

Tech co-founder sought for ambitious consumer web startup - yywt

Technical co-founder sought for early-stage startup solving the "It's hard to find people I'd be cool doing stuff with to do stuff with" problem.<p>The founder is a SF-based, hardcore business/product guy, recent grad of penn/wharton with experience leading data analysis initiatives at major consumer web startups.<p>The idea is called Yo You Want To. Yo You Want To will be a way for (initially) college students to find other people on campus to do stuff with. For those times that you want to get a late dinner, carve a pumpkin, see a spoken word poetry show, go weightlifting, or really whatever, and your friends aren't free, you just post: "Yo, you want to _______" where you fill in the blank with whatever you want to do. When people on campus say they're down, you guys meet up and go do it. It's a simple concept to understand, and the early success of this will rely on brilliant execution and a killer UX more than any never-before-done feats of engineering. Clever use of mobile is also key but has been largely unexplored to date.<p>The founder has the prototype of Yo You Want To built - it's at www.yoyouwantto.com (get in touch for a demo login).  During a test launch at Penn, hundreds of people signed up within a couple weeks, and many meetups actually happened through the site. It's clear that we've scratched the surface of a huge opportunity here and what we need more than anything is a brilliant engineer who can execute, lead and inspire. Someone who lives for elegance, speed, and innovation in social products. Someone extraordinarily entrepreneurial to be in the founding team of a company, with equity and responsibilities to match. If you're looking for an hourly rate or a salary before funding, you've missed the point.<p>The prototype was built with Ruby on Rails, and while we're unlikely to switch from that, your brilliance as an engineer and tech entrepreneur trumps everything.<p>Interested? Please contact yo@yoyouwantto.com with some info about yourself - what technologies do you love? built anything cool? what are you doing at 2am on a random wednesday? what do you have going on these days? what about this opportunity interests you?<p>Thanks for reading.
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wehriam
There's a popular variation on this idea that has been featured in the New
York Times:

<http://www.howaboutwe.com/>

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/fashion/04date.html>

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rick888
"If you're looking for an hourly rate or a salary before funding, you've
missed the point."

I hope you are offering 50% equity. If not, it's not worth my time. This looks
like every other business guy looking for a tech founder: you want to offer
almost nothing for doing all of the hard work.

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coryl
I didn't see any mention of what he was offering, so why would you say _"you
want to offer almost nothing"_?

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geoffw8
Err, seems like your splitting hairs: "If you're looking for an hourly rate or
a salary before funding, you've missed the point." insinuates exactly that. I
for one don't see "very much" being offered here.

Edit: ...do you?

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coryl
Well I see a person looking for a co-founder, so not getting a salary or wage
comes with the territory. So I don't see the need to poop on him, he's not
being dishonest with his offering. He said hes a wharton graduate, which is an
elite business school and gives him a bit of credibility in terms of book
smarts. He has a project under way, prototyped and market tested. He needs a
technical partner.

Maybe the idea will interest someone, maybe someone here was thinking about
the same thing but never got it started. It is what it is. What do you find
"wrong" with his posting, maybe it will help clarify your criticism?

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rick888
"Maybe the idea will interest someone, maybe someone here was thinking about
the same thing but never got it started. It is what it is. What do you find
"wrong" with his posting, maybe it will help clarify your criticism?"

If I'm going to toil away on a project for NO PAY (which is a huge risk), it
better damn well be for a huge chunk of the profits.

I have been around many business types and have seen developers put their hard
work into something with little or no payoff.

My hunch is that he offers 5% or less, which is a joke.

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dshankar
Why put down a fair post with useless comments on a "hunch that he offers 5%
or less"?

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rick888
"Why put down a fair post with useless comments on a "hunch that he offers 5%
or less"?"

Because he already stated that the co-founder gets no salary. He never
mentioned the actual percentage, so it's a fair assumption.

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dshankar
Read OP: "But I 100% understand the value of a tech co-founder, and am not
looking to be stingy with equity. I know I can't make it succeed on my own."

Not mentioning exact equity, how do you assume 5%!?!?

It is very common for cofounders at an early-stage startup to take no salary.

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geoffw8
"The Social Network" effect has begun! People think its a business model.

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scottyallen
Holy crap. I think you're right. This could explain why I've had two different
strangers corner me in the past month (and seen at least two similar pitches
on HN), trying to pitch me to work on their pre-funding social network. They
"have the secret sauce all figured out", they "just need need a coder to build
it". Unfortunately, they "can't really get into details" until I sign an NDA.
Needless to say, I still am pretty fuzzy on their secret sauce:)

It all fits though - up until now, I couldn't figure out why random shmoes
that don't know anything about technology were getting excited about social
networking.

I suspect Facebook/Twitter/Linked In aren't the end of the road for what we
call "social networking", but I'll bet it's created by someone with at least
some experience in the technology space...

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geoffw8
Couldn't agree more, the likealittle flirting "site" is another from the same
breed, although I think they might pre-date the movie.

Wouldn't it be fantastic/ironic/funny if the eventual downfall of FB came
because the movie lit so many entrepreneurial fires....

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startuplist
Feel free to feature your startup on the Startup List. Submit your info via
<http://startupli.st> or on Twitter and metion @TheStartupList

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iworkforthem
clickable: <http://www.yoyouwantto.com/>

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rhizome
_If you're looking for an hourly rate or a salary before funding, you've
missed the point._

Pretty sure you have that backwards.

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yywt
I guess I should have been more clear. From my post, I'm looking for "someone
extraordinarily entrepreneurial to be in the founding team of a company, with
_equity_ and responsibilities to match."

I am fully prepared to give a way a very large chunk of my company. Will it be
50%? I don't know. I've invested a lot into this, and other people have some
equity now too. But I 100% understand the value of a tech co-founder, and am
not looking to be stingy with equity. I know I can't make it succeed on my
own.

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pclark
If you need someone with you for you to succeed, sounds like they should have
the same % as you.

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aberkowitz
Splitting equity 50-50 is almost never a good idea. When hard decisions need
to be made, someone needs to have the final say.

