Ask HN: Where to meet people who are interested in building a company together?
Where can I meet people who are serious about working on something together? I've been trying to meet people who may want to be co-founders together or just discuss/hack on some ideas together with the goal of building something bigger.
My connections & network is mostly other tech workers, but so far they have at least been honest with me that they're not interested in building a company or products, they are more into enjoying fat paychecks and there's nothing wrong with that. I've tried to do the same, but I would much rather use my paychecks to give me a good runway for the next few years to fully devote to building a company. Unfortunately for me, I didn't study CS at a top uni either, so I guess whatever chance I could have had to meet people in my prime is out of grasp since I've been out of college for years now.
tl;dr where can I go to meet "serious" co-founder tier people?
I’ll put this out there as a point that’s serious and I’ve come across a few times as both a founder and freelancer.
No body wants to build your idea for free. For those that are reading this and thinking that finding a cofounder is actually just finding a set of hands you can work with, be buds and create your idea and you can split it 50-50 or whatever. Just stop.
These people don’t exist in the random hallways of the internet. You’re asking for someone to get on your amusement park ride of horror for a multi year commitment, risk it all at great cost on every metric imaginable.
Sorry to be a downer but anyone worth their salt won’t be willing to do that.
I would be willing to be the tech guy for someone credible, with many years of experience building domain expertise and real connections in their industry who approaches me with a viable idea (even - and perhaps especially - if it sounds boring on its face).
I am not willing to be the tech guy for some 20-something business student "idea person."
To expand on the topic...
YC wants cofounders that have strong relationships, clear leadership, and significant/differentiated contributions to the venture by both cofounders.
“Build my idea” founders generally don’t have strong relationships and also not true hustlers, they literally have an idea, nothing more, which is worthless; met 10s of thousands of “founders” and the build my idea founders are definitely a type of (wannabe) founders.
No one cares about ideas, they care about growth, especially if they don’t have an existing relationship with you. If you want ideas, they are easy to find, any experienced founder would be happy to give you “good” ideas for free if they liked you; that does not mean the ideas are guaranteed to work, nor will magically build themselves. If you think your idea is worth something with nothing built, go ask potential customers or investors for money to build it; seriously, if it’s really such a good idea, they’ll give you money to build it; just make sure your estimated costs include realistic market rate labor costs.
The OP isn’t talking about finding someone to work on their idea. They want to meet someone like-minded to start a company.
Idk, I've been dumb enough to do this twice now.
Well then.. has.. it worked? No? What went wrong?
better call saul!
It's not that there are no people who would want to risk it "all" and fall in love with the idea, it's just that most people are hedging bets [1] and the ones who are already successful are not that inclined to jump on board with somebody with just an idea. Friendship really helps!
It's also very hard to fall with someone else's idea - you are attached, it's your baby, others are not that attached. The job is to allow others to meddle with the idea, so they can treat it like their own.
Personally I've hired 2 people over the past year, one of whom I wanted to become co-founder and he declined - even when he is young, we have a good relationship together and he really had not that much to loose. He is working for respected company and don't just want to dump it like that. That's why joining incubators like YC can help a lot - helps with potential co-founders to join full time, among other things of course.
Sooo, now the plan is to build MVP and achieve early product market fit hehe.
[1] https://youtu.be/ephzgxgOjR0?t=958 I really recommend these videos, as a solo startup founder, working on a project for the past 10 years, at 32 and being broke listenting to this makes me much less isolated. These guys are really articulating ideas perfectly
This is really not true. How do you think people start companies together when they don't have capital? By splitting 50-50 and working on something "for free" on nights and weekends.
But it's not one guy has the idea, one guy does the work. It's two people who have the same vision working together. One might be more technical than the other but the less technical person is still bringing something worth 50%.
It's not even about bringing something worth 50%, you will often find at that early stage even having someone who brings 35% value while working as a team is worth giving 50% stake cause startups are so hard. It's usually down to owning 100% of nothing or 50% of something in those situation.
Tell me how much are you getting paid to write this? But then, how are your hands moving?
It reminds me of a guy who argued, as a beginner, I could never do security by myself. He pointed out the flaws, I fixed them. Eventually he said I just needed to hire a professional to do these things for me. His friend joked, you mean like you are doing right now? But this was wrong and that was wrong and this and that! His friend: But that is all fixed now isn't it?
An even better story: A guy I knew for a few weeks said he was going swimming. If I could answer his phone for a few hours and write down the messages. His phone rang the whole time! It was some kind of prank. People wanting to buy things, people wanting to sell things, people who owed him money, people he owed money to... It just kept ringing. He planned for it! He squeezed a ton of work into those 3 hours. He was very happy when he returned. A note book full of stuff. He only expected me to answer a few calls but I was to damn curious what the next call was about.
50%?? I did a bunch of coding project for free for peoples companies. Just for fun, no pressure. Last one would probably cost 50 k to get done.
5 min ago I was actually thinking that if I didn't find love I would quit my job and just go help this guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6nobuceVd8
Why not?
This is why SF was so amazing in its heyday (still is, but much less than pre-pandemic days). Just being here offered so many opportunities for networking, and it compounded the longer you stayed and were actively going out.
I would say that in today's remote-first world, building in public (and learning in public[1]) is the best way to get the attention of the stakeholders you desire -- not just prospective cofounders, but also investors, customers, partners, and contributors. (An aside -- this is one of many reasons I believe that commercial open source in particular has a very bright future.)
Some tangible ideas: Be active on twitter, start a podcast, write blog posts, stream on YT, deliver meetup/conference talks. Once you are more in the public eye, living in a Tier 1 city is the next step as it gives you a greater chance of meeting the people who discover you online!
Happy to chat more if you'd like! This subject or specific startup ideas if you're interested twitter.com/benghamine -- DM's open!
[1] https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/
I've found one from https://startupschool.org, built a project together (i am the tech one), didn't continue finally because he wanted to continue with his startup and I don't feel like I can code and commit my time further.
Weird experience, I would love to have another co-founder who can code together or even work together in something tbh. I guess having someone who can code with you together makes it more fun? Rather than having a product guy waiting for you to code
I am pretty sure, that if you have a product guy waiting for you to code you don’t need the product guy. If you can code it, you can sell it and keep that 50% share. At some time building stops and one enters bug fixing/feature implementation phase that is less intense than initial creation from zero to product.
Doing a trial project together is a wise move as entering into a partnership to build a business requires a leap of faith; whatever you could rely on to derisk would help. I'm in a similar position right now, maybe we could connect and see if there's any common ground?
Join an existing startup in the same field. Not only will you learn a lot - on someone else’s dime - but you will meet plenty of people hungry to do the same.
If you are an engineer, you'll just keep shipping and learn nothing and get paid peanuts while being told you're having the best time of your life working 16 hour days with no life. This is something I dont advise most people. If you live in a place like SF or NYC, unless you're a founder or in the first 5-10 employees, having significant equity, joining a well established company will make you a lot more money and you can still pursue your passions on the side.
It’s not a perfect answer but my the incubator my old startup was at would have networking happy hours
People there despite already being in startups were super excited and interested in other peoples businesses
I had a founder try to poach me at one point, so it’s real enough
If there’s any kind of hub for startups in your city, start there.
If not, check meetup.com or start your own. You’re certainly not alone and there’s definitely (literal) value in being the guy who brings founders together
I like the idea, kind of like the best way to get something done is to ask the busiest person to do it.
my 2 cents is that "if only I had X I could get started with Y" type of things are often excuses one makes themselves why they haven't started yet, if you need somebody to work on your idea a "fat" paycheck goes a long way hiring freelancers over the pond, if you need an idea, because the end goal is "having a startup" just take an existing product, put a spin on it and go, although having a peer pushing each other through tough times is fantastic, you need to be aware of each others expectation, maybe they want to work on it full time, maybe only after hours, maybe they (or you) get an even fatter offer, would you say no to that, would they?
I think that HN is the perfect place, but perhaps there should be another monthly thread - not looking2hire but looking4startuppartner. I know there is a startup school matching thing but it does not seem (from my experience) to be crossing that chasm.
I certainly don't think we should sit on a web bulletin board and say thing like "only get business partners from IRL networks"
I'll second shermanblanca's recommendations to build and learn in public. And to build an audience on a variety of social media platforms.
I was lucky to have met my non tech cofounder at my previous employer. We remembered each other as great to work with and decided to strike out together.
What you're lookig for is super interesting to me though, and something I think about often from a variety of angles. If you ever wanna chat more in depth about you can find me email in my profile.
I'm told this game is less about what you know than about it is about who you know. And now we've met : )
Oh, and if you shop online for anything you could buy in person, start shopping IRL. Oodles of lifestyle biz or startup potential just from being friendly with store owners and employees. They love friendly tech wizards who want to solve their problems.
I will say this as a coder who has worked with non-technical founders: unless you bring something to the table other than your idea, good coder's will steer clear.
The amount of work it takes to bring a coding project to fruition is massive. 50+ hour work-weeks, lots of uncertainty and wasted attempts, and a ton of stress from juggling a million moving parts. All while the non-technical dude rests on his laurels and "PM"s his way through the workweek, providing general guidance in pointless meetings. This has been my experience twice and I will never work with a non-technical person again unless A) His idea is entirely groundbreaking and the chance of success is high B) He has strong marketing chops and takes care of the growth question.
You are right and I agree 100%. This is my experience as well.
Imo the hardest part is timing - meeting like minded people who are ready and available to start building now.
The best solution I’ve seen so far is https://joinef.com , they run programs in a bunch of major cities.
> they are more into enjoying fat paychecks and there's nothing wrong with that
A big issue with build a company is how support the people in the mean time.
So, you have enough saving, investors or low-cost of life. THEN you need the drive and talent to build something.
Is not easy to fulfill all the things!
And is common that when somebody approach me with a great idea for a company, not understand this. So the first advice is to know how value the effort and what you expect everyone to bring in return.
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I dream of build a Access/Excel/FoxPro replacement but that is a long-tail for development (maybe 2-3 years?) and assume you have some people with the skills for that.
And having the "that" that pay the bills take time. So is a chicken-egg problem.
I would love to work on an open source project I am passionate about.
So in the interests of finding this passion, I journal everyday. I wrote down 450 journal entries, each one is an idea for computing software or a startup.
You can find links to them on my profile.
I recommend you take up journalling and dig into your ideas and thoughts. And write things down for rereading later. Someone might like a thought you wrote and contact you. I've had people contact me and be interested in my GitHub projects.
If you want serious people, join the product hunt community.
Hi Sam! I have...about the same number of domain names as you have journal entries. Will message you and see how we can match them together.
Had a look at those lists you made, impressive. I will hit you with an email to start the converstion, I'm based in London as it looks like you are too?
I think it's important that you know the other person for a good amount of time (a few years, maybe?) before starting a company. Ideally, you have worked with this person closely.
The best answer to your question is: At work.
If you think somebody might be a good potential co-founder that you know, ask them. Don't assume that they are not interested in building something with you. You never know what people think, and even if they say no today, they might come back around in the future.
Good luck!
There are a bunch of startup communities you can join like YC's startup school, on deck, and Antler offers programs to connect people who want to start something together around just an idea. Many other structured programs exist too. If you're a technical founder, you'll likely be accepted because they never have enough.
Another way is to start working on something of your own, get some traction, and if you still want a co-founder, it will be easier to find someone after you reduced some risk.
You can also join different startup communities and reach out to people in a genuine way to network. You'll need to have a lot of convos. I recently did this and most people were mercenaries, not founders.
Make it known to friends that you're looking for one and ask them if they can recommend people.
It's a major commitment to work with a co-founder so there's no reason to rush it.
Make sure to go through this if you think you found someone who might be a fit: https://proof-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/firstround/50%20Questi...
You could try out YC's solution: https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching
Or you could talk to me: https://twitter.com/BallerIndustry
You don't need to study cs to write software, everything you need is some online. The "I'm more of an idea type of person" line of thought is very familiar to most developers... Yeah, everyone has ideas, million dollar ideas, that they then go out and don't build..
If you want to find someone serious to work with, at least bang out a walking skeleton, a prototype or some kind of proof of concept to show your idea..
That achieves two things, easier to convince a dev that the idea is neat.. And also shows that you got enough passion for this that you actually went ahead and built something.
Indie Hackers has a "partner up" section:
https://www.indiehackers.com/group/looking-to-partner-up
It's super hard. Networking along with trial and error. The tech is one thing but you also need a great business person to lead the sales and marketing side. Once you find the right person you ride or die with them.
It's better to be hungry and scrappy than born with a silver spoon and well-connected, although the rare combination of raw ambition tied with excellent connections is the ideal.
Worst case you bust out but your skills are 10x from the FAANG clock punchers. Good luck out there
OnDeck is a pretty good community for this https://www.beondeck.com/
I also think working at early-ish startups, Series A-C, will help you find people more interested in the founder path than FAANG type companies. From there you can work on something growing fast, learn a domain, test your relationship under pressure, and then leave to start something together.
I think the way this works is:
1. Meet potential benefactors
2. Establish a reputation for making something, shipping it AND…make a profit with it.
3. Have great idea
4. Ask one of the benefactors to fund you.
5. Bonus points: meet benefactors NOT obsessed with going public / liquidity events but would rather own companies to help build other companies
6. Remember when negotiating your stake, 100% of $0 = $0. Definitely negotiate what you’re worth, see item 2 for increasing your worth.
I've been working for somewhat large company for years, and I'm highly interested in working someone else's startup these days.
But one thing I worry about is, assuming most companies don't live longer than a year or two, staying in the fields of early staged companies would essentially be the synonym to hopping around there, to me feels like to result in horrible resume.
How do you guys deal with this?
> result in horrible resume.
Any company that would ding you for working at a few failed startups in a row is not worth working for anyway.
Try https://www.indiehackers.com/. Maybe try the meetups, ask this same question there, and mention on your profile there that you are interested in this.
Also mention that you want to do this on Twitter (etc.) and then by just engaging someone might reach out to you. Also look out for people doing the same.
Unless perhaps they're a great friend for many years first (for which the question is the wrong one) they're not going to be interested in co-founding any random company with you.
But if you make a bit of a start and talk about the idea itself, perhaps you'll happen across someone as passionate about the area as you.
(Armchair advice with no experience...)
If you're going to post a thread like this, leave an avenue for people to get in contact with you...
YCs startup school has a founder match section you can put what you want and looking for as well as filter out by hours willing to commit. There is a lot of people looking for developers but also a good chunk that has some off shore investment and MVP going and pretty exciting to see.
Meetup used to be a good place for this. Not sure now it’s very dependent on your location.
I found my business partners through CoFounders Lab.
I didn’t pay for membership. Turned out it wasn’t necessary to make those initial connections.
The tough thing is that anybody can call themselves an entrepreneur. There’s no barrier for entry, so you’ll get a lot of jokers.
https://www.meetup.com/
Find meetup groups and start social networking in them. Try the startup, computer science, programming, business, etc meetup groups.
I am considering this route as well. But dunno what the future holds. Would be good to meet like-minded folks.
Thanks for this question. I've also been curious about this and have been almost embarrassed to ask :).
HN and in-person meetups are both a good start.
It's sort of like dating. Fit and alignment are everything.
1. On twitter
2. Start building. It will attract people. Don't go out and find them.
Probably mentioned already but YC has a co founder matching tool
startupschool.org
Clickable link: https://www.startupschool.org/
It’s pretty ironic this question was asked on YC haha. Specifically, the cofounder match is exactly what OP is looking for.
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