
How to find direction as a prospective CTO founder? - naamicas
So, I&#x27;m a fullstack dev. I&#x27;ve worked at startups, worked at small and medium companies, and worked as a contractor.<p>I&#x27;m currently working as a contractor exclusively, and really would like to found (or cofound) a company this year. I can contribute 40+&#x2F;hrs a week to this.<p>I would really like to found a small company that is tech-focused, with a stack that can be maintained by 1-2 devs. I am not looking for investment, IPOs, whatever. Just a sustainable SaaS (or otherwise) that can do 10-50k revenue per month on the longer term.<p>My main problem is that my real passion and interest lies in web technology itself, not something that is _delivered by_ web technology. I am fully confident I could CTO a small enterprise and build an effective product, I just don&#x27;t know what that product should be. Do I simply need a business-minded cofounder?
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tetek
I think finding a business partner is a great idea, unless you are making some
kind of low-level software, let's say db, web server etc.

I was at the same situation a year ago, and I was browsing through some
startup oriented fanpages, where I found a guy who posted comment like "I'm a
construction site manager, and have an app idea, looking for cofounder". I
contacted him (this was over a year ago), we talked, but eventually it didn't
work out, we were based in different cities, and I was still finishing my
master degree.

He hired a software house to make the whole product for him. He was able to
get couple customers, but the software house was just very slow, made a lot of
bugs, and made him pay a lot of money for fixes.

Couple months ago, he wrote me back and basically said he needs me as CTO. We
met, shook hands and started working. I've redesigned and made a new iOS app,
fixed backend and released a solid update. He is talking to customers,
gathering feedback, analyzing keywords, buying ads.

It is working splendidly, and I see that this relation is somehow a Nash
equilibrium. I don't have construction site knowledge or contacts. He doesn't
have any technical background. So we are both better off working together.

It's still early days, and a lot of work ahead of us, but this is my first
side-project that already helps people in the real world.

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sheraz
Great story. What was that startup oriented fan pages you mentioned?

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tetek
It was a fb fanpage of a local meetup group. They make events to integrate
startup scene. Invite speakers, have time for networking or pizza. I'm based
in europe, but I'm pretty sure you will find sth like this in any bigger city.

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CyberFonic
Short answer: YES you do need a competent business minded cofounder.

Technology is a component of many solutions to real world problems. It is a
common trap to have solutions in search of problems.

Perhaps you could look at your past contracts and identify which industries
you enjoyed working in the most. You could then go back and talk with contacts
you made in those industries. Based on those conversations you might be able
to identify people who have a big problem that you can help create a solution
for.

BTW you mention having a couple of devs, etc. Do you have funds to pay
salaries for them or do you need the cofounder help you with getting starting
capital? The more people you expect to work for 12+ months for sweat equity
alone, the less likely you are to be able to successfully launch a new
business.

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bdiu
Given your goals and interests, I would focus on building a focused solution
for a problem you see in and around the work that you've done in the past.

Focusing on a problem space you understand and you yourself might be a
potential customer for gives you a lot of advantages. If your solution can
accomplish two big goals 1) make developers happy and 2) increase efficiency
(reduce bugs, make releasing functionality faster, etc) then you'll have
something worthwhile on your hands.

From a pure operational perspective, building a single focused tool that is
low cost enough for a solo developer to gladly pay for or for an employee to
gain easy sign off on will make support and sales much easier. By focusing on
a simple solution, you also limit the breadth of the functionality you have to
maintain. This will allow you to focus on refining and improving the value
proposition and help minimize spaghetti code. It also makes growth possible
with a small team.

A good example of this might be jell.com which helps teams handle standup and
work visibility. Making a SaaS product with a low initial cost means you
accumulate revenue over time. Compared with traditional software/app sales,
you have a much easier path to sustainable monetization.

Good luck on the effort. I also recommend reading into the lean startup
methodology and taking small iterative steps and measuring their impact to get
started.

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avaer
If you don't know what area you want to work in, you should go find the
communities that interest you and engage with them. This is regardless of
whether you're looking to collaborate, or to solve someone's problems
professionally.

Also, throw your contact information into the world. Fruitful relationships
have started just like that, even on HN.

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naamicas
Fair enough, very reasonable advice. I've updated my profile with contact
info.

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soneca
I believe you would enjoy building a developer's tool startup. The only
problem is that developers are a hard consumer niche to get revenue from. Not
impossible, but harder than, say B2B.

I am building myself a SaaS product with the same goal of a significant
monthly revenue, but no explosive growth. If you want we can exchange ideas on
how to find a good product to build and how to build it (from a business point
of view). My contact is in my profile.

Good luck!

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SirLJ
Different idea: If you have an interest into stock markets/business in
general, look into stock market trading robots, you don’t need developers,
cofounders or customers... I think it is the perfect life style business
model...

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naamicas
Sounds interesting for sure. Can you provide any direction on where a dev
could start reading up on such things?

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SirLJ
This is a classical AI/ML problem if you will, so the best approach is to get
as much data as you can and start back testing any trading idea you can come
up with, until you find one that will work for you, after that , the
automation portion is easy, every discount brokers offers an API for the
orders execution...

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naamicas
Do you believe this is approachable by a developer without significant ML
experience, nor trading experience, but with significant motivation?

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SirLJ
Absolutely! I was like you and I am not even a developer...

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chakrachi
I can relate with you, I have similar passions/issues.

Find me on twitter or GitHub @chakrachi to connect ^~^

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flignats
Contact info needed.

Me: front end dev (ng) / IM / biz dev

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naamicas
I've updated my profile.

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Arthanari
how do i connect with you?

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naamicas
I've updated my profile.

