> 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.
>> 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):
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.
Trying my best to put this politely, but this reads like a list of excuses.
If you have dependents and a stable income is important then by all means, wait for the perfect conditons to arise (they likely won't - or when they do, everyone else will also be taking advantage of such conditons).
Otherwise, take the plunge. Reduce your expenses e.g live in crappy apartment to save money and go all in on your dreams
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)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
The OP reads much like the archetype - it doesn't make any mention of building parts of it while searching, or of finding funding, or actually if contributing anything other than some ideas. Good to hear this OP can build stuff, doesn't really change the contents of the article as written.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
It can be better! Potential co-founder asked me to bring my own 9000€ 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.
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.
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 : )
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?
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
> 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.
> 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.
>> 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
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.
What is your track record of building businesses? With just the information from this post, you sound beyond delusional and super arrogant.
Wow, beyond delusional? What does that even mean? Illusional? Or maybe ... illusionist :))
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.
Trying my best to put this politely, but this reads like a list of excuses.
If you have dependents and a stable income is important then by all means, wait for the perfect conditons to arise (they likely won't - or when they do, everyone else will also be taking advantage of such conditons).
Otherwise, take the plunge. Reduce your expenses e.g live in crappy apartment to save money and go all in on your dreams
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)
People playing their options on multiple fronts is even worse than finding a way to increase and maintain the increased levels of participation.
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.
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.
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.
One is a decent Linkedin post, the other is not.
> 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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
The OP reads much like the archetype - it doesn't make any mention of building parts of it while searching, or of finding funding, or actually if contributing anything other than some ideas. Good to hear this OP can build stuff, doesn't really change the contents of the article as written.
So is this what Y Combinator is attracting nowadays
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Dropbox comes to mind.
Yes, what happened to building side projects? Meeting people that you've worked with that you would care enough to build something with?
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.
Coinbase is probably an example.
thats like doing tinder instead of talking to users and building it
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
It can be better! Potential co-founder asked me to bring my own 9000€ 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.
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.
You would dare refuse the offer of doing the heavy lifting while he 'manages'?
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 : )
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?
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
Maybe I'm not the target audience but defining FIX on your landing page at least once might be useful. Best luck!
Not your target but FIX took me way back to my Investment Banking days as a techie worked with Front/Middle/Back Office users :).
Just sent you an email now.
There is also a free little tool for cofounder alignment called https://aligna.team
A mention of "cofounder dating app" made me stop and thing wtf is wrong here.
Why the push for having cofounder at all? C'mon such person can potentially have bigger impact on certain aspects of your life than a spouse.
Sounds like a standard hiring workflow with some questions tailored for the role. Is this supposed to be revelatory?
> 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.
Devils advocate: people in a position to work full time unpaid have probably enjoyed outsized success in their career to date
...1% of the time. The other 99% are "ceo of myself"
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you are good enough at the task of "finding a cofounder" that you can offer useful advice on it, you are... bad at some very critical things.
This is not a task anyone should be experienced enough to be good at.
No-bs mode is the ultimate mode tbh. Whatever you do, do it w/o making a hype, coining marketing words, and exaggerating.
This sounds like a recipe for never getting funded, sadly.
That’s almost demonstrably false if your goal is to get funded.
Just look at the pear AI guys.
Or literally 90% of the YC class in any given year
> Browse profiles and then adjust your own profile based on the best examples.
What does that mean?
I think it just means "learn how to make a good profile by looking at some good profiles"
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.
misread this as "my tactical guide to firing a cofounder."
.....probably would be quite useful also?
Hopefully won't have to write that part 2
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 :)
How did it work out? It's now several years later.
> 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?
This whole "mode" shit - stupid start up yuppies and their movements.
I think the kids call it “sigma mindset”
Same stuff, but for 12yos
I had to crack up when he abbreviated Ideal Cofounder Profile as ICP.
We've all lost the plot.
Tech bro yuppie mode
I think finding cofounders is one of those things where the best time to start was always last year or two years ago