

Ask HN: Who is looking for a co-founder? - adityakothadiya

(I'm reposting this as I guess the initial timing  of posting did not give any results. Here is the old post - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774508)<p>Hi HN,<p>This is similar to "Who is hiring" post. I'm personally actively looking for co-founders, so thought it will be useful to start this discussion, and see if we can meet our next co-founders via HN.<p>Please submit your details if you're looking for a co-founder. (My details are posted in comment below.)
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adityakothadiya
I'll start with my own background and requirements -

I'm currently working on a social shopping startup - Shopialize. Shopialize is
a Founder Institute (<http://founderinstitute.com>) incubated company.
Currently I'm the only founder and developer at Shopialize. I'm actively
developing the product and hoping to launch beta by October.

I'm seeking a bay-area based talented and passionate backend developer to join
me as a Co-Founder to build this innovative and valuable product which will
help consumers to discover great products and save money when they buy
products.

Responsibilities: As a technical Co-Founder, you'll be primarily responsible
for scalable software architecture and backend technology. You need to have
experience in data-mining, information retrieval, and search engine
technologies. It'll be great if you have experience in semantic web and
machine learning as well.

I'm proficient in PHP and MySQL technologies, but if you convince me that we
need to use other technologies, then I'm open to listen and change if it makes
sense.

Compensation: It will be generous co-founder equity. If you want cash as well,
then we can discuss cash+equity model as well. But Shopialize is currently in
a pre-financing stage, so cash will be reasonable. To start with, you can
start working with me in the part-time with minimum time commitment of 20
hours per week. When the company secures financing, you can expect a salary
that will rise over time as revenue grows. It will then require a full-time
commitment.

Contact: If you are interested, then please write to me aditya.kothadiya at
gmail.com. You can send me your resume, or link of exciting projects you've
done. We can meetup locally and then discuss the details in person.

To learn more about me, my recent project was <http://tweeght.com> and my blog
is <http://adityakothadiya.com>

~~~
catch23
Don't look for a cofounder by stating the technical requirements -- that
sounds like a job posting. If you want your technical founders to feel vested
in the company, they'd prefer to hear what the company is aiming to do.

~~~
adityakothadiya
I understand your point, but I disagree.

I don't think I've posted a job posting. I'm still being very broad in
description. But I'm looking for a co-founder who is more experienced in
backend technologies. I'm not looking for passionate startup person who is
great in design, and have no experience in backend. I'm trying to compensate
my skills.

About what the company is aiming to do - I can't write all the details openly
and with everybody. My approach is to discuss the details with the right set
of people - on one and one basis. Once someone shows any interest, then I'll
discuss the details with him.

------
alain94040
A lot of my friends at the Founder Institute are actively looking for co-
founders (<http://founderinstitute.com>). And they have very cool projects
spanning very diverse industries. You can check a more detailed list at
<http://www.thefunded.com/job/list>

Bottom line: if you are serious about joining a startup pre-funding, where
most of the fun and the action is, Silicon Valley is full of such
opportunities.

The challenge is to build trust so that the team doesn't break apart after a
month. How can you trust a stranger? Friends of friends are a great way to
start. Ask people you trust _who_ they trust.

------
scottdw2
I'm looking for a co-founder, or really a partner, because my company is
already founded.

My product is currently in Beta and I should be releasing V1 soon.

You can download a copy of my product here:

<http://www.transactor.com>

If you are interested, please send mail to:

cofounder@transactor.com

I'm looking for an engineer who can help start work on V2 of the product.

The basic qualifications that I'm looking for are:

1\. You have to be willing work with out pay (in return for a big chunk of
equity), until we start generating revenue.

2\. You have to be ready to make a firm commitment to the business.

3\. You have to be a hacker.

4\. You have to have at least 7, but preferable 10 years of programming
experience. This doesn't mean you have to be 10 years out of school. If you
are 23, just graduated from college, but have been programming since you were
13, that would qualify as 10 years of programming experience. This is pretty
firm. I need to know that you will be able to work independently, at a high
level, from the "get-go". If you can't hit the ground running then it isn't
worth the cost of brining you on board.

5\. Your experience should have some significance. If your 10 years of
experience is really 1 year of experience 10 times over, then it doesn't
count. It can be stuff you did on your own, or in school. However, you should
have a list of impressive projects that demonstrate you are a top notch
programmer. For example, in the course of getting a BS in Computer Science, I
was able to accomplish the following projects:

a. I wrote a compiler

b. I converted a Java data flow analysis framework that worked over source, to
also work over byte code

c. I wrote an implementation of the genetic algorithm

d. I wrote a library that added method injection (before and after methods) to
C#

Plus I worked full time as a programmer while going to school full time.

6\. You can't be a snob. If you are the type of person that thinks "all
Windows Programmers are idiots", then I don't want you. Transactor makes tools
for programmers. Windows programmers are the largest segment of the developer
market.

7\. You have to be interested in building a business, not in career
advancement. You aren't going to get promoted. If we succeed, you may get
wealthy. That has to be enough. If you want to build a business, so that when
it grows you career will advance, and you can fulfill your life long dream of
being a middle manager, I don't want you. Transactor eschews "career
thinking".

8\. I don't care where you work from. However, you have to be willing to fly
out to Seattle to do an in-person technical interview.

~~~
icey
Maybe you and jcrocholl should touch base with each other.

Also: what platform are you developing on? Is this a C# application?

~~~
jcrocholl
Maybe, but I don't qualify for all points, especially number 6 -- I'm a
terrible snob and will avoid the Windows platform whenever I can. Also, I
don't see the need for Transactor Code Agent if you have good version control
(e.g. git).

~~~
icey
Okay, maybe I was wrong. I'm terrible at developer matchmaking :D

As an unrelated point, what's the startup scene look like in Seattle?

I'm looking to start-up and willing to relocate, but my wife hates San Fran,
so unless I can find a SV suburb that's more midwestern (read: strip malls and
yards) then I have to look elsewhere.

~~~
scottdw2
I appreciate the attempt. Thanks.

Seattle has a very healthy startup scene. If you want to you should come into
Seattle and checkout Startpad (startpad.org). That's where I have my office
at. They lease office space specifically to software startups. There's a good
mixture of early stage and later stage companies there. The "biggest" company
there is Rescue Time (I think they were funded by YC).

In any case it's in Pioneer Square, which is basically startup central. I'd be
happy to show you around (and of course try to convince you to come work with
me).

~~~
jcrocholl
I would be interested to meet you for coffee and a Startpad tour.

------
jcrocholl
I'm looking for a co-founder in Seattle. I have product ideas involving voice-
to-text, automatic speech recognition, and mechanical turk, but would love to
discuss other ideas as well. I'm an experienced Python/Django developer and
Linux server admin, created Browsershots in 2005. Email is on my profile.

~~~
timr
You mean like Jott? ;-)

~~~
jcrocholl
Yes, but for transcriptions of hour-long material like podcasts, interviews,
speeches, essays, long emails. So it would be more like castingwords.com but
faster and cheaper because of speech recognition.

~~~
Caligula
I'm working on speech stuff as well but geared towards telephony. Its a hard
task.How far along are you?

~~~
jcrocholl
You mean like Twilio or lavarockhq.com? I know it's hard but I consider that
an advantage. But I'm still brainstorming, exploring existing solutions, and
working on a very basic demo to see if it can be done with open-source
software.

~~~
Caligula
Not like either except for the speech component. Yours can be done using the
speech open src sft but the accuracy will be bad unless you buy or make a good
acoustic model. Very painful.

~~~
jcrocholl
Yes, but the acoustic model (or models if you account for male/female and
different accents) can be improved with all the input that the service gets
over time. The bad accuracy can be fixed by human intelligence using Amazon
Mechanical Turk.

------
quizbiz
Always looking for help, I've got too many ideas and not enough time. To the
point I did <http://www.collegecofounders.com/beta/>. Feel free to add to that
listing. :)

~~~
bmickler
Hi quizbiz, I've added my info to your site but some fields got (severely)
truncated. I am, in fact, not a lamp, but a LAMP / Android developer :) You
may want to add some "maxlength" attributes to your form fields, or else
expand your database field length to accommodate more info. Thanks!

------
astartupaday
Earlier this week I kicked off Italian Graffiti Factory, which is an overly-
pretentious name for a site that is focused on bringing together co-founders
and helping them to get and stay motivated. For the alpha stage, the site is
going to be very specifically focused on helping co-founders to come together
to build a prototype and submit a killer application for YC Winter 2010.

If you're interested, you can check it out here: <http://www.igfactory.com>

------
spoiledtechie
Im interested, but live no where near the Valley. Located in Melbourne, FL...

My contact info is in my user info on HN. Find me and we can talk if you don't
get any hits on this.

~~~
adityakothadiya
Sure. I'll keep you in mind if things don't work out here.

------
rcmorin
Cambridge, MA mobile startup here. Our dev team is located abroad, graphic
designer in Silicon Valley, and we could use the additional dev help (front-
end/server-side) in Boston to work on the next iteration of our app. New
platforms, new servers, new features, and plenty of challenges to keep us
busy. Userbase is about 10K at this point, and we're working on a business
model. We've been a top 30 free social networking app on iTunes a few times
since launch. Funding from friends, family, and fools (the founder). Looking
to contact with co-founders in the Cambridge area.

------
gb5150
We (2 of us) have a Ruby on Rails app in the online classifieds space that is
in an "Alpha" stage.

We have an exciting opportunity to be in front of lots of important people in
the very near future, and we're looking to round out our team with someone who
possesses the technical chops we lack.

We have lots of plans and we're looking for someone who wants to really dig in
with us, get involved, and contribute. Get in touch, let me know if you have
any questions. Looking forward to telling you all about it! Thanks! gb5150
[at] gmail [dot] com

------
mcxx
I'm looking for a graphic designer and/or sales guy and/or information
architect, usability guy.

I'm a python and javascript hacker. I have a couple of ideas, but the one I'd
like to persuade is real-time web analytics with understandable, beautiful
presentation of data and statistics to the user. However I'm not insisting on
this, I'll gladly discuss your ideas.

Interested? Let's talk; contact details are in my profile.

------
josefresco
I'm looking for a co-founder. I have an app in true beta stage that's going
... nowhere. I'm looking to sell what I have, or find someone with the spark
to reanimate it.

I'm in MA, and not willing to relocate (have a fam/business). Don't need
someone local, just someone with passion and the geek cred to make my (and
soon our) vision real.

------
thaumaturgy
I don't know that we're looking for a co-founder at this point -- we have a
team of three that should pretty well cover our needs.

But we'd really love to find a good graphic artist for icons, layout, etc.

~~~
simonsarris

    			/*****************************************************
    			
    				This is exactly why programmers should not try
    				to be web developers ...
    			
    			*****************************************************/
    
    

I was hoping you'd give some login information in the comments, too, so
curious ones could take a look.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Ah, that's not actually our project -- that's an old(er) site of mine that I
use for client work, etc. The front login never got completed.

The comment there was a bit tongue-in-cheek. It's for some old JS that once
upon a time faded in / faded out a "coming soon". Bleah.

------
maxstoller
Anyone looking for a co-founder in NYC? My email address is in my profile.

~~~
kevindication
Just FYI, I don't see an e-mail address if I click on your username here. I am
logged in.

(I'm not looking for a co-founder at the moment, but would be interested to
hear about any projects going on in the DC area.)

~~~
maxstoller
Thanks for the heads up. Fixed.

------
abdullahjaved
Looking to do a startup, doesn't matter where ping me with details.

~~~
scottdw2
You should check out my company:

www.transactor.com

Also, take a look at my post about the type of person I'm looking for.

If you are interested, please feel free to shoot me an email and we can setup
a time to talk.

-Scott

------
simonsarris
I live in Southern New Hampshire (Nashua, NH), on the border with MA.

Anyone in the area looking for a hand, or at the very least someone to talk to
about their project?

~~~
scottdw2
I'd be happy to talk to you about my project.

I'm based out of Seattle, but with the magic of the internet, I don't think
that would be a big problem.

Would you be available to talk on Skype sometime?

------
inovica
I'm in the UK. North East to be precise. I'm not new to business, nor
programming, but I'm looking for a co-founder for a Python related app related
to brand monitoring.

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diN0bot
we (2 of us) are interested in a third. diN0bot@bilumi.org

my partner just wrote up a neat survey that we're using to quickly understand
prospectives. love to get feedback on that, too ;-)

EDIT: cambridge, MA closeness is a strong requirement from now until the end
of december.

------
AmericanOP
We're a team of 2 applying to YC and willing to bring in a third founder.
E-mail in profile.

~~~
icey
The email field in profiles is not publicly visible. You have to enter it in
the "about" box.

------
teuobk
Anybody looking for collaborators in the Minneapolis area? (Email in profile)

~~~
clistctrl
would've said yes 9 months ago, then I moved to Boston :)

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rms
Any industrial designers out there?

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c00p3r
Is there any activity outside US? =)

