
Looking for a co-founder? post here (3 rules apply) - sharpshoot
Ok with all the cofounder finding going on. I thought i'd start a useful thread.<p>There are 3 rules<p>1. Put in your location in the comments
2. If there is someone in your local area looking for a cofounder meet them this weekend. 
3. Not too much spiel - keep it fairly enigmatic<p>Three rules. Go forth and conquer..
======
JesseAldridge
I know pg says you need co-founders, but I have a feeling that partnering with
a _stranger_ will hurt your chances of success more than it will help. I
remember Jessica saying a major cause of death in startups was founder
disputes (link: [http://www.grid7.com/archives/189_podcast-28-jessica-
livings...](http://www.grid7.com/archives/189_podcast-28-jessica-livingston-
of-y-combinator.html), around the 14 minute mark).

~~~
apexauk
I co-founded our startup after reading an ad for a hacker and convincing the
other guy to take me on as a partner instead of employee - we met for the
first time 2 years ago to talk about the startup that would be, today we've
got an angel-backed team. Meet new people and start work with them - it can
work, you'll soon find out if it doesn't. Keep in mind looking for people with
complimentary qualities though - I put our success 100% down to how we each
have a responsibility for well-defined "halves" of the company - me product &
tech, him sales, marketing, community, legal, biz dev etc.

~~~
sharpshoot
right on. Jesse's excuses above can be attributed to a lack of balls in
changing his situation.

Don't sit on the fence. Make stuff happen. This president's day weekend is
finding a cofounder weekend...

------
burnout1540
Okay, I'll start. I'm 24 and living in San Francisco. I'm a programmer but
would like to find another technical person to work with. I have three ideas
for a startup:

1\. An easy software solution for multivariate testing web pages. 2\. A bid
management tool for PPC. I'm thinking something like www.efrontier.com, but
for small and medium sized businesses. 3\. Totally different from the top two,
but I'm interested in a personalized (or well-balanced) news site. Findory
would be the best comparison. Of course, it failed, so I am a little bit
hesitant and I think relying on advertising as your only revenue source is
very risky. If you're interested in the latest technology that could be used
in this area, check out <http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~hinton/absps/sh.pdf>

My email address is in my profile.

~~~
cperciva
_My email address is in my profile._

The email address in your profile is only visible to you and the YC
management.

~~~
cawel
Then, when editing one's HN profile, it could indicate it better (whether the
info is shown publicly or not).

~~~
dcurtis
But News.YC prides itself on having both a terrible user interface and a
terrible user experience.

What kind of site calls a feature "noprocrast" without giving any detailed
information about what it does? Only news.yc!

\--edit

I wonder why I am being modded down. Maybe I said it too sarcastically.
News.YC really does have a terrible interface. Look at the account settings
page-- imagine yourself as a user who has never been there before. It's
confusing and poorly documented. I love this site for the content and the
simplicity, but Paul Graham is a programmer and spent very little time on the
user experience, which makes sense. I don't blame him.

But it is still a bad interface. I'm pretty sure 99% of people who fill out
the "email" field expect their email to somehow be visible to other users.
It's right next to another field that IS visible.

~~~
DaniFong
Shiny graphics do not a user experience make.

~~~
dcurtis
Of course not. Craigslist has an amazing masterpiece of an interface and uses
no icons/pictures at all.

~~~
DaniFong
There seems to be some disagreement over what we mean by 'user interface' and
'user experience'. Those who downmodded you probably thought 'I like using YC
news just fine thanks.'

When I hit the little ycn button on my dash, i'm immediately greeted with a
list of interesting articles, flanked by comments that are worth reading.
That's the most important part of the user experience for us, so here we stay.

~~~
dcurtis
Ah. The content here is great. I'm not denying that YC is awesome.

It just has a sub-par interface. Compared to other sites, it has a terrible
UI. It's not very user friendly, and it could be much more so.

------
asisproperty
I'm a technology entrepreneur in Provo, UT. I'm starting a "master-mind" group
here with other entrepreneurs, business owners, or executives of start-up's. I
want to keep it to under 10 people for now. If you're not familiar with the
master-mind concept, it's where entrepreneurs sit down all (in our case
Saturday once a month) day and brainstorm on eachothers' business ideas.

John D. Rockefeller attributed most of his success to his frequent master-mind
meetings with other business owners. In fact, 90% of what we now know as
Rockefeller's achievements came after Thomas Edison joined his master-mind
group.

If you are interested, send me an email and include your phone number:
adammichaelc@gmail.com

~~~
sharpshoot
so you aren't looking for a cofounder? Then i don't think this is relevant on
this thread.

------
zenlinux
I live in southeast New Hampshire, about an hour and a half drive from Boston.
I'm interested in meeting people who are involved with the intersection of
political activism and technology. I'm working on a web application to help
grassroots groups run letter writing campaigns and various other activities. I
enjoy working with Ruby and Rails and also run the NHRuby.org user group. Drop
me a line at sgarman at zenlinux dot com.

------
duke
1\. México. Will move as needed to get text twext.

2\. Este fin de semana en San Miguel de Allende. La semana que entra en
México, D.F. para <http://consol.org.mx>, buscando programador para
<http://twext.com/gig>

3\. <http://twext.com/overview> wants great hacker to add value to unicode
texts by formatting them twext. Why? So we can more easily learn natural
language like Español, Français, Português, etc etc. So we can communicate
better. Twext text works on computers and prints on paper. Today, a billion
people are learning English.

a.)
[http://olpcnews.com/content/localization/learning_language.h...](http://olpcnews.com/content/localization/learning_language.html)

b.) <http://more.read.fm/more_language#why.3F>

4\. Spiel: Lisp?

------
ph0rque
Hailing from State College, PA (home of Penn State) here. Working on an app
that aims to be a one-stop shop for open source learning: a cross between
Wikipedia (for students) and SourceForge (for teachers); with courses,
lectures, classes, and tutorials that anyone can create, edit and use.

Unfortunately, I was an absolute noob when I came up with the idea ~8 months
ago, so I am learning as I go along (ironically, what I really need is
something like ezLearnz to help accelerate my learning). As such, progress is
slower than I expected; I hoped to have launched ezLearnz by February, but I
still have some development to do. Hopefully, the launch will occur within a
week, give or take a few days, at <http://beta.ezlearnz.com> . I'm developing
in RoR, so a RoR developer would be ideal.

My contact details are in my (public) profile.

------
ubudesign
Santa Monica, CA.

If you are creating or have a nice idea for a client based on the webdav
protocal (web-based or desktop), we would be interested to work with you. We
have the server implemented already which works with existing clients and
developing other clients

------
rosy720
Looking for a Lead Developer for the coolest new music site. We're 2 fun,
music obsessed girls looking for the right engineer to make our great idea a
reality. We're located in San Francisco. email rose at imthemusic dot com

------
fergusom
Three liberating real-world app ideas on the table. Atlanta, 30.Two successful
ventures under belt. Looking for young-ish, VP of Engineering to partner / co-
found / code third.

~~~
carpal
"Real-world app ideas"

Elaborate?

~~~
fergusom
"Real world" is probably better described as tools & apps that will
dramatically change the way non-technical people do business. Email me at
fergusom@yahoo.com

~~~
wehriam
oh my

------
zapnap
I live on the Maine/NH/Mass border area about an hour north of Boston. A Ruby
developer. Lots of ideas, in various prototype stages. Looking to take some
time off of freelancing and focus on one of them with 1-2 other people for a
few months.

Not looking for an immediate cofounder as much as just other local
entrepreneurs with moxy to meetup with from time to time, exchange ideas and
skills. If things click, we can go from there...

------
carpal
24 living in Atlanta. Working on an accounting suite for small businesses
called Aloe. Very very raw pre-alpha quality build up at <http://aloe-
acct.com>

Looking for someone who can kick ass and take names. A Rails developer would
be great, but I'm also looking for someone who has business chops and a good
understanding of accounting principles.

~~~
Todd
I've been working on a similar concept on and off for almost a year. It's on
the shelf right now, but I wouldn't mind talking. I've done a lot of research
into Oracle and Peoplesoft and (to a lesser degree) Peachtree and Quick Books.
If nothing else, I could share some insights on database schema, etc. tl
@nospam@ onlyshallow.com

------
bluelu
Switzerland, Luxembourg or inbetween ;)

25, university degree, looking for a cofounder with experience in natural
language processing and clustering of documents (like
<http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~hinton/absps/sh.pdf> someone else posted below).
Preferentially Java. Idea is blog search related.

~~~
Tichy
I am in Munich and would be interested to meet.

~~~
davidw
And I'm in Innsbruck. I'll remember to look you up if I'm in Munich again -
feel free to come down here to visit some time for day of hiking or skiing or
something.

bluelu - where in .ch? I am in Zurich sort of regularly on business these
days.

~~~
bluelu
I live in Zurich. Maybe we can meet for a dring sometime soon. I will contact
both of you.

~~~
davidw
I guess so, because you don't have any information at all in your profile.

------
dderu
Hi all,

Ok, I'm not looking for a cofounder, but rather a lead developer to help
commercialize our software. We are a funded startup company in Salt Lake City,
UT. If interested, you can see our Craigslist ad at:
<http://saltlakecity.craigslist.org/sof/576377282.html>

------
wmeredith
Wade Meredith, 26, Kansas City

Graphic design, GUI, CSS+HTML, SEO, Blogging, Viral Marketing

wademeredith.com <\---portfolio site/contact me here.

------
thinkcomp
I'm in Palo Alto, California. I'm 24, I've been running my company for 10
years, and I'm looking for someone who knows how to sell the products I
already have to people. Or, if you'd like to help code new ones, that would be
cool, too.

------
cstejerean
I'm not exactly looking for a co-founder but I'm looking to meet smart people
with interesting ideas. I like working on interesting projects whether it's my
idea or someone else's. I'm located in Chicago (for now).

~~~
jdavid
Milwaukee, WI - We will be at techcocktail 7, you should come find us. we want
to meet people that like to work on fun projects.

~~~
pchristensen
I'll be there too.

------
dkokelley
While I'm not sure how well HN works as a co-founder-finder (confoundit), I'll
test the waters. :P

19 living in Santa Clarita, CA (just north of Los Angeles). Contact info, as
well as stuff I've done is available in my profile.

------
edw519
1 man band in Tampa. Wouldn't mind teaming with a LAMP / AJAX rock star.
Here's what I'm doing...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=114568>

~~~
rms
Do you need a drummer?

~~~
aston
Do you play?

~~~
rms
Lately, just Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I'll pick up a decent electronic kit
one of these days though.

------
davidw
It looks like a lot of people are simply interested in meeting other hackers
in their area, whether looking for co-founders or not. Maybe that should be
part of the site at this point.

------
ptn
Why must someone meet with the person who posted that same weekend?

~~~
imsteve
Just what I was about to say.

~~~
sharpshoot
This was posted at the start of the weekend. Some people are already getting
together.

Just imagine what would happen if you left this for next weekend. And then
felt a bit lazy, and put it off for another few days. Then didn't bother
meeting up at all. Chatted over IM, got offended by something someone said
because they were nervous and then never met at all.

Momentum breeds momentum. People have a huge inertia to changing their
situation.

If you want to stay how you are, then do it. Everyone around you will be
finding great people to work with and moving on.

~~~
imsteve
More tough for some of us who are broke and have no car to do this all within
one day.

------
gscott
I need a person into writing copy. If you like to write articles, sales text,
web page copy please let me know. Click on "gscott" to see what I am doing and
where it is going.

~~~
sharpshoot
what city are you in?

~~~
gscott
San Diego, California.

------
dizm
I'm in the Los Angeles area. Mainly looking for an interface graphics
designer, but anyone else could be interesting. Doing work in Seaside. phil at
dizm.com

------
pretzel
I am going to be in Leeds, UK in 2 months time working on a p2p
database/webserver. If you are interested, around the UK, and know Java, let
me know!

~~~
neilcauldwell
Pretzel - I'd be interested in meeting up. Graduated from Leeds last summer,
and I've been scrambling round in the startup world since.

Anyone else from the UK, let me know. The Songkick guys held a UK hackers
meetup last year, so we're probably due for another one soon. Maybe we could
do one in Stratford-Upon-Avon?!

~~~
danw
Theres BarCamp Brighton in a few weeks which will be attended by a load of
smart hackers. I suggest you check it out if looking for a cofounder:
<http://www.barcampbrighton.org/>

------
kirubakaran
I am not exactly looking for a co-founder right now but I'd definitely like to
make friends with ppl with startuppy interests.

Location: Seattle, WA.

(Proximity not a requirement)

------
michaelr
If anyone in western Canada (Calgary, Alberta) would like to toss around some
ideas send me an email (see profile).

------
memius
i'm a programmer fresh out of college in bergen, norway (planning to relocate
to boston or bay area). i'm 34, and i'm building a neural network to do speech
to text. i need another programmer, preferrably someone with more experience
than myself, especially with browsers and low-level signal processing.

~~~
duke
speech to text interests me because SLS (same language subtitling) now helps
many in india learn to read..

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/same-language-
subtitl...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/same-language-
subtitling.html)

synxi theory: with tools to easily sync/caption youtube, kaltura, etc, we can
make a fun way to learn/teach each other language, (ie engelsk, spansk, norsk,
etc)

------
andreyf
New York, NY - doesn't have to be a co-founder, just always happy to meet more
smart people.

fedorov@rutgers.edu

------
alaskamiller
It's nice to make friends but this isn't how you start up companies

~~~
edw519
From the responses on this page you appear to be correct.

What would you suggest?

~~~
alaskamiller
The pairings that are made today would be best to apply for future cycles
later in the year. Most people here you talk to will at best end up as an
employee in your eyes, it's going to be hard to treat them as equals when most
people are just throwing out soft skills they want filled.

My partner and I have known each other since high school but he went off to
college while I went into the military. After reconnecting we've been working
on small projects on and off for the past couple cycles to learn each others
quirks, styles, and most importantly trust.

And after attending our 5 year high school reunion it's really surprising that
people we haven't talked to in awhile turned out to be doing very similar tech
things as well, even if they're not in the area. It surely doesn't hurt to
look up Facebook some old friends and see what they're doing or what they're
working on. Maybe some hate big corporate culture as much as we all do here.

A better way would be for people to list out their work experiences or market
they're analyzing for their startup.

For example, one of the failed ideas I was researching for was event planning
and building an evite competitor. After 4 months I dropped it but I've kept
plenty of notes about trends, other websites, feature lists, specs, and so
forth. If anyone wants to discuss it feel free to get in touch with me at
alaska.miller@gmail.com. I also worked at a big corporation working with CMS
tools, search tools, publication, enterprise software for PLM processes. If
you want to build software to optimize those fields, again, get in touch with
me.

Likewise my current idea is dealing with Flash video and Flex environment, and
accessibility. If anyone has experience with that, please email me.

Start emailing people and sharing with them your ideas for feedback, then ask
them for another referral to someone else you can talk to until you've
literally have no one left to talk to. I've been keeping track of all my
conversations and people of interest in iCal and 37s Highrise and building my
business network. I'm also inviting local people to lunch to pick their
brains.

But it's completely youthful naivety to think this is the right way to cofound
a business together.

~~~
edw519
Thanks. Already been doing some of what you suggest. This just looked like an
interesting thread.

In the meantime, back to work.

~~~
alaskamiller
I've even got you stored in my little database as the ERP guy

~~~
edw519
Thanks. I never thought of describing myself that way, but who knows, maybe I
can find 2 chicks who dig it.

~~~
kirubakaran
They will, when you get acquired.

------
latrokles
Miami, FL... 25. Doing hardware stuff...

------
danw
sharpshoot: What's the reasoning behind Rule 3: 'Keep it enigmatic'?

I'm in Bristol, UK if anyone wishes to get in touch.

~~~
serhei
Guessing: you have to be serious enough about actually co-founding something
that you're willing to meet people in person to get opportunities.

