
Show HN: Find a co-hacker for your project - bloatedcarpel
https://projectboard.xyz/
======
git-pull
Here's why I advise extreme caution when partnering up if you're a programmer:

If you have a co-founder or co-hacker that goes postal, off on their own,
acting shady, behaving badly, for whatever reason, you're lost at sea. If you
don't have a safety net or savings in place to catch you, you're going to be
living on the street. Thanks to someone else.

You can't control other people. Your co-whatever could become a saboteur. The
reasons why and how don't matter, it's about the ramification on your life and
how deeply it reverberates.

If that's the only thing you have going - your life is wrecked. You're
humiliated by being kicked out of what you created. You have to start over,
with an added penalty to all your family you can't support, your networking in
tatters, and so on. Make no mistake - have a co-founder - you're one person
away from having collateral damage done to your life.

And they'll probably make the company tank afterwards. The main reason a co-
founder was there was to keep each other's ideas/egos/visions/whatever in-
check. Without that personality mechanism in place, the business is
rudderless.

So consider me a skeptic to this whole idea of sharing when I coded everything
without safeguards in place for myself. That's the _exact opposite_ reason I
run my own thing. This is the _one_ thing where _I_ get control.

If you got cash stashed away somehow, or other cash flow sources, you're in a
safer spot to take your chances with a co-founder and bounce back should stuff
hit the fan.

~~~
jv22222
This comment makes it seems like it's a foregone conclusion your business will
be a success.

Yet, the odds of success are _very_ small... If you have a co-founder... or if
you don't have a co-founder.

In other words, it will probably be nothing to do with your co-founder that
you end up on the street!

And, while I'm on that subject. DON'T leave your day job when you start your
side project. Just keep your day job until you're making enough money with
your side project before you leave!

~~~
git-pull
> This comment makes it seems like it's a foregone conclusion your business
> will be a success.

Startups are a game of optimism. The mindset is: in it to win it.

It's totally OK to be visualizing the finish line and your equity turning into
a Tesla, house, or yacht. And you're all sharing the success. It's a huge
motivator.

> And, while I'm on that subject. DON'T leave your day job when you start your
> side project. Just keep your day job until you're making enough money with
> your side project before you leave!

You can't survive in this field on a 4 hour work week.

Let's be a bit more generous and assume we've built a savings with full time
job first. What is the other founder bringing to the table while the
programmer produces tangibles?

Billing code, dashboard, homepage, getting users, retaining users, design/ux,
debugging, customer service/support. This takes months of grueling work.

You have to go all-in. And a co-founder that's less than 100% is a serious red
flag. Why would I want to share ownership with someone who saw this as a side
project, when I view it as center of my life?

Get what I mean?

~~~
jv22222
Don't get me wrong I think having a co-founder is often a bad idea. I just
don't like any of the reasons you mentioned.

Hmm. Let's see.

1) It’s very hard to convince a cofounder to join an unproven business. And
that is going to waste a lot of your time looking for someone. When you could
be building your business instead.

2) You likely won’t need to build anything to validate your product if you use
duct-taping, wizard of oz, lean startup. And after it's validated, well, just
go ahead and build the mvp using the minimal toolset.

3) You can hire someone from a site like Upwork and in many cases they will be
a lot cheaper than you are and still pretty good.

4) With frameworks like rails, laravel, bootstrap and a mountain of plugins
it's pretty easy to build products that can make money in your spare time (10h
week).

> Billing code, dashboard, homepage, getting users, retaining users,
> design/ux, debugging, customer service/support. This takes months of
> grueling work.

If any of those things are grueling for you:

a) Are you sure this is the right game for ya? ;)

b) Are you sure someone didn't already make a lib for that?

c) Outsource them!

Edit: If the main reason you want a co-founder is because you don't want to go
it alone then you could fix that by joining a site like indi-hackers and
talking to other founders as you work on your stuff. Maybe join a mastermind
group. Etc.

~~~
git-pull
I think this illustrates a mentality of undervaluing programmers. I think it
underestimates how hard and intensive the job is. _I think prospective co-
founders do this exact thing to programmers_.

Why would someone go the extra mile, to work late into the night, for someone
who just viewed them as commodities at the lowest bidder? Were any successful
startups you can think of built on Upwork? (I think Digg's MVP was on oDesk.)

Creating a sense of authenticity, [1] mindfulness of the product, aesthetic,
value is hard to outsource. Unless you have someone sink their teeth in it.

It's just not the trend I've seen at startups.

> b) Are you sure someone didn't already make a lib for that?

As for the the library part. Just billing code alone is consuming my life
right now. Sure, there's the stripe-python wrapper over the API, and djstripe.
Which even goes all the way to create a database parity with Stripe's
resources.

Can djstripe handle multiple subscriptions for a customer? Will it
automatically propagate plans configured locally so they exist on Stripe's
end? Can djstripe recover from inconsistencies between the customer ID in
local storage and stripe's remote (a custom intervention would be required).
Does it have a flow for handling stripe elements (the widget that accepts
billing info), creating a user (if logged out) and accepting the source? I can
list more.

Am I to expect an outsourced programmer is going to consider all these cases?
Or do I have to wait for customers to drop off?

There are superb libraries, permissively licensed ones. But no one-size-fits-
all to give a workflow that looks top notch. A great deal of the skill when
programming isn't just data-in/data-out, but gluing and synthesizing the parts
cohesively. In this sense, there's a great differentiation from a programmer
with less skill, or giving less effort, and someone taking the time to make it
fit in.

User's have an expectation of quality, typically based off the "craftsmanship"
of other sites they visited. There are competitors, and having stuff like a
good UX, somebody in your timezone, immediately accessible, "in the zone" on
where your product is / its philosophy, that speaks english to debug things,
all help.

[1] It doesn't have to be a household name.

~~~
jv22222
I think we're violently agreeing and also we have somewhat similar side
projects (i.e. helping other devs) ;)

------
rgbrenner
Sorry bloatedcarpel, but I've always thought this is a terrible idea...

I've been a solo-founder for 15 years, and I'll admit a co-founder would be
awesome. But starting a company is not a walk in the park.. things are going
to go wrong. It's not going to go as planned, you're going to feel like
quitting at some point... And you have to trust this person you just met to
handle that, resolve differences of opinion on the company, etc all while
barely knowing how this person behaves under pressure, with their livelihood
on the line (or their unrealistic dreams of riches).

It would be some kind of miracle if it actually works out with a random
person. I would never do it.

~~~
jnordwick
> I've been a solo-founder for 15 years

> I would never do it.

So, it sounds more like you would never have a cofounder anyways. This idea
probably isn't aimed at somebody who after 15 years still can't find someone
available that they can trust.

(P.s. dear hn, fix your formatting ability to bee able to have a line break
without a paragraph break, or maybe block quote actually be useable)

~~~
Flavius
I don't get why this guy gets downvoted. He's right. Who in the right mind
would take advice from a solo-founder? That's like taking marriage advice from
a monk. Of course you can do it yourself and it could work, but that's not the
point. Even if this project will fail at helping people to find a co-founder,
it's still a better exercise than just dismissing the idea.

------
dktp
This is a very stripped down version of a platform I'm currently creating with
a friend. I love the idea, obviously. And I like the implementation. Simple
(no registration too!) and understandable.

And unlike many others here I think something like this is very much missing
and could, in fact, bring a lot of interesting projects to life. Yes, like
everyone else mentioned, there are a ton of problems with finding a co-founder
like this. But not every project needs to be a company and not every project
needs to make money. Especially on the web.

Which is why the platform I'm building tries to focus on non-profit projects.
Or rather, projects you want to build/help build because you want the project
to exist, rather than to make money off of it.

An example project that I wanted to make some time ago: I want(ed) to create a
platform with all hip-hop artists, where anyone could write an opinionated,
subjective, hopefully positive introduction to an artist they admire. The idea
behind it is that there's plenty of artists that get bad reviews/critics but
have a huge fanbase - so the fans could write what they like about the artist
so much, rather than just seeing the "industry-respected" reviews and critics.
Basically, get introduced to a new artist through someone who loves him
already, rather than from someone who mainly critics him.

Now I'm very confident in my web development (and hip-hop) knowledge. But I
have no eye for design whatsoever. I couldn't make a beautiful interface to
save my life. And the project is not start-up material since there's no
business model around it and it's hard to get someone you know interested who
can design and is interested in hip hop (or at least my project idea). In my
circle that left me with 0 people. But I think a platform like poster's, if
popular enough, could bring projects like these to life.

------
throwaway_491
I can't agree more. I understand the Silicon Valley bias against solo founders
given that most celebrated founders are very young and in your twenties you
don't yet have a well developed support system. Building a company is hard but
it's really not that much harder than other things that are truly worth doing
and haven't been done yet. Virtually everything worth doing is about failing
repeatedly as you try for the few bits of success that you build on and turn
into something truly worthwhile and this repeated failure is going to hurt
your self-esteem badly unless you have a strong support system. If you already
have a support system, you may be better off without a co-founder unless there
is someone you almost have to have. I've had success building companies more
than once as a solo-founder. Having tried it now with a co-founder, I would be
very, very wary of doing it that way again, and I didn't try it with a
"random" person.

------
alain94040
Mandatory post: Finding a Co-Founder
([https://medium.com/p/259bb428377f](https://medium.com/p/259bb428377f))

The best co-founder is someone you’ve already worked with.

~~~
onion2k
That article conflates "least risky" with "best".

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mzzter
I noticed very few of the projects list skills that the poster has. This is a
big turnoff for any potential collaborator. One would want to know what the
poster brings to the table skill-wise, too.

Then I tried submitting a project and realized why: I can’t find a field that
lets me add the skills I think I already have. Is it the optional “Specific
Skills Needed” field? If so, it’s unclear that it becomes the “Skills I
Already Have” section once rendered.

~~~
bloatedcarpel
Thanks! Fixed now.

------
kylesf
Seems like a really great idea for small projects to help grow your skills.
Also seems like a great place to spawn some open source projects.

As an aside, I think it would be neat to sort open source projects by
technical skills needed.

~~~
bloatedcarpel
Thanks! Added Open Source as an option.

------
quadcore
The biggest challenge I've seen so far to find a co-founder is that you need
good reasons to spend time with the person before you screw anything because
you actually dont "match" with the person. The process is awkward socially.

Therefore, meeting someone for the reason of wanting to co-found a company is
probably not the best way to find a cofounder. Going back to university or
going to hackatons works probably better.

Though, maybe what would work as an app for example would be to collaborate on
fake projects because that way you sure you wont screw anything.

~~~
bloatedcarpel
I agree with this sentiment with regards to more formal businesses. Like you
say, you don't want to screw those up. But for smaller, side projects, I think
this is usefull.

I also believe in the "shotgun" method of pushing out an MVP, guaging the
response, and seeing what sticks. This could be the perfect thing for finding
someone to build "shotgun" kinds of projects with.

~~~
rgbrenner
And if the MVP is successful.. then what? Aren't you back to the 'formal
business' problem?

~~~
bloatedcarpel
Yes, and individuals should be cautious about the terms they agree to when
people are interested in pairing up.

I used the term "co-hackers" on the site specifically, meaning people can pair
up to work on projects together, not necessarily as co-founders.

~~~
quadcore
I like co-hackers. Sounds exciting without being to formal.

------
Nuzzerino
I've seen idea boards and similar projects to these in the past. What
inevitably happens is the board gets flooded with lousy ideas, which are hard
to filter out or sift through. Credibility weakens, leading to a bias toward
people who don't see that as a red flag, and therefore a bias toward more bad
ideas.

I think that with a novel and effective solution, it may be possible to turn
the tables and bias toward the best ideas being most accessible.

Assuming you have to try something, how would you attempt to improve that
situation?

And finally, if someone claimed to have some promising ideas on how to improve
it, would _you_ be open to pursuing joining forces with them as a co-founder?
If not, what do you think might be a different strategy to take to have this
project stand out?

~~~
bloatedcarpel
I'm trying to implement voting, so valuable ideas needing co-hackers show
first (just need to find a way to integrate with airtable).

To your second question, I'd definitely be interested in hearing you out.

------
stochastic_monk
Does anyone else get this error?

"An error occurred during a connection to projectboard.xyz. SSL received a
record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. Error code:
SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG"

------
smoyer
I have a reasonably large computer screen but when I select a project, the
dialog is significantly taller than the screen and I have to scroll up to read
it top-to-bottom. As I read I scroll down (of course) and then have to scroll
back to the top to hit the close button. I suspect the portrait orientation
works better on a phone/tablet but this process means that I've lost my place
in the main list manipulating the dialog.

~~~
bloatedcarpel
Yes, I'm not too happy with Airtable's layout. Will be building this out as a
stand-alone web app.

------
richard___
I made something similar, didn't take off:
[https://pushboard.net/](https://pushboard.net/)

~~~
jarofgreen
Any thoughts as to why that you can share? Thanks :-)

------
alant
A lot of people are in need of a partner / cofounder including myself. However
just like dating, this is a hard problem to solve. I hope this helps!

------
xstartup
As someone who started 5 companies with different cofounders in last 10 years.
I've lost 50K with in first startup, 200K in second startup, 300K in third
startup, 500K in 4th startup and 5th startup is ongoing. Co-founders ripped me
out of this much money in all cases! All startups were making loss and I sold
each one of them for 10-20x the of my personal loss.

------
eterm
If anyone wants this in an easier to read format and without the double
scrollbars (and with far fewer trackers loaded) it's also available directly
at

[https://airtable.com/shrbKl9sxaFJqtjAN/tblzm60W80AwbPLJj?bac...](https://airtable.com/shrbKl9sxaFJqtjAN/tblzm60W80AwbPLJj?backgroundColor=gray&layout=card&viewControls=on)

------
muzani
I think this is a great idea. As someone who has worked with (and been screwed
over by) lots of people, my main advice to those using this is to just trust
your instincts. Your instincts are part of your decades of experience knowing
people. Most of the time, you'll know if someone is a shady type.

------
phoe-krk
"Specific Skills Needed" has no option of supplying user-provided skills. I
would like to insert Common Lisp there, but the most suitable option is
"other", which is _not_ specific at all.

~~~
bloatedcarpel
I included Common Lisp as an option. I don't think airtable allows for users
to input custom values. I'll need to think of a workaround.

------
chriszelazo
It makes me happy to see one of these populated by people motivated to do a
project. There were endless student projects like this in college to find a
___.

------
dharness
I find the airtable kind of cluttery. All the content is on the far left, why
not use the full width of the page?

Then it opens the description in this tiny little window...

~~~
bloatedcarpel
I agree. I'm open to using another service, but Airtable seems to be the best
fit for now.

------
bootcat
Great project, hope it works as advertised. I had asked for support in
hackernews for supporters and co founders who can contribute and grow a
product !

------
wolco
Great idea hope I remember this link when I'm in need of a partner.

------
vesche
It would be cool if you could search by language.

~~~
bloatedcarpel
Coding our country language? You can filter the view by coding language.

------
ytNumbers
McAfee Web Advisor has labeled your web site as not to be trusted. I was so
looking forward to seeing what you built. Perhaps your site has been
compromised in some way?

~~~
smoyer
Even John McAfee recommends you uninstall the McAfee security software.

