We had a major power outage in the Seattle area in December '06 and some areas didn't come back for 12 days (mine was 6). I met my partner at a grocery store while picking up firewood and somehow we talked about how our lives were dependent on computers and the internet :-P. That evening we started poker nights with a few friends where we bounced ideas. Finally, when I was working on my idea and the 2 people working with me QUIT, I was telling him about how hard it was to find a co-founder! And to my surprise, he offered to work on it....now we exhibit great teamwork! Just like the founders of Google, our Bachelors is from Univ. of Maryland and Univ. of Michigan ... LOL
When I started a summer project, I used facebook advertising and campus flyers to find potential partners.
I ended getting ~15 hackers interested in working on the project over the summer, interviewed 10, and picked two.
We all worked an lived together in the same apartment. It was probably the best summer of my life, and cost us about $2,000 / person. Most of that was for food & rent.
I approached two of the smartest hackers I had worked with, and showed them a very brief Keynote presentation followed by a demo of the concept I had been working on part time over the last 6 months.
The Y-combinator application process prompted me to expedite my search for other founders. I was originally planning on launching v.1 of the app before approaching them.
Take-aways from this:
It is tempting to get a co-founder quickly, if only to validate your idea. That's fine, but don't approach potentials just because you believe there is a high chance of them accepting. Always try to bring in the best people you know.
Know that you can work well together. Often said, but it's still worth repeating.
Presentations are great, but it's easier to convince someone to spend their time on an idea when you back your presentation up with a demo. Regardless of the outcome, you'll receive valuable feedback, and it's probably good practice for when you meet VCs.
My current business partner went to the same highschool as I. He and I became friends because of our love of ideas. We both looked to the future not just as an amusing fiction, but as something we would create. So we were always working on science projects, rail guns, etc.
My initial interest in applying to Ycomb came when a friend of my brother's put an alert out to anyone who wanted to start a business on top of an idea he had around OpenID. I expressed interest and after he discarded his idea, he opted to join my project. However, the connection between he and I was far looser, and eventually he left the group. Interestingly, a day before our third left I told my brother that I had a feeling our third was going to leave. Not particularly useful prescience, but I think it goes to show that if you have a bad feeling about a relationship, you should listen to it.
Back in high school I used to get small freelance projects. Every now and then I would subcontract it. And I subcontracted one of the coding projects through a rentacoder.com to what later turned into my partner. We just connected really well and shared a passion to launch new things.
We've done quite a few ventures together in past 4-5 years with MSN chat being our only line of communication:) If we get into YC he'll be flying up to US and hey we might actually finally meet.
I met mine through a mutal friend. He had the product idea and could do everything needed except for the technical side of things. My name was eventually brought up and I got a phone call later that night to go over the idea. A week later I had a prototype version ready to demonstrate and we moved on from there. That was 5 years ago and we're still business partners to this day.
I'm interested in the relationship between the idea creator and the coder.
I have the idea, but I can't program for the life of me. I've outsourced to people in China but I need to have someone local who can take care of the small stuff.
It just seems that if I find somebody I'll just be telling them what to do while I sit and watch them code...
If it was just him giving me an idea then I would have simply done it myself without his involvement. Our product is about teaching guitar. I didn't have any guitar experience while he has nearly two decades worth. He has to produce all the content which is a massive task in itself. The difference is he works on a guitar and I work on a computer. I should make clear the idea is no longer just his. He may have had the initial idea but it's developed a great deal from there to be made up of many ideas from both of us. Ownership of an idea seems to dilute over time. I believe our relationship works because it is equal. Equal decision making power, work load, and business ownership. I think any business relationship where the workload isn't equally shared is doomed to failure. Ideas aren't really worth much. His idea was seemed pretty obvious but we discovered no one was really doing it (due to technical restraints which have only started lifting over the past five years, not through lack of a market ;-).
For a successful business relationship I believe you need to bring an essential skill that helps the project get off the ground, not just an idea. Otherwise, your only alternative is to learn how to code or pay someone to do it.
Friends of friends... put it out there to anyone/everyone you know that you're looking for someone with x background or x skills. Let your network do the work. It worked for me!
