
Ask HN: What should we do - warewolf
We need some advice on our next step. We currently have a product that is in the App Store that we launched for user validation. The problem is, we now have that validation but the product isn&#x27;t scalable. We outsourced the development so the backend isn&#x27;t what it should be it crashes and has lots of bugs.<p>The reason we did this is because my cofounder and myself are design and marketing backgrounds. However it served its purpose as a Validation tool. We are now planning on doing a Burbn --&gt; Instagram move. We will be using our feedback to build a better product and hit the market on larger scale.<p>My question is should we find a Technical CoFounder who can fix the issues on the product we have? Which we all know finding a quality CoFounder is hard. Where is the best place to find CoFounders?
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hartator
I am actually looking for a CTO position at an early startup. Hit me up by
email: my HN username @gmail.com I'll send you more info. about myself and I
would love to hear more about what you are trying to build.

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brianwawok
So question.. what determines "passed" vs "failed" user validation?

My question for that is you get so caught up in the excitement of a new
product.. it is very easy to say "hey 10 people liked it, good product". How
do you know the product is REALLY user validated?

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warewolf
20000 DAU 15% of the users open 100 times a day. This is higher than snapchats
early stage data.

However we have recently been told by a big name investor he doesn't consider
anything under 30k user validation. So I could be wrong.

My concern is that the product has bugs and backend isn't ready to support
massive growth.

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niftich
Load test your backend -- not the 'actual' production backend but a copy with
the same characteristics. That is, call your backend functions in an order and
manner that's consistent users' actual usage, with as many simultaneous
requests as you can. There are many products that can do this, one free one is
JMeter [1].

This will help you figure out if you can scale your way out of the problem
(i.e. throw more servers at it), or if it's fundamentally broken beyond
saving.

[1] [http://jmeter.apache.org/](http://jmeter.apache.org/)

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warewolf
I'll do some more research on this thanks.

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omginternets
I'd say this all depends on the nature of your product. Having a technical
cofounder is always helpful, but not _a priori_ necessary.

What are you making? I may be interested in joining as CTO.

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warewolf
Mainstream Slack send me an email brayson@letsprattle.com

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bbcbasic
You may consider hiring a contractor too. Less commitment on your part than
giving away part of the biz. Especially if you just need some performance
tuning.

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warewolf
This is something we are discussing as well. We are weighing all of our
options but gotta move quickly. We think having a technical cofounder has its
advantages for championing ideas, improvements and reassurance. Its hard to
find talent that sees beyond the code that doesn't want to work on their own
ideas by themselves.

We also think finding the right contractor is smart idea too because it will
allow us to make the changes without equity like you said. Which than we can
scale the product on our own to get the traction/funding we need to hire the
right CTO.

We've really only had one investor question us on not having a CTO anyway.

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webtechgal
> Where is the best place to find CoFounders?

I'd say you're there already!! :-) All the best.

