Looking for a technical co-founder for your startup

Stop! In the name of love before your break your heart… I’m sure you’ve heard of that song by Diana Ross & The Supremes. Just in case you haven’t:

You might be wondering why I quoted the lyrics from this song. Well I’m a tech guy and finding technical co-founder is a nightmare. If you live outside US or UK like me it’s even harder.

I’ve worked in one startup and I had 2 startups of my own. The one thing that wasted my time the most is looking for another people to join me. Let’s be honest, I’m a tech guy, I’m not marketer, I’m not one man show, I can’t do everything on my own.

I’m gonna give you few options that might help you. Here we go!

Option #1 - Friends

They’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to fall…?

Luckily I worked in a startup with only 4 other developers: iOS, Android and 2 web developers (including me). As time passed we became friends and we were already excited by working in a startup so it wasn’t very hard to talk them into joining this side project I was working on.

Surprisingly they accepted the idea very well, so we started working on it and after few months we finished it, we had an MVP. The main problem we had there was marketing. Getting out of our rooms and promote it, but that’s the story for some other time.

The main and most reliable way of finding co-founders is to ask people you know, your friends. You already trust each other, you have good relations, you know how reliable other person is and so on. Be careful there, I like to say: business is business and friendship is friendship. From that point on I never do business with my friends, it’s like becoming friends with benefits but once benefits are gone a lot of bad can happen.

Option #2 - Reddit and other websites

My first startup failed, so I said to myself: “Let’s start with another one and try something new”. The problem is: your idea might look good and interesting to you but not to other people.

So I started new project and I decided to look for co-founders somewhere outside of my country. Oh boy, that was a huge pain in the a**. Let me give you a list of websites I was using to find a co-founder:

• Reddit Cofounder (and many other subreddits like Entrepreneur, Reddit Startups…)
• Founder2Be
• CofoundersLab
• LinkedIn — different LinkedIn groups
• Founders Nation
• GrowthHackers
• Discord’s channel “/r/startups/”
• Different Facebook US oriented startup groups (no luck there)
• Even looking for answers on Quora

This is not the end, this is not the beginning… Exactly! Posting there was just a beginning. I needed to find the best way to present my idea. People were contacting me and asking: “How do you plan to monetize? How are you going to get users? What problem are you solving with this?”. I spent some time answering all the questions and Skyping with people explaining them my idea.

Other offers were like: “I can do it for money. We are company from India, we can do it for you…”. I specifically wanted a co-founder and not someone who will make the app for money. I needed someone who I can rely on, someone who will lead this future company with me.

I went through thousands of people on those websites looking for, specifically, iOS developer. I was contacting each (not 1000 but dozens) “available” person via email, LinkedIn and Facebook. How many responses did I get you ask? None!

People are mostly looking for someone else on those sites and not really wanting to join someone else.

It’s really really hard to transfer your passion and wish for success to another person, usually people don’t have the same vision as you even though they are a part of startup community. Everyone wants to do something different.

Option #3 — Startup events

Last thing and I guess the most useful are startup events. If you go there you’ll probably meet a lot of people face to face. You can see their reaction and they can see your reaction, you can talk, exchange ideas…

But again it all depends on why people visited that specific startup event. They might be looking for a tech co-founder or want to join another startup or maybe they are just curious, but face to face meeting is much better than anything else.

The real options

Just do it… yourself!

Joker is right ladies and gentlemen. It’s easy for me to say because I’m a web developer, but man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

I realized I’m just wasting my time on people who I don’t know hoping they will join and stay without getting paid. So what did I do? — you ask yourself.

I learned another programming language. Mostly I’m a web developer (backend and frontend) but I had no choice so instead of paying or looking for an iOS developer I learned how to create hybrid mobile apps with Ionic. So now I have iOS and Android app all at once. I agree it’s not the best solution but for the MVP it’s more than perfect.

Pay someone

I like to say: “It’s all about dollar bills”. If you are not a tech person or if you are not into programming your only option is to pay someone to create MVP for you.

Bad side of this approach is that you’ll lose your money again and again. Why? Well someone needs to add new features, fix bugs and so on. Worst of all you’ll need to spend time with a developer otherwise there will be a lot of miscommunication.

You are saying I have no real choice?

Developers are very hard to find, especially if you want them to work for free. Developers are people who can actually earn money by sitting at home and they can do it easily. Not everyone is a startup enthusiast. Do your best to create MVP by your own or at least pay some cash so you can show the actual product.

I know I won’t make the same mistake again, my 3rd startup will be me, myself and I, at least for making MVP. Remember, if you drag someone into something you’re responsible for that person.