
TechCofounder.com: Meet Technical Cofounders for your Startup - byrneseyeview
http://techcofounder.com/
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andrewstuart
This basically seems to be a job board.

If I was building a system like this I would allow people to post an ad about
the company they are starting, their location, the people currently involved,
something about the vision of the company (without giving away too much), the
expectations of how much work is involved, are the other people full time,
equity on offer, the skills, experience and qualifications of the other co-
counders, does location matter, do you need to be in the same city etc etc
etc.

Instead this odd site assumes that searching for cofounders is about placing
job ads. A bit strange.

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jasonkester
I wonder if that's just emergent behavior.

It's possible that the first several postings along the lines of "Smart
programmer wanted as co-founder for new social networking concept (that also
shortens urls)", but it has since been noticed by recruiters as a "free job
board" and thus is filled with "Programmer/Analyst III with J2EE" positions.

Perhaps they need to work on the tech a bit to discourage the job postings and
encourage the actual entrepreneurial stuff.

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sachinag
Great execution. I know it's supposed to be anonymous, but I wouldn't require
that. Have optional fields for a website, blog, GitHub (or Google Code or
whatever the hell) public code repository, and projects they've worked on. I
noticed a number of people have links to one or more of these in the Short
Answers section; that to me shows that the site's focus on anonymous
communication may not be the right choice for everyone.

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webwright
Well done. IMO, there are three things that matter when scanning through a
list of potential co-founders. Skills (which you have well covered),
markets/areas that you love/hate (some people won't touch the enterprise,
others would never do a Twitter app), and availability (some people can't
afford to go without a salary and some can).

The anonymity angle is interesting, but I don't think it's critical. In fact,
it probably hurts. If I can't read their blog, check out their tweets, or scan
their LinkedIn profile, there's generally a lot less for someone to get
excited about. There will be a lot of "toad kissing" to find a prince.

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tlrobinson
Am I the only one who dislikes the term "coder"? I'm a programmer, dammit.

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cool-RR
I like how it's shorter to say and write.

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techcofounder
Yep, "programmer" is too long, which is why i used the term "coder". I'm a
programmer too and never thought it had any negative connotations.

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mixmax
You're basically dismissing everyone outside the US since it's not possible to
pick country in the sign-up. That's a lot of market potential you're wasting.

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techcofounder
@mismax, I hear ya and getting similar feedback from many others as well. I
will def build in int'l support asap!

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mixmax
No worries - and good luck. We Europeans look forward to joining the party :-)

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andrewstuart
This site seems to assume that only coders are valid cofounders. I would have
thought that the site would allow people of any area of expertise (business,
designers, finance, marketing, tech) to seek people to cofound companies with.
Why are coders the only valid cofounders?

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zach
Now now, I'm sure there are coders who have those areas of expertise as well!

Seriously, coders are not the only valid cofounders for this kind of company,
but they're the only necessary ones.

For example, I don't see a lot of coders begging for "a guy with the vision"
who can provide them with a "can't-miss idea" they can put "sweat equity"
into. It's always the other way around.

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TristanKromer
Umm...there's a hell of a lot more than "guy with the vision" necessary for a
startup in my opinion. But I guess that's from the perspective of someone who
spent days trying to learn contract law for his own startup until realizing it
would be better to bring in a qualified lawyer as small equity partner to do
it.

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techcofounder
The purpose of the site isn't to discount non-technical cofounders. Being a
product guy myself, I recognize the important of product vision, strategy, as
well as other non-technical expertise like contract law, etc etc. That said,
from my personal experience I've had a lot more people ping me about intros to
good coders than to non-technical folks who want to start a company. After
evaluating the other tools/services out there to meet interested parties I
decided to build techcofounder.com b/c I felt it served the greatest void in
this area.

-Ben

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camccann
Have you considered letting the non-tech users post profiles of some sort as
well? I can certainly see some difficulties, but it could be useful if you
found a way to make it work.

Particularly, I'm thinking of people with specialized expertise or connections
in a specific domain--people who know a niche, and could build a business, but
need technology to make it happen and don't have the resources to just go hire
a team to make it happen. Advertising to such an ill-defined demographic would
be awkward at best, though.

As someone who is, for most purposes, a pure technologist, my ideal in a
hypothetical cofounder (given basic things like "being able to work
toegether") would be someone older, deeply familiar with some business domain
populated by companies that are a bit behind the technological curve. Tech
startups drive innovation in markets that tech people care about--but there's
a lot of markets that get ignored, when a tech startup-style approach could
seriously shake things up.

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jasonkester
I'm troubled by this idea, since I imagine that any decent programmer with an
entrepreneurial drive would already have his own startup. That programmer
would possibly need a site like this to meet _business-side_ co-founders, but
then any good businessman with an entrepreneurial drive would already have his
own startup.

Since all the good minds on either side of the equation would already be
locked into their own thing, I can't see how any of them would show up on a
site like this (or its natural counterpart, BizCofounder.com).

As a result, all that's left is a pool of developers who either don't have any
good ideas, or have been to afraid to make the leap on their own. Neither of
those qualities are ones you'd look for in a potential co-founder.

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davidmurphy
Good work! I suggest you have sections for NorCal and SoCal (not just states
-- CA is a big state!)

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tomh-
I like the idea, but the execution can definitely be improved. It lacks too
many features to be interesting for me. Such as being able to login and edit
my profile, international support (why not do this from the start??), ability
to provide some links and stuff.

but its a good start! Iterate your way to the top ;)

Oh: looks like I can edit my profile!

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thibaut_barrere
I like the idea. Important point though (I think): the yellow/orange you used
is both hard to my eyes and difficult to read.

HTH.

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ryanhuff
Agreed. If it was paired it with a darker color (foreground or background) it
would be easier to read.

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techcofounder
good feedback! I'll go for a darker orange and see how that is.

I like the black and gold b/c it's kinda unique. looks different than most
other sites.

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jasonlbaptiste
This is really great. It gives me a lot of the information I like to see in a
clear and concise manner. A link to twitter+blog would be nice. Also questions
that are similar to what you see on the YC app would be cool ie- "tell us
about the time you successfully hacked a non-computer system".

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rwhitman
Hmm I kind of think having the reverse relationship for profiles would make a
lot of sense. "I'm looking for a tech cofounder, let me pitch you in my
profile"

In the non-tech to tech cofounder match, the tech guy actually has more
leverage in the relationship on some level

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techcofounder
@sachinag, thanks for feedback. good point on not requiring anonymity.

@tom_ilsinszki, I will add int'l support shortly. In the meantime, please go
ahead and create a profile and choose arbitrary location. I can update it for
you later.

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ANH
Nice work. How about having all skills that registrants list accessible in the
'Browse by Skill' box? I would expect the 'View All' link to show me all
skills people had tagged themselves with, e.g. 'C++', 'Python', etc.

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subbu
Is there anything like this for meeting designers? Programmer => Designer

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kalid
<http://programmermeetdesigner.com/> ... not sure how good it is, but it's
there :).

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necrecious
Wish there were something like this for finding good business
development/marketing cofounders. I want someone else to do the nuts and bolts
of biz dev so I can focus on the product dev side.

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gridspy
Looks like a nice resource.

\- I'd also prefer optional anonymity.

\- I'd rather that the page views (such as the list of all coders) showed 50
or 100 items at a time.

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reynolds
I'd like to second the links idea. Let me link to my blog, twitter, github,
etc.

Looks pretty interesting; I signed up to see what happens.

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christonog
Congrats Ben! I think there's definitely a need for this type of thing. Good
domain name too.

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tom_ilsinszki
Have to live in the US to register (properly). Asks for state name. Oh,
well...

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discolemonade
Great idea. This definitely solves a real problem.

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techcofounder
International support deployed. Have at it!

