
How to interview a technical co-founder - chrisloy
http://chrisloy.net/2017/11/19/how-to-interview-a-technical-cofounder
======
bpizzi
I've got a problem with mixing 'co-founder' and 'hiring' terms: to me they
look mutually exclusive. If you're searching for someone for 'co-founding'
your startup, then you're asking for a partner. If you're trying to 'hire'
someone, then you're asking for an employee. Partners are not to be
interviewed, at least not with a 'coding test'.

Think of the reversed situation: you're a 'business guy' (whatever that
means), and a 'technical co-founder' is asking you to join the founding team
on the business side, but first he's asking you to prove your business skills
by tossing an Excel sheets and saying 'please find the formula errors'? What
will you think of him?

~~~
baddox
So how do you find a business partner? It sounds like you’re suggesting that
you need to already have been personally close to and trusting of your partner
for a long time, or perhaps find a partner based on recommendations from very
close and trusted friends or colleagues. That’s probably how it happens most
of the time. Is that the only viable way to choose a partner?

~~~
mozumder
Go with recommendations, seek them out personally, or just take the person
most willing to partner with you and use your gut feeling in how they interact
with you.

There is no “easy mode” in finding a partner. You will have to take some risk
here as well.

~~~
afarrell
> use your gut feeling in how they interact with you.

The problem here is that intuition (gut feeling) is best trained in
environments where you have:

1) The opportunity for lots of repeated trials.

2) Rapid feedback which results from the data you currently observe rather
than from

So if you're predicting tomorrow's weather, intuition is useful: your
prediction can't change the weather, you can do this 365 times in a year, and
you'll get feedback the next day.

Picking a founder (or heck, uni project partner) is unlike this in that you
_don 't_ have many opportunities to do it and the feedback only comes months
later. So, its better to think through a more deliberative and explicit
thought process.

That deliberative process might involve a difficult, awkward conversation like
"Hey, so if we jump into this, we are going to have to really trust each other
for a lot of things. I think its best if we explicitly come up with ways to
prove to ourselves and each other that we have the skills to tackle the
_known_ challenges we're going to have to face."

I don't know where "easy mode" comes into it at all.

~~~
cirgue
> The problem here is that intuition (gut feeling) is best trained...

You have had an entire lifetime of trial and feedback in understanding the
character, talents, and ambitions of other people. If you don't have that, or
if you can't trust it, you probably should not be a founder yet. Wait until
you actually have those skills because they're critical for everything else in
running a business.

------
pbiggar
I agree with all of this (caveat, downplay the "interviewing" angle a bit),
and let me add some more things I found helpful in my recent cofounder search:

\- the most important thing for an early stage startup is that they can
validate. That means building incomplete and imperfect prototypes quickly and
repeatedly. "Getting the architecture right", "clean code", etc, are usually
the wrong skills for a super-early-stage startup, and your CTO shouldn't
prioritize them.

\- more important is that you get on well with the cofounder. You're going to
be working together for a long time. Make sure your personalities mesh, that
you can spend a large amount of time together, and that you can discuss/argue
constructively.

\- Having the same values and goals for the company are paramount. When
finding a cofounder recently, I wrote a questionnaire with 40 open-ended
"values" questions for cofounders to answer (and then I sent them my answers).
It was very apparent when I met someone with values overlap and when I didn't.

Ended up with a great cofounder, have been working together for 6 months now:
[http://ellenandpaulsnewstartup.com](http://ellenandpaulsnewstartup.com)

------
codingdave
As an experienced developer, who spent the summer exploring options after my
last company was sold, I had many approaches from non-technical founders. Most
of them completely skipped vetting me, and just were hungry for someone who
could code. One I worked with part-time for a few months, with the explicit
agreement that it was a test run on small projects to decide if we wanted to
move forward together. The last one did interview me, and ended up being my #1
choice to work with because, aside from agreement on the product and how we'd
build it, she was clearly thinking about the bigger picture, not just trying
to find a coder. (Although the market drove me to take a different full-time
job instead, anyway.)

All that to say, another criteria is that if your potential co-founder is too
easy to convince to join you, that is a red flag - a good potential founder
will have many options on the table. If you are their only option, there is a
reason for it, and you should walk away.

~~~
dominotw
> Most of them completely skipped vetting me, and just were hungry for someone
> who could code.

How did these people find you?

I am ready to quit my stable job and do something fun for a while. Where do
you I find people in the same boat.

~~~
codingdave
Networking. All of my consulting contracts came from people I already knew,
who either hired me directly or introduced me to someone who needed help. And
those contacts and clients then introduced me to other people who were looking
to found something new. FYI, I found zero value in meetups or other networking
events, because the people who are working hard on good ideas are too busy (in
general) to attend such things.

~~~
methodover
What was the source of your network, if I may ask? Old college friends?
Church? Co-workers?

~~~
codingdave
One contract came from a partner of a business I used to code for. The rest
were just asking around town, in particular with people who worked in
marketing - they knew who needed help growing their business, and would pair
me up with business owners who had specific tech problems to solve.

------
ryandrake
I guess this is a terminology question: If you already have founded a company,
how can you be looking for a co-founder? Isn't it already founded?

As a technical person and potential co-founder, I would be very wary of the
"Company with non-technical founders looking to get their product built"
scenario. First, it looks like they're looking for an employee, not a founder
(see above) and second, I would want to vet that product idea front-to-back in
terms of technical feasibility and schedule.

~~~
mathgeek
The "founder" title carries prestiege, which can fool some folks into thinking
they are really founders. The important part, if you really want to be a
cofounder in more than title, is to make sure you have equal share and control
with all other cofounders. Otherwise you are indeed just an employee (which
can be fine as well if you are satisfied with it).

~~~
hkmurakami
Doesn't have to be equal. Had to be substantial (depends on stage of joining
and how much derisking has been done)

~~~
mathgeek
To me that's an employee with substantial power, but mostly it's a semantic
disctinction which goes to my original point. It does get a little fuzzy when
you have enough share to "not get fired".

------
mratzloff
The opinion of your trusted friend or acquaintance is often just as illusory
as your ability to judge for yourself. After all, you aren't subjecting your
buddy to the same rigor you would a candidate, and you are just as incapable
of judging their actual ability as the candidate's. You may trust your friend
to give you good feedback, but if your friend is inexperienced or in a
completely different technical domain (therefore lacking context), their
opinion can even be counterproductive.

And how are you selecting your friend? How many tech people do you really
know? Surely not that many if you're non-technical and interviewing for the
position instead of partnering with one of them.

Time and again I see founders choose poor technical cofounders. Often it's
enough to get the business off the ground, but then as the company grows they
fail to grow with it. Now they're a CTO without the ability to handle strategy
or manage people.

The sub-optimal recourse in these cases is often to hire a VPE to manage
people while the CTO acts like the principal engineer. Now the VP reports to a
CTO who is incapable of doing that job and (privately) insecure about it.

Basically I'm saying a non-technical founder selecting a technical cofounder
is a crapshoot and people don't answer enough uncomfortable questions up
front. Management skills (or at least aptitude) should be part of the
selection criteria. There should be a discussion up front about how the
position will evolve over time, and what the success criteria are at each
stage, and what happens if those aren't met (mentoring, career counseling,
step into new role with reduced title)? And the same conversation should
happen in reverse, from the CTO to the CEO.

------
hobofan
My advice: Ignore all points except the last one. I've seen a lot of startups
trying to hire a technical co-founder on their own, even following advice
similar to point 1-5, but still ending up with a co-founder that was a bad
technical fit ~80% of the time. With the involvement of a technical person in
the interview process, usually either referring the candidate or having an
additional technical interview with them, that figure drops down to ~20%.

~~~
pm
Honestly, even that's a crapshoot. In fact this article presumes that it
should be an interview, when it should really be a conversation.

If a non-technical founder wanted to "interview" me, I'd tell them to shove
it. If they wanted to have a conversation about how we could bring our
complementary skills together to solve a problem, then I'd certainly be much
more interested.

~~~
hobofan
I mostly agree. A co-founder interview should be more of a conversation rather
than a traditional "company vs. employee" interview. Nevertheless, if it is
already a running project, there is an imbalance of trust and skin in the
game, similar to a job interview. So going through a technical screening can
be a very easy way for the candidate to close that trust gap.

Also, the popular perception between technical co-founder and early employee-
CTO is very blurry (unless you go by virtual vs. real shares). Some people
will call a CTO that joined 3 months into the project and holds 10% virtual
shares a co-founder and some people won't. Same goes for "technical co-
founder" vs. "early CTO" interviews.

~~~
TimPC
If you're joining 3 months into what's often a 7+-year mission (where if
you're successful you'll be underpaid for a long-time and make your money on
stock) and you expect a 90-10 distribution of shares you better be getting
something like a salary (co-founder in name only). These kind of distributions
are part of why yCombinator discourages unequal co-founder distributions.
You're asking for the company to implode over co-founder issues if you think
your 3 months at the start is worth a 90-10 distribution in shares especially
when as a non-technical founder hiring a technical co-founder the technical
co-founder generally has bigger opportunity costs financially.

------
ian0
Looking for anyone who is an expert in a domain your not familiar with is
difficult. Especially a co-founder, as your success together will depend maybe
more on dedication & your relationship VS technical ability.

At a minimum, look for someone who:

\- Has the ability to explain something complex from their area in terms you
understand.

\- Is not afraid to question or disagree with you, but does so in a way that
doesn't make you feel bad.

\- Is looking for a challenge and is genuinely interested in what your doing

\- Displays a history of non-conformity, thick-headedness in some way.

\- Really thinks/codes in terms of minimal viable product

\- Who you get along well with!

------
chrisloy
Wow, I thought this one had just disappeared into the void. Glad to see I got
people's attention and provoked debate, even if it seems much of it disagrees
with my underlying assumptions.

For what it's worth, one thing I don't cover in the article is whether this is
a good idea in the first place. It obviously isn't ideal, and as I say it is a
difficult situation to be in. From my perspective, I think a non-technical
founder is obviously better looking for a trusted former colleague or friend
to join as CTO. Proven mutual history is the best thing you can lean on here.

But if this isn't possible, I would definitely espouse an interview process -
however formal you prefer that to be. My post is therefore really intended as
a how-to guide for someone in this awkward spot, looking to identify the
skills and experience for technical leadership without the background to do
so.

Of course other soft skills and fit are just as important. But any decent
founder will need to identify those in all people joining the founding team.
This is just intended as a step-by-step guide for those specific skills needed
for a technical co-founder or CTO. I hope it is helpful for someone!

------
dirtyaura
If you are going to build a company, not a team of 2, the core skill of CTO is
to ability to hire talented technical people to the correct positions. This is
hard. Most people can't do this well.

Most of the early stage teams are better off to avoid using C-titles and talk
this through from the get-go. The founders and first employees might be great
builders, but not necessarily great CTOs when you start to grow the team.

~~~
chrisbennet
That probably goes for the non-technical founder as well right? I.e. bring in
someone more experienced to grow the business once the founders proves the
market exists.

------
cabaalis
I think the reliance on open source work is too heavy. Plenty of amazing
engineers have done work at organizations serving millions of customers but
have not made contributions to open source. A portfolio is mentioned but is at
the bottom of the list of importance, and even noted as such. The author
mentions company blogs. At decent sized organizations these could be written
by the marketing departments, little regard to the engineers.

~~~
uladzislau
Open source contributions shouldn't be a deciding factor as I've seen a few
very active open source devs unable to do the commercial work on the proper
level. On the other hand, lack of open source meaningful activity is a red
flag.

------
petegrif
Skipping over what others have pointed out - you don't interview a co-founder.

a) ensure this is someone you are going to get along with b) get someone else
to assess their technical competence - you can't assess it and the guidelines
you provide won't work reliably.

------
wpietri
I would suggest people double down on point 6, "Find someone to help". If you
don't have anybody in your network, pay somebody.

Why? Well, there are two abilities that are only partly correlated: coding and
talking about coding. A non-technical founder can only ever evaluate the
talking part. My approach to interviewing involves both chatting and pair
programming. A surprising number of people are pretty good talkers and pretty
terrible doers. Indeed, some of the best talkers are the worst doers, because
they've had to become extremely good at talking to keep getting hired.

(As an aside, some of the best coders are pretty bad talkers, but those are
not the people you want for a tech cofounder.)

So please, non-tech founders, borrow or hire an expert. There are plenty of
people who sell their time by the hour, including former tech leads and tech
founders. Like accounting or lawyering, interviewing programmers is a skill
not easily acquired. When you need it, it's worth paying for.

------
DyslexicAtheist
nice article, though:

> A non-technical founder interviewing a technical one is akin to a brain
> surgeon hiring a rocket scientist. Forgive the self-aggrandisement!

It's not _self-aggrandisement_ but lacks acknowledgement that it's equally
complex the other way around. As engineers we tend to think no aspect is more
important than the product we build. Yet without the right person to
understand financial growth (and the patience to carry us along despite our
lack of understanding), it's going to be rough! (not just finance, but sales,
marketing, even legal depending on the field).

~~~
chrisloy
That was my intended point (I'm a CTO at a startup).

I consider myself a decent rocket scientist (CTO) but would make a terrible
brain surgeon (CEO) ;-)

------
crdoconnor
It'd be interesting to find some successful CTOs (e.g. people who built up a
company from the ground up to a successful exit) and ask them how they'd want
to be interviewed for their job.

------
rothbardrand
This is great advice. Any decent CTO will immediately be put off by this kind
of interview for a “co-founder” and be spared working with someone who doesn’t
know his circle of competence.

------
james1071
didn't realise you could hire a 'co-founder' suspect it means subordinate who
is paid in share options

------
crispytx
How things really work: Non-technical founder tells potential technical co-
founder his great idea. Technical "co-founder" goes and creates
Facebook/SnapChat on their own ;)

------
ilaksh
For finding a technical co-founder, I think this is more like it:

Imagine you are looking for someone to marry and to cook for you. You will
have to get along with them for years. You will need to share intimate secrets
with them. The main thing that is really different is that you will not be
having sex with them (although from what I hear that is not actually very
different from most marriages).

The other thing is that instead of cooking food, they are doing engineering
research. Pretty much all software projects are complex research projects.
Now, imagine if the woman you married were a bad cook. You could always go out
for takeout after dinner lots of the time. But say your entire business was
built on making sure that her eggplant soufflé or whatever was 100% on point.
If it doesn't taste good, it just crashes and you can't make money. But this
is not eggplant soufflé its a completely new dish you need her to invent as a
master chef. Only its more complicated than that. It has a thousand moving
parts. Its sort of like they are inventing a new type of space ship for you.

So anyway, I would try to do smaller test projects or subprojects with people
first and be very careful making a selection of a partner. Ideally it would
take several months or a few years, checking out multiple people.

Also be aware that about 50% of all marriages end in divorce.

~~~
baddox
Finding a spouse or long-term romantic partner certainly seems like an apt
analogy, but I wonder if the analogy really holds for any specifics beyond the
empirical observation that a significant percentage of both marriages and
businesses “fail.” I put that in quotation marks, because I’m not convinced
that the “success” criteria for either are well-defined. The standard view for
marriages seems to be that any marriage that ends before one partner dies was
a failure, but I don’t see why a separation or divorce necessarily implies
that there wasn’t a net benefit for both partners. Likewise, if a business
eventually ceases to exist, I don’t think that necessarily implies that the
founders didn’t benefit on net (even if there was no obvious benefit, like a
payout). I claim this even though I realize that both “failures” must usually
cause considerable pain and/or hardship for all participants for some amount
of time.

