactical guide to finding a cofou...
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Cofounder Mode: My tactical guide to finding a cofounder
Author : rob313
Score : 144 points
Date : 2024-10-13 18:22 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (repromptai.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (repromptai.com)
| braza wrote:
| > They want to work on this part-time > They want to quit their
| job but haven't set a date to do it > They're going to quit their
| job but only after the YC interview
|
| I resonate with the OP because I am in this exact situation that
| I am building something but I cannot leave my current job now.
|
| When some friends started to build companies in mid-2000/mid-2010
| you could code/build something, try to get some traction and you
| could be received by VCs/angels and occasionally they could write
| a 25K check for you to work for 3-6 months to build it and
| perhaps you could get some traction and then scale or go burst.
|
| Now the bar for new products it's absurdly high if you're out of
| the YC or San Francisco VC circles or if you do not have anyone
| in the industry; plus most of the VCs prefer to invest in
| "pedigree founders" than in unknown people, especially if those
| people are outside of the bay area.
|
| In my first endeavor, I went with a finished product that
| undercut some big enterprise SaaS vendors, and we lost space for
| a bunch of non-technical guys with PPTs and one idea.
| j45 wrote:
| People playing their options on multiple fronts is even worse
| than finding a way to increase and maintain the increased
| levels of participation.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Honestly, in this situation, you want paying customers not VC-
| funding. YC at least has an objective application process (VC's
| don't, it just cold-email) and even then the acceptance rate
| makes it a non-viable dependable strategies. Especially if
| you're enterprise SaaS..the question you need to answer is, how
| do you get a customer to pay?
|
| (Sometimes having a co-founder here helps to answer this
| question)
| MichaelRo wrote:
| >> Now the bar for new products it's absurdly high if you're
| out of the YC or San Francisco VC circles or if you do not have
| anyone in the industry; plus most of the VCs prefer to invest
| in "pedigree founders" than in unknown people, especially if
| those people are outside of the bay area.
|
| I suppose that's if you pursue the "SAAS AI Analytics Crypto
| Cloud" latest hype where all the low hanging fruit has been
| picked already.
|
| I'm in EU (Romania) and don't feel the least bit concerned or
| connected about San Francisco VCs and yet I'm preparing not one
| but two businesses which could go to 100s of millions (first)
| or billions (second).
|
| 1) First is a plain brick-and-mortar physical product delivery
| thing. Zero competition from "YC San Francisco VC" crowd who
| almost exclusively targets computer-only stuff as it's much
| easier and cleaner to deal with. But if you have the brains for
| computers (and I've been working as a well paid eastern
| European software dev for 20+ years), you can most definitely
| compete in the "physical" world should you identify an
| opportunity there as I did. This is the businesses that I
| estimate in the half billion before it reaches saturation or
| someone steals it from me.
|
| 2) Second is online services hence much easier to deliver and
| to grow hence with the properly polished product (which sells
| as hot cake in a brick and mortar setting) and target market
| should have no problem reaching billions. Provided that #1
| works well enough to kickstart me into #2.
|
| So ... cofounders. Anyone interested?
|
| If so send me a mail or go on my forum and enter "sunshine"
| when you register yourself (so I know you're not a spambot,
| they are this dumb):
|
| https://www.aquarianz.com/contact.html
| shafyy wrote:
| What is your track record of building businesses? With just
| the information from this post, you sound beyond delusional
| and super arrogant.
| unusualmonkey wrote:
| So the first business has no competition... but also no
| defensibility?
|
| The second business should be able to be much bigger AND
| easier, but you aren't focussing all your efforts on it
| because you're splitting your time with the first, non-
| defensible business?
|
| It's good to be optimistic, but balance that with realism.
| It's easy to build a billion dollar business on paper, much
| harder in reality.
| Ghaenergyyy wrote:
| It has never been easier to create your own company if you have
| the proper grid.
|
| Reduce your workhours to half day or 80%, spend your evenings
| and weekends building.
|
| Show your demo around to get more money if your progress is
| slow.
|
| But technology has never been as accessable as it is today. You
| have a lptop, a server costs you 50$, a big machine perhaps 100
| or 200 / month.
|
| The problem are people who think just having an idea is the
| main part of creating a product/company.
|
| I have more ideas per day than non technical people and i could
| make 50% work. Not unicorn work but making enough money for a
| company money.
|
| Its just a lot nicer to work from mo-fr earning good money and
| having time for living.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| This whole "mode" shit - stupid start up yuppies and their
| movements.
| ratg13 wrote:
| I think the kids call it "sigma mindset"
|
| Same stuff, but for 12yos
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Tech bro yuppie mode
| fullstackchris wrote:
| I had to crack up when he abbreviated Ideal Cofounder Profile
| as ICP.
|
| We've all lost the plot.
| behnamoh wrote:
| No-bs mode is the ultimate mode tbh. Whatever you do, do it w/o
| making a hype, coining marketing words, and exaggerating.
| Arubis wrote:
| This sounds like a recipe for never getting funded, sadly.
| dartos wrote:
| That's almost demonstrably false if your goal is to get funded.
|
| Just look at the pear AI guys.
| rodiger wrote:
| Or literally 90% of the YC class in any given year
| elicksaur wrote:
| > I spent 9 months and almost 100 "cofounder dates" finding my
| cofounder.
|
| What's the highest value company that was started with a method
| like this? Genuinely curious, can't think of one.
| think_build wrote:
| Yes, what happened to building side projects? Meeting people
| that you've worked with that you would care enough to build
| something with?
| themanmaran wrote:
| Suppose it's the same as online dating vs "meeting the old
| fashioned way".
|
| I'm also pretty partial to "just work on your hobby and meet
| someone else". But probably a lot of opportunity left on the
| table that way. Especially if you know you want to build
| something serious.
| rob313 wrote:
| Good q and I can't name one either. Though I suspect when
| you're successful you tell a modified story about how you met.
|
| "I ran a tight interview process and selected the best match
| based on vibes and a spreadsheet" isn't super inspiring to
| customers, employees, investors.
| aduffy wrote:
| Dropbox comes to mind.
| inquisitor27552 wrote:
| thats like doing tinder instead of talking to users and
| building it
| jasfi wrote:
| Coinbase is probably an example.
| doodaddy wrote:
| Sounds like a standard hiring workflow with some questions
| tailored for the role. Is this supposed to be revelatory?
| neilv wrote:
| > _Browse profiles and then adjust your own profile based on the
| best examples._
|
| What does that mean?
| KTibow wrote:
| I think it just means "learn how to make a good profile by
| looking at some good profiles"
| taytus wrote:
| Shooters gonna shoot I'm working on something new. It's pre-
| seeded and MVP is almost ready, and pilots will start in three
| weeks. It involves AI and education. I'm an engineer, raised VC
| money before, and I'm planning to raise again. If you love sales
| and want to learn more, email me.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| I think finding cofounders is one of those things where the best
| time to start was always last year or two years ago
| ipaddr wrote:
| The mindset of wasting 9 months going on dates instead of
| starting something is so foreign. Based on what this person was
| looking for (someone to build out his ideas) he would be better
| off trying to get funding and hiring someone.
|
| It was a job interview (50 question homework, 3 day hackathon
| trial) plus firm requirements and who has the final say is
| presented. We didn't hear about the different tests and
| requirements these 100 dates demanded so it appears one sided.
|
| The best way to meet a cofounder is to be interested in
| something; so interested you explore it and you find something
| you like someone else is doing and you talk to them about it. You
| come up with some idea and you reach out to this person and
| explore it.
| sverhagen wrote:
| It's reportedly hard to get funding for ideas. Investors want
| to see a team that is strong enough to iterate through some
| ideas and pivots. It's not one perfect idea that becomes the
| product or the company. People actually are too focused on some
| magic initial milestone. They'll align it with the end of the
| funding, or the limit of their patience, or the limit of the
| patience of their support system. That's not how these things
| work. They're repeated marathons, not sprints. And being
| focused for nine months on finding a co-founder also seems like
| an oversized goal, that shouldn't take so much time. It's not
| uncommon to swap out key people later, including founder,
| painful as it may be.
| m11a wrote:
| > Based on what this person was looking for (someone to build
| out his ideas) he would be better off trying to get funding and
| hiring someone.
|
| Yeah.. or even just learning how to code himself. Could learn a
| decent amount in 9 months.
| unusualmonkey wrote:
| If you spend 9 months learning to code, you get a junior
| engineer (at best).
|
| If you sepnd 9 months getting a technical co-founder, you
| likely get a seasoned engineer + thought partner for all
| decisions going forward.
|
| One is vastly more valuable than the other.
| m11a wrote:
| You don't need to be a great engineer for most startups,
| unless they're particularly specialised. Most apps are
| really just CRUD at small scale. These apps aren't really
| hard until you scale. Eg Airbnb is really simple to make,
| technically speaking, at small scale.
|
| I think it's valuable to be able to implement your own
| ideas. Its going to be more productive than trying to
| explain what you want to someone else. (This isn't mutually
| exclusive with having a cofounder as well)
| unusualmonkey wrote:
| If you're implementing you're idea's... who is marketing
| them? Who is handling customer support? What about sales,
| legal, finance, hr etc?
|
| Writing code is not building a business.
| barrenko wrote:
| One is a decent Linkedin post, the other is not.
| unusualmonkey wrote:
| The skillset to find a cofounder is similar to the skillset
| needed to raise money. Additionally, founders who try to hire
| for skillsets they have no experiance in, often find their
| money wasted.
| lionkor wrote:
| Is this how you make a soulless throwaway "hope I get acqui-
| hired" type company? It doesn't sound like there is a lot of
| passion to make something great.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| Yes, this process also filters out candidates who would refuse
| to go in such a hiring process.
|
| I think the goals of having a good match are nevertheless
| important. Perhaps it is better to communicate these goals to
| your candidate co-founder and figure out together what the best
| approach is to verify them.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Red flags to watch for > They want to work on this part-time >
| They want to quit their job but haven't set a date to do it >
| They're going to quit their job but only after the YC interview
|
| ...so this guy wants someone in SF to quit their job and work
| full time while unpaid? This method selects from the bottom of
| the pool, not from the top.
| kidintech wrote:
| Got spooked by the exact quote you mentioned, but your
| conclusion is more precise. You're correct, this is a recipe
| for messing up your chances lmao.
| mnahkies wrote:
| Devils advocate: people in a position to work full time unpaid
| have probably enjoyed outsized success in their career to date
| goodpoint wrote:
| ...1% of the time. The other 99% are "ceo of myself"
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Isn't that the difference between a co-founder and an employee?
| I'm assuming that half of the company will belong to the new
| co-founder, of course.
| fhd2 wrote:
| I say this to every non-technical founder looking for a work
| for equity (or effectively "for free") technical co founder:
| They'll meet two types of people; those that won't do it, and
| those that don't know yet that they shouldn't do it.
|
| It _is_ possible to get seed funding for a business if the
| idea is solid and you bring something valuable to the table,
| like the right connections and domain knowledge. If a founder
| doesn't have either, that's bad. The money doesn't have to
| come from an investor: There's government funding, you can
| line up pilot customers etc. If they can't raise any seed
| funding, what does that say about their talent to be a CEO?
| The job is _all_ about bringing money in.
|
| Asking someone to work with zero cashflow for who knows how
| long (investments and initial customer acquisition can take
| months) is just not reasonable. If somebody doesn't _need_
| cashflow, chances are they're either comfortably doing
| nothing, or already working on their own idea.
|
| What you're left with are mostly people who need cashflow,
| but are for some reason desperate or reckless enough to try
| and go without. So then your founding team is a naive CTO,
| and a CEO who can't raise money. Not a winning combination
| usually.
| logotype wrote:
| I'm looking for a co-founder, running https://fixparser.dev which
| is a profitable company with clients worldwide. Been applying to
| YC twice but failed - will continue the search for funding. Reach
| out at victor@logotype.se cheers
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Maybe I'm not the target audience but defining FIX on your
| landing page at least once might be useful. Best luck!
| etewiah wrote:
| Just sent you an email now.
| codegeek wrote:
| Not your target but FIX took me way back to my Investment
| Banking days as a techie worked with Front/Middle/Back Office
| users :).
| kidintech wrote:
| I wanted to label this as a "nothingburger", but all the pieces
| of advice are either tautologies, vague general dating tips (i.e.
| "make sure the vibes are not off"), or straight up untrue: "They
| want to work on this part-time", "They want to quit their job but
| haven't set a date to do it", "They're going to quit their job
| but only after the YC interview". The latter are all very context
| dependent and are impossible to label as a "red flag" without
| further information. Possibly SEO bait?
| l7l wrote:
| There is also a free little tool for cofounder alignment called
| https://aligna.team
| v3ss0n wrote:
| Asking your potential co-founder to quit their full time job as a
| first thing in your zero customer startup is the biggest Red Flag
| of OP as a Co-Founder. That is too selfish.
| lnsru wrote:
| It can be better! Potential co-founder asked me to bring my own
| 9000EUR for company's registration (in Germany). I didn't. A
| year later the company ditched all hardware and went software
| only. I dodged a bullet as a hardware developer as I see it
| today.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| It's a guy with an idea that he doesn't know how to build, asking
| you to spend hours filling out a form then three days building
| something to see if you know how to build stuff. And you need to
| be unemployed and love the idea.
|
| That should have taken unbounded time to find someone, not a mere
| 9 months.
| siva7 wrote:
| So is this what Y Combinator is attracting nowadays
| yaseer wrote:
| Are you talking about some other scenario, rather than OP?
| (i.e. the archetypal 'co-founder dater'?)
|
| OP is a technical co-founder - ex-Facebook and Stanford
| computer science, it seems.
| shawndrost wrote:
| I have to repost an earlier comment of mine
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27752798) on this topic:
|
| I have a tip on finding a cofounder. I've been looking for the
| last 12 months and I tried a lot of things, but the thing that
| worked best is this: Post a job ad.
|
| That's it. My ad sounded like a normal job in every way, with a
| title like "Director of X". A couple of specific notes: 1) the
| first line said "cofounder" in it somewhere, and 2) it specified
| "part-time to full-time, heavy on equity compensation" somewhere
| else.
|
| The result: Lots of inappropriate candidates applied. But also,
| my 2 job posts resulted in three extremely excellent team
| members: a equity-only cofounder, a mostly-equity cofounder/early
| hire, and an amazing advisor. I have been working with these
| folks for months and they are very solid.
|
| I also recommend my vetting process: just like a job. That is, I
| did a phone screen, a multi-hour interview, a little take-home,
| and I winnowed down the candidates at each stage. With the chosen
| few, I kicked off a "let's do this" conversation. My pitch was,
| "I know it's ridiculous, but let's get business married, we'll
| set up an offsite and start working together full-time... and, if
| we really need to, we'll get an annulment". That's what vesting
| is for!
|
| Hope that helps :)
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| How did it work out? It's now several years later.
| neilv wrote:
| > _I also recommend my vetting process: just like a job. That
| is, I did a phone screen, a multi-hour interview, a little
| take-home, and I winnowed down the candidates at each stage._
|
| Did you both do take-homes?
| j7ake wrote:
| Terrible advice, 0/10 wouldn't recommend.
|
| Honestly the author sounds like they like the idea of doing a
| startup more than a specific problem they want to solve.
|
| Unfortunately this means you're an undifferentiated untechnical
| person trying to attract highly in demand talent to work on your
| vague idea.
|
| It won't work because both cofounders will have no vision and no
| strategy that distinguishes them from the massses.
|
| This strategy might work if the person has a proven track record
| of leading start ups to success. But if this were true, you would
| raise money and hire technical people instead.
| closewith wrote:
| > Unfortunately this means you're an undifferentiated
| untechnical person trying to attract highly in demand talent to
| work on your vague idea.
|
| Bafflingly, the author is technical, the CTO. That makes this
| course of action even more confusing.
|
| These articles are always written absurdly early, too. Reprompt
| AI is apparently brand new and pre-seed. It's not a success nor
| has the founder relationship stood the test of time. This would
| be much better written in five or ten years.
| yaseer wrote:
| Am I missing something, or are HN readers assuming (incorrectly)
| the author is non-technical and looking for someone to build out
| their ideas?
|
| From what I can see, the author is a CTO who is ex-meta and
| Stanford computer science. They look like a technical co-founder
| to me.
|
| I know there's this annoying and widely prevalent persona of co-
| founder dater with only ideas, and no skills to build them, but
| this author doesn't seem to be that.
| Ghaenergyyy wrote:
| If the example is something like this: "I am non-technical and
| can handle Sales, Marketing, and Product. " it does seem to be
| written from a non-technical person.
|
| Ex-meta doesn't mean anything. As far as i know manager / non
| technical people work at meta as in any other 'tech' company.
| yaseer wrote:
| I think that was written as a generic, illustrative example.
| That Example was also for healthtech, which OP is not.
|
| Yes ex-Meta could imply non-technical, but OP is a CTO with a
| Stanford computer science degree. Their job title and skills
| are technical.
| dlisboa wrote:
| If you take a look at the Linkedin resume it seems his last
| technical job was 12 years ago and in an unrelated area to what
| he's currently trying to build. All in all his on-hands
| professional software engineering work seems to be limited to
| 2-4 years. Most of his experience seems to be product-related
| type work, including his work at Meta.
|
| Combined with him calling himself a non-technical founder it
| seems pretty on point. He's not looking to be coding and making
| all the nitty gritty engineering decisions, there are better
| people for that in his opinion. Which is totally fine.
| rob313 wrote:
| You are correct. Thanks for defending me a bit on the internet
| Yaseer! Also going to ping you offline, your company looks
| great and relevant to us.
| nsmog767 wrote:
| misread this as "my tactical guide to _firing_ a cofounder. "
|
| .....probably would be quite useful also?
| rob313 wrote:
| Hopefully won't have to write that part 2
| rob313 wrote:
| Appreciate the feedback and rousing discussion
|
| Some responses that I'll probably also update in the post:
|
| a/ Why not start with people you know or friends?-- This is 100%
| the best way and I tried it first. Timing is hard and there's
| only like 7 people I'd want to start companies with. They all had
| good reasons not to embark on starting a company at this moment.
|
| b/ Vibes is super vague-- I found it really important to get
| along with a cofounder as friends-- I met my CF's wife early on,
| we did thanksgiving together, we spent a lot of time together
| outside of work. We've had actual fun building so far. For some
| that's important, for others not. It's a great point, I'll
| clarify.
|
| c/ OP is a non-technical ideas guy looking for his coding ninja--
| Nope, sorry. I've never had an eng job but learned to code early
| in college building random iphone apps. Been building nights and
| weekends for the past 10 years (including while cofounder
| searching).
|
| d/ Start building instead of just CF searching- great point.
| Building out ideas, talking to customers, etc makes your
| cofounder conversations waaaay more interesting because people
| can see you get excited about something real. Early on I had too
| many high-level conversations about "the space" or "starting
| something" that led nowhere.
|
| e/ These "modes" are total bs-- Totally agree but gotta keep the
| title interesting : )
| unusualmonkey wrote:
| What's missing here is what value the writer is bringing to the
| table.
|
| Let's look at the trade:
|
| "I'm looking for a technical cofounder who is ready to commit in
| the next 2-3 months and work in-person in San Francisco. I'm
| looking for them to do Product, Design, and Engineering."
|
| This requires a lead level engineer, say $200k to $500k/year
| salary in SF. Given that this is a 2~3 month engagement, we'd
| double that for contractor rate and pro rata. I'd estimate this
| is $100k to $250k of time.
|
| "I'm committed to healthtech and have a few ideas, but willing to
| work on other ideas in healthtech."
|
| Great, this is worth about $0.
|
| This doesn't seem like a fair trade.
|
| What's worse is that "Rob Balian" _is_ a CTO with product manager
| background. Instead of looking for a co-founder to complement his
| skillset, he 's duplicating the skill set.
| AlexandrBel wrote:
| In my opinion, it's easier to find a co-founder on some platform
| for finding co-founders, like https://indiemerger.com, where
| there are developers and marketers and you can find suitable
| candidates.
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