

How to find hackers for only stock options? - ideas101

All creative ideas are welcomed to find a hacker who is interested in joining a start-up. The person that we'll hire will get generous stock options (no salary for at least 6 months), and the chance to be part of the founding team.<p>Please let me know all the creative ways that you might know of for finding this kind of people, I know it could be very difficult but not impossible.
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lisper
From first principles, actively looking for such a person is IMO a major
mistake. You are essentially looking for someone to invest in your company,
but to buy their shares with labor instead of cash. So you need someone who is
1) financially able to make such an investment, 2) a savvy enough investor to
be able to assess whether or not your company is worth investing in (or
foolish enough to make the investment without due diligence) and 3) able (and
willing) to program. Such a mix of skills and financial means is very rare.

This is not to say that if you should happen to be lucky enough to find such a
person that you should not hire them, but actively looking is not wise.
Division of labor is a very powerful tool and should not be discarded lightly.
You're much more likely to succeed if you get investors to invest and hackers
to hack and not try to fram these two disparate skills into one brain.

IMHO, YMMV, etc.

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ideas101
well thats what founders do .. work for shares. they dont get paid in the
beginning when they start in a garage. we are looking for founder who is
interested in such propositions and risk.

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eb
Why don't you tell us more about what you're working on? I'd think that this
would be a pretty good place to find a hacker.

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chaostheory
yeah, I do find it a little strange when there are dev/hacker/programmer
recruiting posts on YC and an unwillingness to at least give an overview of
the idea... I've since stopped upmodding these types of posts. imho they're
repetitive and near worthless. It's hard to help someone without knowing more
details.

ideas are cheap... and more likely than not they change overtime...

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jdavid
I meet half of my current core team, buy not building a startup, but by
building my local tech community.

I started a casual think tank, Fireseedgroup.net to help focus the community
on tech related projects. When barcamps started up, well the Fireseedgroup was
there to throw one in Milwaukee. I helped get other communities going. Now we
have a lot of interesting things going on.

MilwaukeeDevHouse is next weekend, it starts on friday, and its a code party.
We have also thought about throwing hackerweekends, and startupweekends. We
have a great place to use, bucketworks.org for these events in exchange for
helping others with their technology needs.

Through the Fireseedgroup name I am always trying to raise money for incubator
projects like yCombinator, we would call ours (startupMilwaukee, or
M7combinator); and other systems of change. One platform i like is called
prize economics. In this system we would use prize money awarded to a themed
challenge, like darpa, and the xprize foundation have done.

An example is when Milwaukee was trying to get muni-wifi setup, i proposed an
option to award a prize for the best ubiquitous web application. I felt that
if the prize was $250k or more that hackers would flock to MKE to compete.
Have been able to talk to a number of people in MKE about my ideas and have
meet with the visitors bureau, the mayor and other law makers. In many cases
they get excited but it doesn't go much further. I however get on their call
list for ideas and technology. I puts me in an expert position, not from
success, but from effort, and powerful people always need someone they can
turn to, kinda, like you are looking now. Those network connections are well
worth the effort to me to support the community.

I have been able to build bridges to our community to companies like MS,
Adobe, Google, Yahoo, and nVidia that were not there before. That is powerful
stuff.

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ideas101
good work, good ideas - thanks

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iamelgringo
I had that same question 4-5 years ago when I started reading Hackers and
Painters as a noob. I wanted to start a startup, but had no hackers to help
me. What was I to do?

I went back to school, picked up some books and started learning how to hack.
5 years later, I'm almost done with my degree, there's still a market for
startups and I realize how incredibly large the knowledge chasm is between
hackers and non-hackers.

I have 3 ideas a day that would make decent, viable startups. Putting those
ideas into practice, coding them up, designing the layout, configuring the
servers and databases and finally acquiring users... that's where the value
is. The idea has little value on its own. I never would have known this had I
not started to learn the hacker-fu.

So, may I respectfully suggest that if you're looking for hackers to help you
start a software business, and are not one yourself... Take some time, read
some programming books, and get in touch with your inner geek. If you are
looking for a Hacker to found your business, first look inside yourself to see
if there is a hacker waiting to come out.

If you can't do that, then at least offer them some cash to work for you.

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tptacek
Someone who doesn't take a salary for _six months_ doesn't get "generous stock
options". They get a founders stake. You're going to fail.

~~~
ks
I can only speak for myself. If I'm going to work for 6 months without pay,
you would have to offer me a position as a cofounder.

~~~
ideas101
i agree - u r right !

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tx
I was a person you are looking for. Two years ago. The founder took the
prototype I built for him in my spare time and had terminated my employment
two weeks before my "generous options" granted, explaining to me that it was
hard to get funded because there were "too many cofounders" and VCs "didn't
feel comfortable". (there were only 3 including me).

It took a lot of effort, time and lawyer fees to get at least something back
from the guy. His startup failed (of course).

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Prrometheus
What value do you add to the relationship? Why would a hacker want to work
with you? If your business plan involves extensive sales and marketing from an
early stage, non-hackers might be able to add some value (you need someone to
place all those Apple II's at the computer shops).

Remember that an idea is worth nothing. A funded idea is worth something, but
it doesn't sound like you have funding since you're asking someone to work for
free.

Most of the non-hacker founders that I heard of were personal friends of the
hackers involved. It's hard to convince a hacker to take a chance on you
otherwise.

"Great opportunity to work for free!" is not a good value proposition.

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vikram
You need to go and raise some money so that you don't have to do such a hard
sell. If you can't do that, and want to wait until you have a prototype then
look to hire someone on a contract. If it works out then you can make them an
offer to join full time.

I think you need to demonstrate what you bring to the table other than an
idea. When you do that you will gain the respect of the hacker and you might
be able to get a deal going. It might even be something like, when you raise
some cash I'll come join you.

What are you going to do for the first 6 months, to raise the value of the
business? What have you done since you thought of the idea?

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marcus
You need to impress the hacker with your understanding of the market, quality
of ideas, commitment, background/experience and above all intelligence.

Convince him that the work will be challenging and interesting.

The generous stock options need to be a very significant percentage of the
company think more along the lines of cofounder than early employee.

~~~
ideas101
thanks - i'm looking for platform to find these hackers ... dont want to spend
on recruiters .... give me ideas the way i can at least contact few hackers -
such as posting on bulletin boards at all major IT schools? etc.?

~~~
eb
I don't think you'll be very successful recruiting from universities for this
sort of thing. A student with debt is not going to want to work without
salary, unless your startup has amazing potential or you have an excellent
reputation. In either case, you'd probably have funding to pay them anyways.

~~~
jdavid
I have tried unsuccessfully several times.

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german
It would be easier if you share what your startup is going to make.

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robmnl
Have a really good idea and start pitching it to hackers. If it's interesting
enough there will be takers.

~~~
ideas101
well thats the real challenge - i want to know the creative ways to pitch to
the hackers? where and how to find them?

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thorax
This site is not a bad one to pitch to hackers, being Hackers News. There are
also a few other sites:

<http://www.partnerup.com/>

<http://programmermeetdesigner.com/>

In a way it depends on how discrete you wish to be about your idea.

Thinking outside of the box. One kinda interesting place to find up-and-coming
young hackers is to check gaming coding sites. New gaming mods and game
scripting communities are often a doorway into for-profit hacking. Quality may
be hard to control for, but most of the potential candidates there don't yet
know they have marketable skills.

For example:

* Eventscripts/Python scripters: <http://forums.mattie.info/cs/forums/viewforum.php?f=90>)

* C/Pawn developers: <http://sourcemod.net>

There's also major development conferences like PyCon (next week in Chicago):

<http://us.pycon.org/2008/about/>

~~~
thorax
Here's another sneaky trick I just thought of.

Set up a Google Blog Alert (or other blog search alert service) for the
technologies you think make a good hacker. For example "python", "lisp" or
"arc".

As you get new personal blog alerts on those topics, you probably could get a
decent sampling of hackers talking about technology. Approaching them
individually on their blogs might be something that could work out for you.

~~~
ideas101
thanks again...

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eugenejen
You can't give stock options for founding member.You have to be willing to
treat them as partner in this case. So you have to be willing to give out
equities instead of options.

After the company is incorporated and has significant fund. Then the options
plus salary will make sense. But for founding member, it is just not right to
give them options.

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mikesabat
Start going to meetups (meetup.com) for web/hacker/entreprenurial topics in
cities with hacker communities.

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PJWilkinson
So - how do "hackers" afford to work for nothing even if you convince them the
product is good, a fun place to work, and give them equity?

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xirium
Let them define part of the problem.

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martianpenguin
I would find a mailing list at a technical university. Try the LUG lists or
the compsci lists. If your idea sounds like it will make some money, someone
will probably take it. Emphasize that it will look good on a resume too.

You're more likely to find someone to do it if they are still in school and
don't need the money yet.

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ideas101
To sum it up - i want to know where and how to find these hackers?

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jdavid
to sum it up, create a place for them to have fun, and they will find you.

