
Ask HN: I'm looking for a technical co-founder/partner. - jason_tko
I read HackerNews almost daily, and I always enjoy the articles and the discussions about startups, software and code.  So, I'm hoping that there might be a similarly minded HN reader out there who is looking for their next big thing.<p>As a preface, I've had a lot of software developed, but I've never worked full-time on software with a co-founder/partner.  Much of this is new to me, so I would definitely be open to comments or ideas about the way I'm performing this search from other members of HN, especially about the responsibilities I've listed below.<p>The Offer : In one sentence, I'm looking for someone to work with me to build a Software as a Service business based in Japan.  I'm experienced at IT sales, running a business and managing people.  I have a large network of contacts in Japan, and Webnet IT has a large 'built-in' active customer base that are interested in software that provides value to their operations.  Webnet IT is still my main operation, however I plan to spend a large portion of my time on this project once I find the right technical partner.<p>Here are some basic guidelines that are important to me :<p>- Skill Sets.   I am not a coder.  I have plenty of experience on the IT infrastructure side, and I've been running an IT business for 7 years, but I have no coding skills beyond basic scripts, basic PHP/MySQL and HTML.  I'm hoping to find someone who is passionate about coding, and has either the experience in creating SaaS systems, or the periphery experience and the ambition and ability to create this level of application.<p>- The Idea.  I have a number of ideas based on software I've developed and our customers requirements, but I'm open to discussion.  I see this as something we'd generate and agree on together.<p>- Personality and Capability.  I imagine we'll be spending a lot of time working together, and as a result, personality and attitude (and a sense of humour!) are paramount.  This goes both ways - you need to be comfortable and happy working with me.  I don't really mind about your background.  I don't place too much stock in degrees and certificates.  I'd be much more interested to hear about your personal software projects, your personal wins and your work experiences.<p>- Compensation. I'm open to ideas on compensation structures. If we get as far as discussing compensation, we can work out a fair and reasonable structure based on who you are, what you want, and what you can contribute.  Naturally, "I want a large base and no revenue sharing or company percentages" is a very different conversation from "Give me a place to sleep and X% of the company".<p>- How we work together.  I imagine that at the start, we'll discuss our ideas over Skype.  I'll show you examples of the software I've designed and developed, you'll do the same for me.  We'll put together a basic arrangement, and we'll do a couple of small projects to get an understanding of how we both work.  When this goes well, we'll see if we can agree on a basic product road-map.  If this goes well, we'll put together a plan to launch, detailing responsibilities and milestones.  By this stage, we should have an agreement in place.  Work begins.  Within a few months, we'll need to be spending a good amount of time working together.  As such, I'd like for you to be willing, happy and able to move to Japan.  As we get busier and as we acquire customers, I'd be hiring more developers and support staff, most likely working under you.<p>Bio : Like any relationship, or perhaps even more so, the co-founder/partner type relationship is based on trust and understanding.  As such, here is a brief biography to give you an understanding of who I am.<p>My name is Jason Winder, I'm Australian, I've been living in Japan for 8 years, and I run a business named Webnet IT that provides IT services to foreign companies in Japan.<p>Introduction : I was lucky enough to get a 2nd hand clunker computer when I was a kid.  For the technically curious, it was a x8086 with a green TV as a monitor, two 5.25 floppy drives, no hard disk and about 128K memory.  I grew up breaking, fixing and learning from this computer. From the experience gained from this PC over the years, I landed a job working for a large company out of high school.  I then found work at a smaller company in Australia, then I moved to Japan.  I worked for various IT companies for a couple of years, then I started my own company, Webnet IT.<p>Webnet IT : I didn't go to university, but I love learning.  I started from a blank slate in regards to entrepreneurship.  I've built up a consulting business by learning incrementally about business, sales and marketing.  During this process, I designed software and systems that automate mundane tasks, and assist us doing things like generating quotes, invoices, sharing information with our customers, and many other things. Through this process, I've discovered I have a passion for developing software that helps people perform complex tasks both simply and efficiently.  I'd like to build on this and develop useful software to sell to people.<p>Side note : My main PC these days is an Apple 15" MacBook Pro. I built my home PC myself, it's an Intel Core2Duo 3.06GHz running Windows 7 with 2x24" monitors.<p>You Would Be Responsible For<p>The technical and architectural infrastructure, Initially all coding, Eventually managing a small team of coders, Brainstorming ideas, and Creating a product roadmap with me.<p>I Would Be Responsible For<p>Sales and marketing, Funding, General hiring and Management, Accounting, Brainstorming ideas, and Creating a product roadmap with you.<p>I imagine these responsibilities will evolve over time, however I think it's important to do some initial general planning on expectations and responsibilities.<p>If this describes you and your situation, or if you have any comments or thoughts, I would be very happy to hear from you.  Please contact me at jason@webnet-it.co.jp.<p>Thanks for your time reading this.<p>Jason<p>tl;dr 
95%Biz/5%Tech guy looking for a Tech guy. btw Japan.
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apsurd
I must say this is a lot more intriguing and value-based than most of the
other:

    
    
      1) I'm an idea guy.
      2) I need a code monkey to clone ___.
      3) Profit.
    

Thanks for being upfront and geninue (imo).

I would certainly entertain the idea of working with you. I'm a 37signals
kinda guy and roll with tha saas model. We can definitely get a feel for one
another, but have to be honest and say, while I am not _opposed_ to moving to
Japan, its one of the super-huge obstacles that would make this _actually_
working out quite a long shot, since what if we make it all the way to that
point, it doesn't work out down the line, and I am out on my ass in Japan??
Hey wait ... that actually sounds really damned fun - Email is on the way!

P.S. Been seriously working on a pretty solid idea of my own, it should work
just as well in Japan.. but I guess that's what the email is for!

~~~
jason_tko
Thanks very much for your reply. I'm glad thats coming across. I'm certainly
not an MBA with a game changing idea that I'm 'allowing' someone to work on -
quite the opposite. The idea itself is important, but the execution is the
critical component.

I'm also down with the ultra clean 'as few features as possible' mentality, so
I'm looking forward to having a chat with you.

Agreed - there are worse situations than being unencumbered and single in
Japan.

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jacquesm
Funny how it is always "business guy looking for a coder" but never "coder
looking for a business guy".

Probably your post will become much more readable if you drop the two leading
spaces on your bullet points, that way they become inlined instead of in a
scrolling div.

Another thing you could do is limit the line length with hard returns.

~~~
cperciva
_Funny how it is always "business guy looking for a coder" but never "coder
looking for a business guy"._

Clearly this is due to business people being more aware of their limitations
than coders are. ;-)

~~~
kunley
Actually I know coders looking for a business guy with a condition that he is
a former coder. For instance, reading HN is a plus for a candidate.

Ha ha only serious. The job is located in the EU, in a country with one of
highest GNP in Europe at the moment.

~~~
count
Why can't you just say 'Its in France' or 'Its in Germany'?

~~~
jacquesm
Because it is Romania, Hungary, Czech republic, Poland, Serbia or Croatia.

~~~
kunley
My point exactly. It's Poland. But this way folks here got 2 pieces of
information at once: one about my selfish proposal and another about the
situation in Europe ;P

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nearestneighbor
What makes you particularly qualified at sales and marketing other than not
being a "tech guy"?

~~~
gizmo
Why the snark?

Somebody who hasn't gone to university and managed to keep a business afloat
for 8 years _has_ to have some skills in sales in marketing. Otherwise you
just don't make it. Starting a business and sticking with it for a couple of
years is not that easy, and it probably makes him a lot more qualified than
most of us here.

~~~
nearestneighbor
I don't know about Japan, but in America, you can register a company and keep
it "afloat" for as long as you like, even if it doesn't do anything.

~~~
jacquesm
If you read the introduction you'd see that this person is (1) not in America
and (2) has been living of his company for a long time.

That doesn't come close to having a dormant entity, and to try to equate it
with that is disingenuous.

~~~
nearestneighbor
(1) I did notice. Why do you think I mentioned Japan?

(2) He never stated how much revenue his IT consulting activities generated.

This person is quite eager to qualify his potential partners (that's a sales
technique, btw), but from reading the pitch, the only thing that's clear is
what he doesn't bring to the table. Promises of help with future marketing and
funding do not justify equity to me, but things might look different to
someone else.

------
Loopy
I've been thinking awhile that i might make a similar post to this one at some
stage. Not being a programmer and beginning a startup that requires
programmers without one at hand already is quite difficult. That being said I
personally would never do a pure software startup. However of late i've come
up with plenty of good business models that have a software element but also
requires skills that I have outside of what they try to teach in a commerce
degree. With that situation it seems a more equal partnership and also allows
a greater sharing of the main company functions, something that helps down the
road. I would suggest you look at doing a startup where you can really
contribute to the actual creation of the product/service.

The other thing about writing these pleas for help/founder is that you've got
to show a little leg. "Software as a Service business" is hardly going to
bring the hordes knocking down your doors. Even if you don't want to give your
ideas away at least narrow down the areas of your interest because your much
more likely to attract someone good if they already share that interest.

~~~
jason_tko
Thanks for your reply and your thoughts on startup business models.

The reason why I didn't go into detail about some of my ideas, is that I'm
still flexible about the idea and the direction. I'm not looking to hire a
developer, I'm looking for a co-founder. I have a whole bunch of ideas based
around all sorts of pain I've had setting up a small company, and I've built
systems to alleviate much of this pain. But maybe the co-founder is passionate
about something else that also fits in with what I'm doing. Thats why I'd like
to discuss ideas over Skype and/or email.

I'm not looking for hordes either - I'd be very happy with one person who is
on my wavelength and has the programming experience where I have the
complementary business skill set, contacts, and experience.

Good luck with your venture !

------
jason_tko
Long time listener, first time caller. Seems like my copy and paste from
Google Docs generated an interesting horizontal scroll. For a slightly easier
to read version, please check :

[http://blog.webnet-it.co.jp/2009/11/14/im-looking-for-a-
tech...](http://blog.webnet-it.co.jp/2009/11/14/im-looking-for-a-technical-co-
founderpartner-for-a-saas-solution/)

~~~
jacquesm
See above why, HN uses indentation as a 'sign' to switch to 'this is code'
mode.

------
bravura
Just to clarify: "As we get busier and as we acquire customers, I'd be hiring
more developers and support staff, most likely working under you."

You mean that the developers and support staff would be working your co-
founder, right? Not that _you_ would be working under this person? I read it
the wrong way the first time.

~~~
jason_tko
I think the natural progression would be to have the additional developers
working for the project lead.

I see how that could be mis-read, my mistake. What I was trying to say was
that I'm looking for a partner who can help run the technical aspects of the
company, including management of the subsequent technical staff.

------
nessence
Whoever gets together with this guy could potentially learn more in 1 year
than they've learned in the past 5. International business experience, candid
honesty, and flexibility are fairly difficult to procure. Is there risk? Of
course.

------
rebelvc
learn how to code

------
allenbrunson
I really like the tone of your proposal, and I'd take you up on it, except I'm
not really a "software as a service" type of programmer. ruby, python, css,
rails, and stuff like that are not my forte. I tend to deal more with lower-
level unixy technologies: TCP/IP, shell scripting, C++, servers, multi-
threading, and so on. If somebody has the same general idea but needs my type
of programmer, I'd love to hear from such a person.

(semi-off-topic: pg seems to frown on job postings here by non-yc companies.
Not sure if this post qualifies as that. If this isn't welcome on the front
page, I really wish there was some part of news.yc where this type of thing
could go.)

~~~
jacquesm
> pg seems to frown on job postings here by non-yc companies.

Is that true ? I've seen quite a few of these 'looking for co-founder' posts
and never heard anything negative about it.

And I would find that a serious point against Paul if it were true but since I
can't recall a single instance of that do you have something to back that up
with ?

~~~
allenbrunson
jacques, you are obviously the exact type of person who should be hanging
around here, but you are really too quick to get bent out of shape over
unimportant things. just a couple of minutes ago i read a comment from
somebody who described dealing with you as 'talking to a brick wall.'

there have been more 'help wanted' ads killed here than i can count. i'm not
going to back to find any now, because of your tone. the ones phrased more as
'looking for cofounder' tend not to get killed, but that seems a pretty minor
distinction.

~~~
jacquesm
What to you is 'unimportant' matters a great deal to me.

If PG would limit access to the forum or kill of posts that would get people
connected or employed I'd be out of here in a heartbeat.

I find the suggestion that PG would 'frown' at that a _very_ strong statement
against him, and from what I've seen so far I would expect the opposite.
That's why I asked for some proof of that sort of behaviour, it is completely
contrary to what I would expect. That's a simple follow up question, trust me,
when I get bent out of shape you'll know about it.

If there have been more 'help wanted' ads here killed (by PG) than you can
count that would diminish not only my view of Paul Graham but also of
Y-Combinator as a whole.

What other editors do is not my concern here, PG was singled out specifically.

