
Ask HN: How to Become a Technical Cofounder - freewilly1040
I&#x27;ve got some startup experience + a few years of big co engineering, and am interested in exploring early stage startups. I&#x27;m craving the startup experience again, and would be interested in something early stage, but am skeptical that the economic side is worth it to join an early stage company as an employee.<p>What are things you&#x27;d recommend doing to develop skills to be a good cofounder? How would you go about finding opportunities?
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gamesbrainiac
I think the best thing you can do to gain some startup experience (since you
have some good engineering experience) is to go for a Principal/Founding
Engineer role at a company. This will give you a respectable amount of cash
and equity such that you will not need to make drastic changes to your
lifestyle. This is better than joining an angel-investment stage startup.

However, if you are hell-bent on becoming a technical co-founder, make sure
that you bring some other skills to the table. You will need to make sure that
you have the resources to pay your AWS bills, be able to hire people and then
fire them when necessary. Furthermore, you will need some measure of product
skills (because at this stage, you will need to determine the featureset of
the products).

So this is why you should go for a PE role, and then if you find the right
idea, go for a co-founder role.

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freewilly1040
What in your opinion makes for a strong PE candidate? Is management experience
a requirement?

I could pursue management experience at my bigco, but it seems really boring
and frustrating.

