Finding a technical cofounder
Coding skills aren’t as important as you think
This article is for people who are trying to find a technical founder but aren’t sure about how to find one or how to vet the people they find.
Technical co-founders are hard to find.
Especially when you’re a part-time founder working weekends and bootstrapping your startup. Unless you’ve raised significant funding and can provide a salary, chances are you’ll be limited to the class of technical founders who have full-time jobs and are just looking for something to work on during weekends, and aren’t in need of a salary and are fine with equity.
That pool of people is small. They’re also hard to reach and get pitched often. The better the developer, the more pitches they get for “assistance with a small side project.” These developers know all too well how “small side projects” can become time sinks, and are generally cautious about accepting a position as a “technical cofounder,” which will likely consume most if not all their free time.
What you can do as a non-technical cofounder
Faced with these odds, what can you as a non-technical cofounder do to maximize your chances of recruiting a technical cofounder who complements you?
Make an offer. An offer that is clear and not “hey, can you spend a bit of time working on time for me” offer that’s ambiguous. Michael Seibel, CEO of Y Combinator and a cofounder of Twitch and Social Cam, advises that you provide as much clarity as possible on how much equity you might be willing to give to a technical cofounder. To add to that, I suggest that you also include an expected time commitment in your offer and a rough roadmap to set the pace for progress. Set a cadence so that you don’t end up moving too fast or too slow for either of your likings.
You should also be clear on what your next steps are for your startup. Specify where you’re at and what needs to be built, and why. Are the users you’ve interacted with describing needs that you think you can meet with your minimum viable product? How do you know? And how can you be sure that what you propose as a minimum viable product will meet the needs of your early adopters?
Details matter. The more detail you provide about where you’re at with your project, what needs to be built, and why, the better.
Know the signs of a good technical cofounder. If a developer has a history of working on side projects, that’s a good sign. You can tell by looking at their Github and by looking through their personal portfolio. If a developer has a history of learning new technologies on his or her own, that’s a good sign as well. The two main signs that I look for are weekend work and self-learning. If both signs are present, I usually reach out to that developer to try to set up a meeting.
Questions to ask a potential cofounder
So you’ve found someone to talk to and they’re willing to hear you out. What do you do next? I suggest coming up with a list of questions to ask. Here are 3 questions that I’ve asked in the past:
What do you expect to get out of this arrangement?
A partnership only works if the two of you can benefit from working with each other. If the relationship is one sided, what ends up happening is that one party commits more than the other, resulting in future conflict over who should be doing what, how to divide ownership and the fruits of your collective labor. To avoid conflict, clearly define responsibilities and a starting arrangement for how equity will be divided. A rough guide is enough and I would actually avoid set in stone agreements since you’re likely to revisit equity at a later date (most likely after your startup experiences some growth).
Can you show me projects that you’ve done in the past?
Note my use of the word “show.” Ideally, the developer should be able to show the end results of what he or she has worked on in the past, what work they did for past projects, and the results of that work. Simply stating involvement in a project is not enough. The best developers to recruit as technical cofounders tend to have side project experience and can walk you through what they’ve done in the past.
How much time are you willing to commit to this project?
I used to think that an unlimited time commitment was what I was looking for. I’m more realistic now in that I understand that if you’re looking for a cofounder, chances are they won’t know as much about the idea as you already do. Chances are, they won’t be as invested as you.
So instead of looking for unbridled enthusiasm at the start (which you can find, just much harder), ask for a rough time commitment. Ask also for weekly meetings to discuss progress. Enthusiasm builds over time (if you’ve found the right person), and your developer should eventually develop more and more enthusiasm for the startup the more the two of you work on it.
You also want to look for someone who remains calm in face of a lack of traction. You’ll hit obstacles along the way and might not even develop traction early on. Take these experiences as chances to learn about what doesn’t work, and then change course. You can probe your developer to see if they have the perseverance to serve as a cofounder for your startup by asking about their experiences of adversity, but the best way to truly find out is to work with them and see how they react to adversity.
So there you have it — a few pointers on how to recruit a technical cofounder.
It’s a process of ups and downs. Moments of hope followed by moments of brief moments of fear and frustration. Patience is the key and be realistic about who you’ll find. Chances are you will have to contract out a lot of the work since the two of you are working part time, which is fine as long as your developer can oversee the work being done. Being a cofounder is all about attitude — about having a sense of ownership over the project and being able to proactively solve problems as they arise.
It took me more than a year to find the right cofounder. The best ones stay around and offer support, even when they have other commitments. They provide support even if it means finding other resources to help you (such as other developers). They’re resourceful and adaptive, and speak in solutions rather than just describe problems that are then your responsibility to overcome.
They have an ownership mentality, which makes all the difference.
Other useful articles for startup cofounders:
- On what I learnt from my failed MVP — https://uxdesign.cc/what-i-learnt-from-my-failed-mvp-a8a965ddf38
- On how to think about feature requests — https://uxdesign.cc/rethinking-feature-requests-82eaedb15ab9
- On building an MVP — https://uxdesign.cc/building-an-mvp-8c0dce27dda9?source=your_stories_page-------------------------------------
