
The answer to the eternal question: “Where do I find a technical cofounder?” - hailpixel
http://www.hailpixel.com/articles/technical-cofounders
======
madaxe_again
You don't. They find you.

Technical co-founders are necessarily naïve.

Why?

Because once they've been one once, they don't want to be one again. The only
"serial" technical co-founders I've encountered have usually failed to get to
the MVP stage of any of the companies they've founded, and thus don't know the
hell their path leads to.

I speak from first-hand experience. I would sooner chew my own legs off than
do this again. Not because I dislike my company, or don't like what I do
today, but because it's traumatic, and I've no desire to go through it again.

It costs you years of your life, you don't get sleep, or friends, and at the
end of it all, nobody will thank you, they'll just resent you, as those that
were there from the start never realised just how much the technical co-
founder did to make things work in the early days (not so fond memories of not
leaving my desk for 9 grim, sticky days), and those that started later don't
see the technical co-founder getting as involved in the technology as much,
and thus view them as disconnected.

Damned either way.

If you get someone in with experience, they'll tell you to get bent, won't do
the death-marches that you often need to get the ball rolling, and will want
to be paid their worth, rather than nothing.

So yeah - your only hope is to get to know technical folks while they're still
learning, and get them in then - otherwise they'll know better and will refuse
your poisoned chalice.

~~~
lettergram
I commented below, but personally every time someone comes to me with an idea
I ask for 75% equity. Usually people scoff and walk away, but sometimes people
are willing to negotiate.

To me it's always amazing how little equity some technical cofounders obtain.
Ideas, like talk, is pretty cheap. Coding for years is pretty damn expensive.

~~~
nissimk
Maybe I'm being naive, but there can be something else that the non-technical
founder brings that is equally valuable to the tech stuff: paying customers.
If they have actual customers that are ready to pay, then the deal may be
worth it even for less than equal share of equity. Another is cash investment
(not relationships with investors, real cash of their own that they are
willing to invest).

I think most of these non-technical founders just have a fantasy about a
product idea and it really is worthless. But if they have a good network of
contacts and people ringing their phone for whatever they want you to build
then that is some value.

If these idea people are so sure of their ideas, they can finance development
using freelancers and they don't need a technical cofounder. If technical
cofounder is just doublespeak for programmer willing to work for free +
equity, only someone very naive will take it.

~~~
dmichulke
Yes, people with money or people who already sold their (non-existing) product
are indeed a good match and as scarce as good co-founders.

------
lordnacho
I met a business guy who explained his attitude to tech guys to me, over a
number of meeting about starting a venture.

\- Tech guys can just sit back once the website is built and cash in forever,
while the marketing and business guys have to keep on the ball. \- You can
rent an army of developers in Eastern Europe for no money at all. He had 30
guys doing his one-pager color split testing for him. \- All the value is in
the marketing and supply chain. He's 80% of the value and feels screwed giving
the tech people 25%.

Funnily enough we never got that one launched.

~~~
brianwawok
Flip side is most tech guys think the business guy is an idiot. people suck at
realizing other disciplines have worth.

~~~
mgkimsal
Many (most?) of the business guys who you end up talking with in those
situations _are_ idiots. The ones that can execute often already are, and
aren't wasting their time doing cofounder dating.

Likewise by the time you're scrounging around looking for technical
cofounders, you're at meetups and startup weekends, and most capable technical
folks never end up going to those - they're either happy in their current
situation, or working on something of their own.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _The ones that can execute often already are, and aren 't wasting their time
> doing cofounder dating._

The same can be said about programmers, I guess. What a horrible attitude.

FYI: many startups fail because the founders don't have a clue that a business
involves far more than writing code. Sometimes you need "people skills", and
when you think you're God's gift to a business, you're probably lacking there.

~~~
mgkimsal
I thought I'd addressed that with "Likewise by the time you're scrounging
around looking for technical cofounders, you're at meetups and startup
weekends, and most capable technical folks never end up going to those".

I'm not at all saying everyone who is at every networking even is a total
loser. Far from it. I've met some interesting folks at events over the years
(cofounder dating, meetups, startup weekends, etc). But I also tend to meet a
disproportionate number of "idea folks" who try to push NDAs before telling
you about their next "big idea".

And on the tech side, there's usually a few tech god/wizard folks who can
literally do almost anything with a few keystrokes, and other people who are
just getting started, have a lynda.com or treehouse account, and want to hack
away. It's not necessarily a bad attitude to have, but usually the skills
aren't enough to execute enough to get traction.

I'm sometimes surprised at how far people get with so little, and those are
the people I tend to want to work with or help out in some way - regardless of
the industry/work/project. I like working with people who can get stuff done.
It's just harder to do that at many networking events, because the people who
are 'getting stuff done' usually don't have time for those events because
they're getting stuff done.

Couldn't tell if you meant "horrible attitude" at me directly because of the
comment or what.??

------
kcorbitt
As a supporting anecdote, I'd like to share the story of how my non-technical
cofounder found/"grew" me (or rather, grew the relationship), and why I think
it worked.

Last year I was in my final year of university. The school I graduated from,
BYU, has a strong business program and a culture of entrepreneurship. A number
of my friends and acquaintances contacted me with ideas for tech-empowered
businesses they wanted to form, but I had the sense to stay away from anything
that sounded like "I had this great idea for a business last week, why don't
you build it for me and we'll see what happens."

When my now-cofounder Sam approached me, it was a very different experience.
It was obvious that he had put months of work into developing his idea on his
own time, with mockups and tons of user testing of various ideas, and
literally had gone as far as he could without actually building the product.
Even after we decided to start working together, we spent several months
contracting together for a 3rd party, before we finally decided to strike out
on our own. When we eventually did form a startup, we split the equity 50-50
and we've both been working 110% since day 1.

In retrospect, I didn't end up joining with Sam because the idea was much
better than the other ones I'd heard about, or because he had access to
connections or capital that I couldn't easily find myself. It was because he
demonstrated clearly that he didn't consider the idea alone to be 80% of the
value, respected what I brought to the table, and worked hard enough to bring
his half to the table too.

I guess my best advice to the non-technical looking for a cofounder (beyond
learning as much as you can about the tech side of the business on your own)
would be to try to find ways to demonstrate, through your actions, that you
have what it takes to push a new company forward. The actions Sam took on his
own, and when we first started working together, demonstrated that to my
satisfaction, which is why I was more than happy to sign on as a cofounder.

~~~
hga
I'd add that calling Sam "non-technical" stretches the definition a bit. Sure,
he wasn't cutting code, but the sort of design work he did to prove and evolve
his idea is also the sort of work a lot of us "technical" people do at various
times.

Sounds like he had a bucket-full of clues, including the equity distribution,
which doesn't sound like it was hard to negotiate.

------
bitL
I am running multiple eCommerce businesses as a tech guy where I provide a
platform that can be plugged straight to another business area with minimal
costs - to take care of those areas I usually find a business person and offer
a generous 50/50 split in equity and rights as I want everyone to feel useful
and in control.

What I noticed from some bad examples of business guys I tried something with
is that some of them 1) don't have a clue nor willingness to improve 2) are
very frustrated they don't own the additional 1% to be completely in charge 3)
try to restrict the flow of business information towards me 4) treat tech as
an easy thing that must work 100% on autopilot while they don't do much at
all.

Whenever this happens I give those persons an out; we can shut the business
down immediately (for me it's just another business test that didn't go well
and it needs to be resolved ASAP as I don't like to waste time) or those
things must change.

It's difficult to find a business person that doesn't want to become super
rich in like one year and that really wants to treat the business as an equal
partnership and have fun growing it. If you find one, stick with them, it's
pure gold.

------
leroy_masochist
Here are my observations as an initially non-technical person working on a
relatively technical side-project that requires the help of others:

1\. Non-technical people (myself included) often have a bit of a complex about
being non-technical. They are well-steeped in the YC/Stanford/Valley zeitgeist
and believe their project won't be taken seriously if it doesn't have
legitimate engineering talent on the founding team. Depending on the product
and the team's growth strategy, this may or may not actually be true.

2\. I would posit that fear of not finding a technical cofounder (FONFATC, I
just coined an acronym) is really three related, but distinct fears: a. Fear
of not being able to get the MVP / beta / 1.0 versions built. b. Fear of not
being able to raise money to grow because VC's won't take your team seriously
if you don't have a technical cofounder. c. Fear of not being able to recruit
good engineers as you scale from, say, 3 people to 15 people. (The reasoning
being, good engineers are going to have doubts about working for an
organization that doesn't have a technical cofounder; both in terms of not
wanting to be supervised by people who don't understand the technical
fundamentals and in terms of working in a non-engineer-centric culture).

3\. Non-technical people in some cases spend more time trying to find/recruit
a technical cofounder than they would have to spend to learn the necessary
technical skills to build a basic MVP. Not 1.0, ready-to-ship-to-paying-
customers product, but MVP. Getting technical people to join your project is a
less painful proposition once you have a product, even a crappy one.

4\. Technical friends might not be willing to join your project as a
cofounder, for reasons including: you can't pay them the salary they
want/need; they're working on their own thing; they don't want to quit their
sweet job; they think your idea is dumb. Even in these cases, you can get a
lot of help from them if they are in fact your friends. They may not be
interested in getting on your cap table, but they'll probably do a monthly
code review with you if you ask nicely.

------
rkwasny
I've got a different question: "Where do I find a non-technical cofounder?" It
seems people that understand tech but also have sales/management skills are a
rare scarcity.

~~~
sixQuarks
what are you going to do with a non-technical cofounder that has
"sales/management" skills? That implies that you already have a product built.

A truly valuable non-technical cofounder will be a product developer, not a
sales/management guy. The most valuable type of marketing is baked into
product development.

~~~
k__
Funny you say this.

All the non-technical cofounders told me, they didn't build a product but the
product idea, business plan and marketing strategy are already done. Now they
just need a dev to implement the software and they are good to go.

~~~
vdaniuk
>product idea, business plan and marketing strategy are already done

If they say this, their failure probability is too damn high. What many first
time founders don't understand is that startup is a search process in the
outlandishly uncertain world. You can't "do" the product idea and strategy
before you iterated on your initial hypothesis and verified/discarded/revised
it.

This is like startups 101, explained in the basic level entrepreneurship
courses on edx/coursera and founder must read books like "lean marketing for
startups" and "startup's owner manual".

If a business-side guy or girl doesn't know that, disregard them.

~~~
k__
Oh, I do :)

> You can't "do" the product idea and strategy

Most of them tell me, they did marked research as a proof for their idea.

------
mvonthron
When I meet such people in meetups, all I hear is "I am the next Zuckerberg
but I have no idea how things work. Where do I find someone to do the work for
me?"

~~~
krampian
That would be an easy one to answer - Zuckerberg did all the coding and hired
a non-technical founder.

More aggravating are the ones who think they're the next Steve Jobs and just
need their Woz.

------
lettergram
Having spoken to 10 - 20 of these people myself (business majors at my
University always tried to convince CS majors to do their ideas). Some of the
post was decent advice, you have to befriend technical cofounders first (i.e.
grow).

Something I would add though, if you are a non-technical cofounder it needs to
be either equal equity footing (if you are bringing a fair amount of
sales/marketing). Otherwise, forget it, I would want 60 - 70% equity. Without
my ability to code, you've got nothing. It seems a lot of technical founders
sell themselves short in this regard.

Finally, for me, it's always been hell finding a decent designer. The two I
talk with regularly are outrageously busy, but usually they can help out. It
took me a year or two to find these guys and now we have some synergy, but
finding a designer is hell.

~~~
Bahamut
Sounds about right for what I would ask for, and I have never found a company.
Crunch time is already bad enough at a lot of companies, but an extended one
to get the first product even out is probably the worst of them all - the
compensation needs to reflect that value.

------
k__
I'm not a founder, only a developer, but non-technical people asked me if I
want to be their cofounder.

Most of the time they are teams of a few business people who do marketing and
biz-dev.

When they tell me about their idea, I often think that the only bad thing
about their idea is the part, where the company has to supply 4 people, where
only one of them can build something.

Also they often see a technical cofounder as a work-horse and not a partner...

~~~
mgkimsal
Almost inevitably, there will be 3-4 people vying for their ideas to be
implemented, sometimes conflicting with each other, sometimes conflicting with
what's actually possible technically, and the sole dev guy will end up caught
in the middle of all this - not unlike corp work, really. And yeah, they'll
almost never see you as an actual CO-founder or equal in any way. I've seen
that happen (equality) but more often than not, the situation you described.

If you can't "sell" something until every single pixel is perfect and it
scales up to instagram levels on day one and everything else is in place
because you "only get one shot at impressing person X (or... first
customer)"... you're doing something wrong.

------
visakanv
I can't seem to load the page...

That said while we're on this topic, I've always enjoyed Drew Houston's take
on it:[http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-find-good-technical-co-
founder...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-find-good-technical-co-founders)

"Unfortunately this is a classic problem. "How do I find a really hot single
girl to go out with?"

* Good technical people will have ideas of their own that they're excited about, and working for a non-technical founder who, by the way, doesn't know or appreciate the difficulty or time it takes to make something well-engineered and undervalues you from an ownership standpoint, gets old quickly.

* People who are not hands-on building the product at the very early stage of the startup are usually not terribly useful until later, because building the product is most of the real work early on.

* Good engineers have a wealth of compelling opportunities at any given time, so it gets even worse if the non-technical founder is inexperienced, or hasn't already brought a lot to the table (funding, etc.) See, for example, [http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-1...](http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-12.html#e2010-12-01T15_45_40.htm) one view of how technical people perceive "idea guys" who "just need a programmer."

So, what can you do?

* One is look for a technical cofounder, not just an early employee, and give commensurate equity. Again, bear in mind that frankly he or she will be more valuable than you at this phase.

* Two is learn to code enough to bang out a prototype -- this will also make you a better engineering manager if you can appreciate the technical craft and can empathize with engineers. And there are tools like Balsamiq that can help create reasonable mockups that can convey your idea without writing code.

* Three, search the far corners of the earth for talent -- maybe you'll get lucky and find a CS student who hasn't been jaded by bad experiences with arrangements like this. Or, if the technology you need developed isn't rocket science, you can try outsourcing, which is its own Pandora's box. Derek Sivers has a good post on managing that: [http://sivers.org/how2hire](http://sivers.org/how2hire)

Good times, but this is what business cofounders bring to the table, right?
They figure shit out, and it's hard work. Hiring the early team is just the
beginning."

~~~
piato
"* Two is learn to code enough to bang out a prototype -- this will also make
you a better engineering manager if you can appreciate the technical craft and
can empathize with engineers. And there are tools like Balsamiq that can help
create reasonable mockups that can convey your idea without writing code."

I've always been confused by how this is meant to help - could you explain
further? I've always been a technical founder, but I've never had any idea how
to find a technical co-founder - as you correctly say, good technical people
will have their idea they're excited about! So I'm always skeptical that "make
a prototype" would work to convince anyone, but perhaps it would - is there
some hidden pool of good engineers who exist in some weird fugue state of
"show me a cool semi-working website and I'm on-board", outside of, like, 1st
year CS?

~~~
visakanv
I can talk about something completely different– I'm a writer, and I work with
visual designers. They much, much prefer it when I can give them a terrible
sketch of an idea rather than a lengthy diatribe about what I want. Because
it's far easier for them to apply their design sensibilities to a crappy
sketch than to a cloud of words.

Similarly- I don't think it's "show me a cool semi-working website and I'm on-
board", but more of- "Show me something that I recognize immediately as a
really good idea, even though it's kind of crappy in execution."

I'm reminded of what Jong-Moon Kim wrote about Pixar movies:
[http://jiggity.com/kitchen.html](http://jiggity.com/kitchen.html)

> Pixar uses a structure known as a braintrust to delicately examine works-in-
> progress. The braintrust is composed of some of the best storytellers of our
> generation who take a supreme effort in understanding the director's intent
> before offering suggestions.

> What's most incredible is that this feedback from the world-class cabal is
> merely suggestive and the director has the power to reject changes. The
> braintrust is aware of the danger of heavy-handed feedback squashing the
> soul of the product.

> New ideas are delicate and brittle. What starts off as a ugly, tangential
> feature later grows up to become a fundamental part of the final product.

------
volent
Cached version :
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BXa1Cn2...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BXa1Cn2TzMIJ:www.hailpixel.com/articles/technical-
cofounders+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

------
eldude
> A close friend once said that, in order of seriousness, relationships go
> “business partners, spouses, cats & dog.”

Prioritizing cofounders over spouses surrenders Silicon Valley's moral
authority and undermines its cultural leadership.[1]

I've always found prioritizing cofounder over spouse a sad depressing
commentary on priority of money over change by bad actors. Innumerable
colleagues and VCs have quoted me unprompted, "You can divorce a wife, but you
can't divorce a cofounder," leading me to doubt their integrity; It's only
true if you prioritize your business over your vows.

It is far more difficult to succeed when prioritizing family, but such is the
burden of leadership. Moral authority, a prerequisite of true leadership,
derives from such commitments.

[1] Power derived when a leader embodies the values of their followers.

------
veb
I know this is a bit snarky, but honestly: ask.

It is the startup world, there's risks everywhere. Find someone, and if you
kick off well with them, then go ahead and try.

If you spend too much time bothering about details like the perfect technical
cofounder or non-technical cofounder... chances are you're not putting your
time and effort into your actual startup.

In my experience, it's simply been the potential of something that attracts
people who actually have a passionate interest. They're the best people.
Technical or not.

------
graycat
Two remarks:

First, for non-technical founders, get technical yourself or at least get
started: Get a computer, settle on Linux or Windows, get documentation, read,
type in code, get it to work, and then build at least something simple.

Second, for technical people considering being a technical co-founder, here
are is a threat you should watch for: Basically, the people in the start up,
especially the non-technical people, may believe that it is in their interest
to block your entering the company or, if you enter, throttle or block your
contributions and push you out of the company.

Here those people may understand that what they are doing is bad for the
company but believe that it is, still, good for them in the company. In the
B-school subject _organizational behavior_ , such behavior is called _goal
subordination_ because the person places the good of the company lower (
_subordinates_ it) to what they see as their own good.

In particular, a non-technical person, might work hard to hire a technical
person with the intention that the technical person will fail so that, then,
the non-technical person can have an excuse for not being more technical
themselves.

Can such wacko things actually happen? Heck yes.

------
bsdpython
How to attract a technical cofounder? Have several of the following... 1\.
Previous success at starting a company 2\. A budget 3\. Previous success at
raising funds 4\. If it's B2B, have industry connections and sales experience
5\. If it's B2C, some serious expertise in the field 6\. Some sort of evidence
that you are a true hustler and not starting a company because you are bored
with your day job

------
aidos
Seems like good advice.

I'm in the fortunate position of being on the technical side and, I suspect
like a lot of technical people, I've turned down plenty of 'opportunities'
from ideas people. If you were coming to me hoping to get me on board with
your idea, offering anything other than equal footing on the equity side would
be a total non-starter. In the majority of cases even that would probably be a
crappy deal.

One thing with this:

 _" If you just need someone who can understand your vision and create the
software which allows it to function, you are searching for an employee."_

I guess it depends on how technical your product is but I think in the
beginning you need to have serious commitment from the technical team. They
_really_ need to care about getting the product right or dropping what they're
doing on the weekend to deal with a support request. It could mean the
difference between life and death for your company.

------
rhapsodyv
And the answer to the eternal question: “Where do I find a salesperson
cofounder?” ? :-/

~~~
groktor
or alternatively, "where do I find a good marketing/bus dev co-founder?"

------
tkiley
I'm the technical co-founder. My bizdev/sales co-founder found me when he read
an article about my product. He'd considered building a business in the same
market space, but lacked the technical resources, so when he discovered my
fledgeling but ramen-profitable product, it was a natural fit.

In the two years after we started working together, we grew our customer base
about 40x.

I'm not sure if this is a scaleable answer to the "where do I find a technical
co-founder" question, but it has worked at least once. :) If you're a non-
technical person looking for a startup opportunity, I'd recommend it.

------
puppetmaster3
May I also ask: how do I get a paycheck, w/o working?

Also, how do I get someone to work for me for free, and I'll mange the cap
table?

And last: is it possible in non fantasy world to be gainfully employed, but
not even know HTML?

------
xchaotic
Easy, pay me more than the competition (big corporates, public sector etc)
Because of the increased risk of default, you have to offer more. So convince
seed/angel funders and then seek me

------
mrfusion
On the other side of it, what's the best way for a technical founder to find a
sales/business guy? (Has HN discussed that before?)

~~~
bryanlarsen
You grow them, just like the article says. I think this applies as much or
even more to sales and/or bizdev than to technical co-founders.

------
plehoux
You become one yourself.

------
hiou
The biggest problem I have with getting an offer to be a technical co-founder
is that if this person's main interest is in business, why are the not already
rich? A developer's main area of focus is not money so they are less apt to
accumulate much, but if your central focus in life is business, then I can't
really have a good feeling about your skills if you are not currently rich or
have built a successful company. It's like saying you are a great developer
but you don't have any software or code to show for it.

------
michaelochurch
Tech cofounders might be in a state of frictional shortage. Before people
argue with me (it's rare that I'd call engineering talent in a state of
"shortage") I think it's important to note that fault lies with the business
co-founders. By "frictional shortage", I mean that cultural factors (low
social status of technical people, due to a half-century of us selling
ourselves poorly) prevent the market (with equity a larger factor in this
market than salaries, because tech base salaries are quite reasonable) from
clearing.

Right now, business co-founders trade 2-4 points higher on a 10-point scale.
I'm a Tech 8, and a Biz 8 wouldn't, realistically speaking, mix with me. A Biz
6 would try to push me down to 5-10% equity, with the cliff and vesting that
would make me more of an employee than co-founder anyway, and take the CEO
job.

A Biz 6 can deliver Sequoia on an idea, and a Biz 8 is turning away executive-
level offers and board positions and 11-to-3, 7-figure jobs at VC funds. A
Tech 8 is happy to break $140k and get interesting projects. I've written at
length about this skew: [https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/an-
insight-o...](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/an-insight-on-
the-damaso-effect/) . Biz 8 have other, very lucrative, options. A Tech 8 who
is objectively just as good at his job (and a harder job) doesn't have the
same.

The Tech 8+ drop out of the co-founder market around age 30 (and it's rare
that someone even gets to Tech 8 before that age) because they get used to Biz
5's offering 2.5% equity to work on someone else's idea (as opposed to a
shared idea with hard technical problems at the core).

See, too many business co-founders want to charge so much for the investor-
level contacts, like they're Marlo fucking Stanfield charging $10 million for
"a connect", that people usually trickle out before they even get to the Tech
6+ (much less Tech 8+) level. Jeff Dean stays in-house at Google for a reason.

Technical co-founders wouldn't be hard to find if the market could clear.
They're hard to find because, while early-stage startups can't pay market
salaries for understandable reasons, sociological factors keep equity amounts
at shortage prices for good tech talent.

------
biomimic
This depends highly on whether the company is funded or not.

------
rasz_pl
Ideas are worthless, its all in the execution. If all you have is cute ideas
go scam people on the Kickstarter.

------
skyboxone
Ask them: how much time do you waste endlessly commenting on ridiculous
articles on Hacker News?

If it's anything more than zero, they are a poser and fake.

