
Ask HN: How did you meet your co-founder(s)? - rblion
Curiosity.
======
preinheimer
I used to work for eDonkey as their support minion, a file sharing program of
yesteryear. We had forums, and a user there was far more helpful to all the
newbs than I was. We started chatting from time to time, then more often, he
even came up to meet me while I was down in NYC for the summer.

We kept in touch, he helped me manage a dedicated server I'd bought somewhere.
I felt bad because he was managing it and I wasn't paying him, he felt bad
because he was using it and not paying for it.

Then I started [https://wonderproxy.com/](https://wonderproxy.com/) he was a
natural choice for co-founder, and we've been growing ever since.

~~~
merkury7
_I felt bad because he was managing it and I wasn 't paying him, he felt bad
because he was using it and not paying for it._

Cute, it's like a sysadmin love story

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BrentOzar
Met one of my two co-founders during a project. In a room full of
argumentative type-A personalities, she was the only one building bridges and
moving the project forward. That really stood out for me as a huge asset in
any team.

The other co-founder and I met in a hallway at a database conference, then
tried our first startup a few months later. It failed - but it was so much fun
failing with him that I figured we should keep trying on other projects
because at least failing wouldn't feel bad.

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buu700
I met my cofounder for Cyph in kindergarten.

It was immediately apparent that Josh and I were destined for great things
when we attempted to plant the world's first pizza tree (by burying pizza
crust near the school playground).

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rhubarbcustard
Blogging.

We both blogged in the same niche for many years and exchanged a few emails,
cross-posts and that kind of thing. Last year, I realised I was never going to
make a successful business by myself and started to look for a non-technical
co-founder - I emailed Geoff because I knew that he knew his stuff in our
niche and he seemed like a good bloke.

My email was something along the lines of, "I'm thinking of building
something, no idea what, fancy it?", the time was right for him and we have
been profitable almost from day one.

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austenallred
On /r/startups

It's been 1.5 yrs, have been through hell and back with him, can't imagine a
better co-founder. We'll start companies together until we die.

I recognize this is not the recommended way of finding a co-founder;
statistically the chances of it turning out like it did are very low. But it
worked out, so I don't care.

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supercoder
Prison.

~~~
jbrooksuk
Upvoting because I like that you found someone else in a usually "not so good"
situation and made something from it :)

May I ask what it is you do?

------
gdonelli
Matt and I were intern at Apple in 2006. We shared the same apartment in
corporate housing in Cupertino. After that summer, we never talked again for 7
years.

I ended up joining Apple for 4 years in California. He decided to stay in the
midwest, eventually got married and settled down in Minneapolis. About 7 years
later we reconnected over Twitter and we started working together.

Today we do [http://astropad.com](http://astropad.com)

------
shubhamjain
One little question to the posters here: Did you every doubt that your best
smart buddy, might not have the same level of dedication?, might not pull
through?

~~~
scrabble
I'd like to apologize to my friend for whom I was the buddy who didn't pull
through. But to be honest, I was at a different point in my life and had super
low confidence. I'd like to think it would be different now.

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karim79
At a team day at eBay (Germany). While working there as a frontend dev, I had
attended a "team day" which involved stunt driving, and was placed on a team
with this new frontend guy who had just started. He told me about his (at the
time, free) image optimization API, which is known today as
[https://kraken.io](https://kraken.io)

We became friends, having frequent discussions about how such a service could
be monetized. Three weeks later, he offered me a 50% split. Shortly
afterwards, we founded a company and started serious work on Kraken Image
Optimizer, without ever looking back.

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TomSawada
College. We did a finance case competition and we won, so we thought it'd be a
good idea to work together. We wrote/edited a book "Words of the Music
Masters" (failed), then we coached a few seminars for college students/recent
graduates (failed!) and finally some consulting (sucked). That was 6 years
ago. We both took jobs, now we're back. It's really interesting, we've failed
miserably together and starved, we're kinda bulletproof now. Besides, being
hungry but not alone made us closer, we're like brothers now. seriously.

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runj__
LinkedIn, they sent a mysterious message saying they were looking for someone
for a "project". Wouldn't normally answer anyone on LinkedIn but it turned out
to be one of the best decisions ever.

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soukiab
He's a friend, met him through is brother who is the same age as I, ~6 years
ago. So we spend our weeks and weekends, on and off work, together.

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circlingthesun
On a Kloofing trip. I invited a friend who invited her boyfriend who invited
my cofounder. My friend never showed up, but her guests did.

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Beached
I met mine at a swing dance event in Pittsburgh, a location more then 7 hours
apart from our home cities. Later happened to run into him while we were both
at a dance event in Chicago. Started working together 1 week after Chicago.

It may be worth noting that I am not co-founder, but was rather hired on with
partial ownership when his side project went to business?

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probablyfiction
Church. She was a teenager and I was in my early 20s. Fast forward 14 years,
and we find ourselves starting a company together.

------
hugs
One through a warm intro from a mutual professional acquaintance. And another
through an awesome project they posted to HN.

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Riley
My SO brought me to a planning meeting for a non-profit, and I met their
founder there. We hit it off, and founded a startup together several months
later when the time was right. I think it was good to start off being friends
first. And having a shared network of friends and business associates helped
speed things up.

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ci5er
First-first: Friend-of-a-Friend (FoaF). (I didn't have enough of the right
kind of friends...)

First-rebooted: Snagged from first/large customer

Second: Snagged from the Series A VC team mid-transaction (that was weird)

Everything else: sometimes my accumulated acquaintance list, sometimes FoaF,
and often from a planning-stage target-market customer.

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charlesgreen
I've had 3 cofounders over the years. 1\. school 2\. hired them a few times
and added them to the team a couple years later 3\. lean startup and tech
event

All in all, I recommend picking someone you have known for a few years. Can be
friends but usually best when it is first a business relationship.

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Fradow
At a hackathon, we won together. On another one, she pitched her project to me
and I decided to join her.

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AndrewKemendo
I looked through some of the technically minded sub-reddits for people who had
posted interesting technology or demonstrations that they had built.

Just so happened that my now co-founder home brewed an in home AR game with a
laptop backpack and AR glasses and had put up the demo video.

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david_p
First startup: high-school classmates.

Second startup: they were looking for a technical co-founder and talked to
mutual friends of ours (who put us in touch)

Third and current startup: former engineering-school acquaintances,
reconnected via LinkedIn when they started looking for a CTO.

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mokkol
The founder met me when he was doing some freelance job in a startup where I
was working. We are a perfect fit, he is the guy doing Design + Marketing and
I am doing everything related to coding.

We founded: nusii.com (Web proposal software)

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buttsex
College roommate. We named our two-man agency after our old college apartment.

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andersthue
First ones I met in school, next through business partners, none worked out
good.

Now I am alone doing much better, starting to see what I did wrong and I am
getting ready to consider partnering with others again.

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sarreph
University — became best friends in junior year and realised our complementary
skillsets (strategy/design, coding) could be put to good use fleshing out
whatever startup ideas we had!

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dopeboy
Still looking.

~~~
davemel37
In a HN thread...

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travjones
On the school bus; We've been best friends for about a decade.

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crusaderwolf
Was scrolling pages after pages of friends in facebook, found a friend who was
my junior in college days, we then went on to create www.grepslash.com .

One thing facebook is useful for.

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um304
At university. Although we rarely interacted in the university, but happened
to work on a project about 5 years later and realized we shared passion for
startups.

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pmelendez
He was my first boss when I was a junior out of college. 14+ years later we
are starting a venture together. Also my wife who I met when I was in college.

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AbraKdabra
A friend of a friend is the CEO, he is a really creative guy and I wanted to
work on a new project, the other cofounder was her girlfriend.

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altharaz
We hacked the network of our school :). BTW, we have now founded a
Cybersecurity company.

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mw67
online, through a job listing website, to start making a prototype. that was
2.5yrs ago!

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onion2k
At a tech networking event.

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misiti3780
High school - he was my friend, now he is my brother-in-law - go figure

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fla
Previous workplace.

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skram
via Twitter for a challenge.gov challenge. We ended up winning and turning the
software into a company and got a government contract.

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weakwire
Univercity

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pseudozach
at our day job

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jtfairbank
College.

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philippnagel
Reddit.

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nighthawk24
School

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benstein
in a bar

