

Ask HN: How do you meet a hacker to start a startup with if you are not in college? - gasull

What do you suggest for meeting hackers?<p>* Go back to school and learn a new programming language.<p>* Collaborate in open source projects.<p>* Go to startup conventions.<p>* Other.
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DaniFong
Get a job working at some other startup. You'll get

a) Experience in startups

b) Contacts with all sorts of startuppy people

c) Money

d) Stock, which could be worth a lot someday, if it pans out

e) Freedom and a bunch of contacts of good people recently out of work, if it
doesn't.

Also, there are a few non-startup startuppy places. Google and Mozilla rank
pretty highly up there. I hear Amazon is pretty good too, though the location
isn't as good.

"Startup" conventions are pretty low on intellectual content. Startup School
is the only one I'd go to. On the other hand, tech conventions are pretty
good: Foocamp/barcamp/superhappydevhouse/pycon/ruby meetups are pretty good.
Also, there are a lot of startuppy people in the bay area javascript meetups,
if you're in the area. <http://javascript.meetup.com/4/>

Finally, contests in programming (ICFP, SPOJ, ACM, Topcoder) and math (contest
in math modeling, the Putnam), and engineering (DARPA grand challenge, the
solar car project, robotics contests) are a good place to find smart, project
oriented people with a lot of technical depth, drive, and follow through,
though you will often have to sell them on the idea of starting a company.

Good luck!

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aristus
Plan A: Lived 10 years in Miami. Hosted dinners, worked on dozens of projects,
ran open source projects, etc. Real Hackers met: 2, maybe 3.

Plan B: Moved to SF, worked at a trendy startup. Real Hackers met: are you
kidding? I pass 12 of them on the bus every day.

~~~
breck
As aristus makes clear, the problem is mostly for people outside the
Valley(like myself, for another few weeks).

What do people think of this:

<http://www.justhackit.com>

~~~
k4st
I think that the light grey font coupled with the small amount of line spacing
makes it difficult to read article bodies. Otherwise, I've registered and made
my first post :)

As a side note, other than the lack of members, what makes your site stand
apart from hacker news and proggit?

~~~
breck
Thanks. Fixed the colors. Will look at the line spacing in a sec.

The lack of members is the biggest feature. The odds of it turning into the
next Reddit/Digg are much lower than the odds of that happening here. :)

Seriously, the idea stemmed from the YC meetup last week. PG said that the YC
interviews aren't like interviews at all, they just "Do YC". If the team and
YC seem to click, then they get accepted. I think the same thing applies for
finding good cofounders--you just start something and see if the chemistry
among the team clicks. I've started projects with friends and complete
strangers before, and whether or not I knew them before the project isn't
correlated with how well we worked together. There are a few people I met the
day of starting a joint project who I'd love to start another company with.

That's what I hope this site could do: not just bring hackers together to
discuss startups, but bring them together to launch things and find new
cofounders.

I think there are a lot of people on HN that would be great to work with, and
the best way to find them would be to just start projects. I currently am
lucky enough to have a few hours free each day, but unlucky that I'm far from
the Valley(I've got family commitments that have been keeping me in Southern
MA all summer). When I get to the valley, I think it will be easier to find
co-founders, but until then it's not that easy.

~~~
gasull
Breck, I posted your site:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=281111>

~~~
breck
Thanks!

------
dmix
The best option is to go out to all the local get togethers for hackers and
entrepreneurs, barcamps, and conventions. Plus try to introduce yourself to
people online, this worked out much better for me then I expected.

Have your idea fleshed out and know it inside out. Theres a lot at stake when
you bring on a co-founder you only met recently. If the person is sincerely
interested and is asking the right questions then you can give it a shot...
just make sure it's a necessity before deciding to find someone.

I was in a similar situation earlier this year. From my experience starting a
business with a close friend, that knowing and trusting a person is only half
the battle. They have to have the skills necessary for the start-up. Just
knowing a programming language or being a good speaker may not be good enough.
Some people aren't cut out to be founders.

Recently I decided that I would rather raise capital and hire a developer with
a nice stock option, mainly because I have a technical and business
background. Although co-founders are still a great asset.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
Agreed.

We tend to be a socially awkward bunch, so it can be intimidating to approach
someone who seems like they've got their shit together. Just send an email and
tell them you want to know them. What's the worst that can happen, they say
no?

Building a good nerdery is key.

------
IsaacSchlueter
Move to Silicon Valley.

Join this group: <http://entrepreneur.meetup.com/1737/>

Work for a company that has a lot of hackers. (Google and Yahoo are both very
good choices.) You want quantity.

Don't go back to school, it's a waste of time and money.

~~~
iamelgringo
++ "move to Silicon Valley." The vibe here is really amazing. Two years ago we
made the move to Silicon Valley and I haven't regretted it for a minute.
Startups are in the air and water here. I've met a number of people that I'd
consider co-Founder material. Networking opportunities abound. In the last 6
months I've gone to startup school, started the Hackers and Founders Meetup
that Isaac linked to above, and I'm going to DjangoCon in 3 weeks.

If you look in Meetup.com, there's dozens of meetups that happen for different
technologies, entrepreneurship groups, startup groups, etc... It's actually
hard to avoid programmers in this town.

Isaac's right. Get a job at Yahoo/Google/Facebook/YC Startup and work for a
year or two, make friends, save up some money and then make the leap with your
new friends into the startup world. At least that's what a lot of other people
are doing around here.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
...this thread emphasizes how much I need to get out of St. Louis.

------
tlrobinson
_"Go back to school and learn a new programming language."_

Semi off-topic, but if you're in school to learn programming _languages_
you're doing it wrong...

------
menloparkbum
Get a job somewhere other hackers are working.

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psyklic
An equally difficult question: How do you meet a hacker to start a startup
with if you ARE in college? ;-)

~~~
ambition
Way, way easier. Group projects, the ACM-ICPC, short internships at many
different companies, student conferences, research labs on campus...

------
KirinDave
Get proactive, find other hackers. If you can't find other hackers, it's
because you aren't looking.

Physical location isn't necessarily important. I got into my first open source
project remotely and that work actually led to a bunch of other jobs that got
me pretty much smack dab into the SanFran startup scene.

The key to getting other people to work with you is to wear your passion for a
project on your sleeves. People of a like mind will be drawn to that.

P.S. Why would you have to go back to school to learn a new programming
language?

~~~
gasull
_Why would you have to go back to school to learn a new programming language?_

Learning a new language would be the excuse, and meeting new hackers in school
the goal.

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inklesspen
Go to local "ruby user groups" or whatever your language of choice is. Or,
heck, go to "ruby/python/blub++ user groups" even if you use Java; you'll meet
some smart people there anyway.

~~~
stcredzero
I'm very tempted to implement Blub++ now. Maybe do it as a pre-processor which
can compile to Perl/Ruby/Python/Lua/Groovy as intermediate code. Of course, it
would have to be a least common denominator of all of those languages.

------
breck
What do you think of this idea:

<http://www.justhackit.com>

~~~
UandIblog
Good job Breck, I took the liberty of kicking the whole thing off for us!

    
    
       Enjoy!

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CRASCH
Posting a question on Hacker News about how to meet Hackers is a good start.
If you are not in SC, which you are most likely not, you might post where you
are.

I'm always trying to meet more hackers in my area which is Denver.

~~~
gasull
_you might post where you are._

In LA. Moving to San Fran in January.

------
ambition
People are drawn to success. Spend some time building your own value by making
something cool. If you are impressive more people will want to meet you and
more will come out of the people you meet.

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vulpes
One thing that hasn't be suggested is Twitter, twitter with local people and a
lot of times you cross some amazing individuals

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michaelneale
Find us online? My details are available on HN - probably too much info online
:(

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dansegzy
i wish to meet an hacker to help me with what i need to do like getting any
bank login in united state

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dansegzy
i wish to meet an hacker to help me with what i need to do

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debtkid
craigslist?

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pageman
work in a coworking space <http://coworking.pbwiki.com/>

~~~
shedd
Co-working spaces are a good suggestion. They seem to be used by fairly
entrepreneurial people and might be a good way to meet potential co-founders
in areas that are still growing in terms of startups.

------
burp
"Other", obviously.

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dansegzy
i wish to meet an hacker to help me with what i need to do

