

Co-founder search - oceanician
http://matchfounders.com

======
vaksel
i honestly don't get these services.

the market is too insignificant. Even if you get 100% market share, you'll end
up with something like 1000-10000 users, most of which will be the business
type looking for a code monkey.

can anyone actually think of a single founders team that found a cofounder
like that and was successful?

~~~
mahmud
I just contacted a business guy with a nice profile and an impressive resume.

If anything, this can serve as a medium for introduction, and not necessarily
final match-making. Think bar, not a marriage agency for catalog Romeos.

~~~
taryneast
Ya - that was our thought. Just like eHarmony - it doesn't marry you, just
offers you some people that are more likely to be a match than the random
selection at your local bar.

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migpwr
Have any of you ever considered building something on your own, and trying to
bring someone on-board with something in hand, instead of joining a co-founder
dating site?

This is becoming a repeating theme here on HN and it seems like its another
way for the people who aren't doing anything to feel like "entrepreneurs". It
also seems like what takes place at a lot of conferences these days and
especially on twitter.

If you're serious about building something, build it. If it's any good, even
if incomplete, people will want to join you. It doesn't matter what it is.
Really. The guys building the traffic/headline grabbing companies today are
just farther along in the process. You can't get there without starting
_somewhere_.

Are you a business guy looking for help building your idea? Outsource it. Pay
someone to build it for you. Don't try to "convince" someone else to join your
vision and build it for you.

This stuff has to be obvious to 95% of the members on this forum.

Sorry for the rant but this nonsense is getting old...

~~~
taryneast
Absolutely... but that assumes two things: a) you're the person with the idea
AND b) you're the developer.

If you're not A or B then you need to find somebody that is...

I came up with this idea because I was A for quite a while... but I did want
to get into the space. I'm good at executing, but at the time wasn't so good
with coming up with ideas (you may still think that is the case ;) )

I also know that business-development and marketing are not my strongest areas
of knowledge.... so I went in search of business guys who had a great,
marketable idea but nobody to build it for them...

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one... though maybe I'm in the minority on
this particular news site :)

Also - I'm not sure if I read it from Seth Godin or 37signals, but I do like
the idea that if you can't convince at least one other person, then maybe you
should reconsider the idea...

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dataguy
Okay, just tried the search function and it does not give me any results
whatsoever... but I just flipped a few options.

oceanician, are you the founder/creator of this project? When did you start
it? Could not find any information regarding that but it would be interesting
to read.

~~~
taryneast
I'm the creator... I pitched the idea on Friday night. We got the registration
page up on Sunday morning... :)

~~~
dataguy
Awesome time frame :)

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thehodge
Just a heads up, I'm not anything to do with this project but its from an
event in the UK called Launch48, this idea was started on friday night and the
idea is that over the weekend you build a MVP then work on it after the event.

------
ZeroMinx
Nice idea, but results I get from a quick search seem to be more suitable for
a dating website.. "24, male, 5.9ft, dark hair, brown eyes.", "I'm a good
guy".

Anyone actually found a co-founder through this website?

~~~
joelg87
Hi :)

I'm one of the co-founders. This is a Launch48 project, i.e. we started it
yesterday morning, from scratch. (48 hours to launch a web startup). If
someone has found a co-founder by now I would be over the moon.

The main idea is that search based just on skillset matching is not ideal for
finding a co-founder you will truly be able to click with and work to build a
successful startup. We bring in methods such as what is your desired exit
strategy or how much time can you currently put in. These can be real issues.

Let's see where this goes..

~~~
jim_dot
Launch48: Encouraging people to throw unrefined shit against the wall and see
if it sticks.

~~~
OoTheNigerian
No. It is a networking event that revolves around building stuff.I have
attended 4 of them and I cannot get enough.

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chegra
1) You should have a list of short 1-2 week projects that founders can work on
together. Something founders can work on that is pretty generic and can put a
price tag on.

2) You can charge for forming groups around these 1-2week project. Like 5
pounds or something.

So, teams can be formed around ideas and there wouldn't be so much focus on
the other person. You can collect their personality types and track which
group went on to form teams, this data will be useful for PR.

You can even charge for people to watch a project progress. This might be
useful for early start-ups who want to find good people[essentially the same
thing as finding a co-founder]. This should open the market up beyond the
1,000-10,000 that vaksel talked about.

Also, matchfounders.com might be infringing on match.com name, so that might
need to be looked into.

~~~
taryneast
Thanks, some good points. I like the "trial projects" idea.

do you think the name infringes? Our name came from the concept of "a match-
making service" - which is an idea as old as the hills... I don't think that
match.com can own the word "match" or the concept of matching people.

------
chris_l
Don't forget to provide a location search...

~~~
slay2k
This. I think utility goes waaaaay down without being location-centric.

~~~
taryneast
agreed. it's on the list of high-priority features.

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edw519
This is way too superficial to give a meaningful result. What's needed is
something like "eharmony for co-founders", "based on 29 Dimensions® of
Compatibility for lasting and fulfilling businesses". There needs to be a way
of matching the things that really turn people on without anyone giving up
their secrets.

Just a few possibilities:

    
    
      - background (education, experience)
      - specific industry experience
      - technical skill set
      - nontechnical skill set
      - space (iphone, web app, desktop, social media, business, gaming)
      - end user (consumer, SMB, enterprise)
      - model (freemium, advertising, subscription, licenses)
      - geography
      - source of capital (bootstrap, incubator, angels, VC)
      - goal (lifestyle business, exit in x years)
      - special domain expertise
      - pet peeves
      - favorite things already done
      - philosophical beliefs of how things should be done
      

I could go on and on, but you kinda get the idea. If enough of these
meaningful "dimensions" could be identified and codified, you could probably
narrow down a search to a few very good possibilities fairly quickly. Business
idea, anyone?

~~~
OoTheNigerian
Nice suggestions @edw519, but I think what they have done is great as an MVP
and can be improved gradually.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yeah, I find it a little humorously ironic that the MVP drum gets beat here
all the time, and when people announce an actual MVP, there's always someone
saying that it needs more features to be useful. :-) (With all due respect to
edw519.)

~~~
DevX101
It's trial by fire here at HN. Yeah, people can be harsh, but HNers are
nothing if not practical.

I'd rather some guy tell me my product sucks, here's 10 ways to improve it,
rather than someone pat me on the head and commend me on a good job!

~~~
taryneast
agreed :)

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elimisteve
This website works in Safari on my iMac, but not Chrome. I get the same
results as dataguy -- none, just a page refresh with my selections intact.

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jhuckestein
If you want to start a business, you should get out of your comfort zone.
Finding a co-founder on an online platform is the opposite.

Get involved in your area's tech (or whatever your startup is about) scene and
find a partner. That validates your idea, too. If you can't find a co-founder
in real life, you may need to change your plan.

~~~
taryneast
Ordinarily I'd agree... but as another commenter pointed out, there are issues
with small towns... but there's also a time-issue involved.

I created this idea because I'm a hacker, and needed to find business guys...
it's taken me a year of joining every entrepreneur/networking group in London
- ad I'm now starting to be confident that I know which ones to bother with
and which to avoid.

I can imagine that it'd be even worse prospect for a business guy trying the
other way around... which of five hundred "user groups" would a know-nothing
business guy join to go find smart hackers that can get things done?

As a newbie, you'll join a lot of the wrong groups... and waste a lot of time
at them. The two different crowds have an extremely small overlap... this site
is intended to cut across the networks (well be going to networks on either
side), and cuts through a lot of the time spent searching.

ie - first find a few people that might match your needs, then go join their
network and see if you like it (kinda like the "first date")... then see where
it leads from there.

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alain94040
I have some experience in the field of co-founder finding. I recognize a
couple of features we had speced out in the early days of FairSoftware, that
we gave up on fairly quickly.

My advice if I was to do this today: think of the Angel List model: a highly
curated e-mail of top-notch founders going to top-notch potential co-founders.

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tyng
I like the service you are creating, but it's hard to take the results
seriously... are there any better (read: outside of box) ways to determine how
good the potential cofounder is?

Also, I'm playing devil's advocate here - how do you differentiate yourself
from LinkedIn? It's something I have relied on in the past.

~~~
taryneast
On LinkedIn - I can reach out through my known network... through six degrees
of separation, and not knowing which contacts are the ones I need to reach out
through.

This site will have one "level" of separation - and you can define who you're
looking for and get them straight away.

------
rvivek
The site looks neat and I personally know a lot of single founders. But, when
you bring in drop-down menus that talk about the number of months / days one
can commit, doesn't it hamper the sanctity of the 'Co-founder' role and make
it more like a freelancer website?

~~~
taryneast
I personally know of very few "potential co-founders" that don't have a day-
job. The only ones I know that have "plenty of time" are unemployed or
students... that is a small sub-set of the available talent.

I also wanted to make sure that people that wanted to commit a larger amount
could weed out people that are only able to commit to a few hours per month.

Finally - we were also thinking about the possibility of people such as
lawyers/accountants joining up - who would in fact only need to commit an hour
or two per month to add value. Obviously this means the site is open to much
more than just equity-share/co-founder arrangements

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NTG
I gave the tool a try and at first the search page would just refresh itself.

It turns out it does that if there are no results. I tried a more general
search and a few profiles were returned.

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bialecki
While not a necessity, it'd be nice to filter by geography. Also, you should
have to throw out three ideas you have -- just so there's a way to
differentiate people.

~~~
taryneast
We've already added the ability to put in an idea - but it's possible that the
person joining doesn't _have_ an idea - but wants to get involved with
somebody that does...

thus the "pitch" field on our form was intended to mean "either your business
idea or why you think you'd be a great founder"

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owkaye
I registered last week to see if there's any value in such a service, but
after doing a search I cannot find myself in their database. What's up with
that?

~~~
thehodge
are you sure it was this service? the domain name was only registered
yesterday and its being built as part of a hack challenge

~~~
owkaye
if not this one then one practically identical which I learned about here on
HN. What others are creating a nearly identical service?

~~~
taryneast
Please do point me at this other service. :)

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arey_abhishek
A great site to understand working style and check culture compatibility.
<http://roundpegg.com/>

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russell_h
Bug: the highest the "I can commit at most" selector on the search goes is 6
days per week.

~~~
auxbuss
I think that's a feature.

~~~
taryneast
yup. works as intended...

------
bjoernlasseh
also check out cofoundernetwork.com

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rick_2047
Shouldn't the sector you want to work in be a very vital thing? My choice of
ideas and my connection with a co founder will depend of my previous
experience, interests and domain specific knowledge.

~~~
taryneast
yup. We'll be adding that too.

