As one who tried to capture a cofounder in the past, I would insist on listing the primary area of interest (i.e. social media, search etc) and also what obstacles you from progressing on your own (i.e. lack of particular skill, lack of money etc), as it greatly streamlines the further interactions
I'm not putting anything in there, so maybe it isn't appropriate for me to add columns. Though I've noticed the Primary Areas of Interest made it into the spreadsheet already.
On the other hand, we used google spreadsheets as an issue tracker to guide working with clients. It fell over repeatedly over the course of an hour phone call on all ends (5 or so people viewing). It's really bad at keeping connections alive.
If you're going to throw your hat into the co-founder pool with information on how to reach you, I think your Google username is the least of your concerns.
Seriously, did you know getting on the interwebs reveals your IP address :p Someone could run a full suite of penetration tests on your IP addr to get to your end-point or router.
What about the people merely clicking the link, to view what it is? It reveals their email address/name for anyone to see. That's behavior unlike any other public page on the web.
But that is the point of a directory listing of people - people who enter their info want to be found and contacted.
If you don't want to be contacted, then don't add your information. I'm not sure what you're suggesting is the problem, but perhaps you can suggest a solution?
You obfuscate your email addr so that it's human-readable and not spam-bot readable. Or just add your twitter username instead, or whatever choice you prefer.
Basically, the consumers of the content (the people just wanting to see what's on the list) want to be completely 100% anonymous. I wonder how the producers of the content (the people entering their information on the spreadsheet) would feel about that.
Well there you go, as suggested above.. you can always logout first - or create a dummy account. Google sign-in is arguably one of the commonly used on the Web, even if you're really anti-Google .. having a dummy account would be real handy.
Excess paranoia, on the other hand, is another topic.
I am king of Nigeria and has been taken to jail by the new leaderships. I have many money hidden but need your hel to get it. Will make us both rich!!!!
Please contact med hurriedly so we can go get money together.
I startup founder be from Nigeria. Have found intellectual property for crunchpad mega-tablet in prison. If 100,000 of your dollars send me, can free and make us million. CEO you can be.
I am writing to in a matter of utmost urgency and secrecy. My name is Olamilekan Smith, close personal advisor of the deposed aristocrat Charles Bartholomew Richards ii. In his haste to escape persecution he hastily imposed upon me the task of securing safe transfer of his considerable monetary assets to an international bank account..."
I'm consistently getting a message saying "Viewing in simple list mode due to high traffic to this document" so whatever that limit is, we hit it. I guess I'll have to wait before I can add my info. Bummer.
Hmm, this could be a webapp. A way for people who are a pre-seed startup seeder, if you will. Startups.com (or something similar) might want to jump on this.
Again, it's all about critical mass and people knowing where to look.
We launched exactly what you are asking for a year ago. It's there, people are using it. But not everyone knows it. Look at my profile if you don't know which site I'm talking about.
Does anyone know a board like HN with a designer bent? It looks like more than half of the people filling out the spreadsheet would like to meet up with someone with design skills. It might be worthwhile to share this link on a board with designers.
one of the more popular hangouts on the net for designers is MediaBistro - it has a bulletin board that might be an appropriate place for this: http://www.mediabistro.com/bbs/
Imho, this spreadsheet captures the very bare essence of a co-founder dating site. Find your co-founder with nothing more than your browser's "Control-F"
This was posted originally in this thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1046134 - can someone write me a script so everytime someone asks that question, I can auto-reply? ... ok bad idea... spam... never mind :-)
I'm working on a project like this, initially but not exclusively for tech. If you'd be interested in helping us improve the service, we'd definitely appreciate the feedback. You can DM me @startupsquare or find us at http://startupsquare.com Thanks!
Trying to reorganize the locations in a useful way. Started by country but this raises the problem that Canada - Pacific - Vancouver isn't close to US - Pacific - Seattle in the list. Other ideas?
You're welcome! I know I'm scratching not just my own itch, but helping others too .. it's a great feeling. Obviously I got lucky too .. it's not like I coded Google Docs. A reminder that despite all our technical and business talent - luck remain an important part of our endeavor. We can however work to maximize our odds and exposure to luck!
I hope this Doc stays around indefinitely, so those of us looking for a co-founder in the future will have a resource. It's worth posting a link to it every so often.
Yup, I will be keeping it up indefinitely, I don't see any reason why to remove .. but if it ever came down to that, I will ping the HN community so that everybody knows.
I guess anyone looking to build a co-founder dating site has to figure out what value they are adding on top of this spreadsheet!
One of the reasons that the Bootstrapper Breakfasts have been helpful to bring teams together is that it's a low key way to have a serious conversation with one or more potential cofounders and form an impression based on more than a paragraph or two on a "dating site."
From folks who have attended a Startup Weekend or similar event, I hear that it's a good way to learn how someone performs under at least a moderate amount of pressure.
I am less sanguine about "dating site" although a lot of folks have contributed to the spreadsheet so it will probably help potential co-founders become aware of each other.
I also think you can form a reasonable impression of someone from reading their blog and HN comments but not everyone who has the strengths you will need to get startup off the ground is necessarily interested in contributing to a forum.
Great idea, but IMHO it would have been much nicer if people had created new sheets based on their location and then added the Info, so that it would have been much easier to browse.
Or course, location+skill wouldn't have hurt either.
In the current format, it could potentially become unmanageable and not very user friendly.
I'm just going to create a sheet for SF-BayArea see if people adopt it :).
yeah, but the problem is that people will not necessarily use same names for their location. E.g. SF, SFBayArea, SFBA, Silicon Valley, etc. all refer to the same location but are different.
On the other hand, if someone really wants it s/he would be able to find it :)
I wonder if it would be feasible to construct a database where they enter the zipcode instead, and set a parameter that determines which area you belong to. (Eg. if you live in 94107, any zipcode within 60 mile radius would be considered the "Bay Area".
So, a while back I created a bartering webapp with location aware searching using Django. I did it mostly as a learning process so I could become more familiar with Django, and I never really marketed it much, and it really doesn't get any use now.
With that being said, if you wanted to get on there and create a profile, add a post saying that you're looking for a founder with XYZ skillsets, or that you're available to be a cofounder, other people could search for you based on keywords or tags plus their relation to your zip code.
A lot of people (including myself) are willing to move to other cities. The way it's setup right now adds a level of fuzziness in a very simple manner that makes it more useful IMO.
Just tossed my info on there. Not actively looking for a cofounder -- mostly because I don't think it's likely I'll find anyone with the right skills/temperament -- but it's worth getting out there anyway.
This spreadsheet is going to get seriously diluted with every bastard and his dog. You might need a password or something. Louis Gray's tweet is doing the rounds: http://bit.ly/info/hackerbrain
Sharing the doc was not an intent to dilute, but to raise awareness. Apologies for any issues. There is a definite interest in plans from the members of this community.
With a verification string placed by users on their profile (as with Google Webmaster tools), a social network could be run interdependently. It would scrape.
A generic social network would work, where users can verify against one or many domains or sets of urls. To reach someone's page, you would type in: site.com/verificationstring edit: the string would have to go in the <head> otherwise it can be faked on ugc sites
* A little structure could go a long way (for scraping).
* A field for startup name
* Picture
* "Next >"? Sometimes I wish I could just page through profile pages by karma descending. Random might be fun too.
* Last N tweets? (The Hacker News twitter list http://twitter.com/tlrobinson/hackernews is fantastic, but I wish the linkage between twitter profiles and HN profiles were more transparent)
A resource like this Google Doc, but limited to people with a certain karma threshold. A way to connect potential founders that are geographically separate. I know that cofounders should know each other so not a start up dating site, but a place where people looking to throw their hat in the startup ring can make first connections with other like minded folks. Current solutions like meetups get overcrowded with the unskilled "idea guy" who needs someone to build his half baked social net. HN would be a great filter.
* I need help with: "A,B,C" (text field)
* I'm pretty good at and willing to help with: "X,Y,Z" (another text field)
* I'm in Seattle, WA, USA
I could certainly add this myself, but it wouldn't be possible to see all info on one page for many people - that kind of thing requires scrape-friendly format that enforces some kind of structure on the input text.
137 comments
[ 631 ms ] story [ 3757 ms ] threadSeriously, did you know getting on the interwebs reveals your IP address :p Someone could run a full suite of penetration tests on your IP addr to get to your end-point or router.
If you don't want to be contacted, then don't add your information. I'm not sure what you're suggesting is the problem, but perhaps you can suggest a solution?
You obfuscate your email addr so that it's human-readable and not spam-bot readable. Or just add your twitter username instead, or whatever choice you prefer.
You reveal your Google Account (and e-mail address for most people) just by viewing the page, without typing a single character into the page.
Basically, the consumers of the content (the people just wanting to see what's on the list) want to be completely 100% anonymous. I wonder how the producers of the content (the people entering their information on the spreadsheet) would feel about that.
Well there you go, as suggested above.. you can always logout first - or create a dummy account. Google sign-in is arguably one of the commonly used on the Web, even if you're really anti-Google .. having a dummy account would be real handy.
Excess paranoia, on the other hand, is another topic.
Please contact med hurriedly so we can go get money together.
"Dear Sir,
I am writing to in a matter of utmost urgency and secrecy. My name is Olamilekan Smith, close personal advisor of the deposed aristocrat Charles Bartholomew Richards ii. In his haste to escape persecution he hastily imposed upon me the task of securing safe transfer of his considerable monetary assets to an international bank account..."
We launched exactly what you are asking for a year ago. It's there, people are using it. But not everyone knows it. Look at my profile if you don't know which site I'm talking about.
This was posted originally in this thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1046134 - can someone write me a script so everytime someone asks that question, I can auto-reply? ... ok bad idea... spam... never mind :-)
Then you can automatically make a map directly from spreadsheet data: http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/spreadsheetsma...
I guess anyone looking to build a co-founder dating site has to figure out what value they are adding on top of this spreadsheet!
1. Better search (by location, keyword, whatever)
2. time-based, so that old entries from years past don't pollute the current directory
3. protect anonymity but preserving a way to get in touch
4. more details available so you can make a judgment call more easily
5. a way to look at projects or people, depending on what your approach is
That's a good start. I'd say #2 is critical, because the Google Docs list will become obsolete within weeks.
http://fairsoftware.net/publicUsers is a list of people, and http://fairsoftware.net/publicProjects is a list of projects. You can navigate back and forth.
From folks who have attended a Startup Weekend or similar event, I hear that it's a good way to learn how someone performs under at least a moderate amount of pressure.
I am less sanguine about "dating site" although a lot of folks have contributed to the spreadsheet so it will probably help potential co-founders become aware of each other.
I also think you can form a reasonable impression of someone from reading their blog and HN comments but not everyone who has the strengths you will need to get startup off the ground is necessarily interested in contributing to a forum.
I figured that some time from now, people will remember 2 things: "co founder" and "google docs". Feel free to bookmark / delicious
Or course, location+skill wouldn't have hurt either. In the current format, it could potentially become unmanageable and not very user friendly.
I'm just going to create a sheet for SF-BayArea see if people adopt it :).
On the other hand, if someone really wants it s/he would be able to find it :)
With that being said, if you wanted to get on there and create a profile, add a post saying that you're looking for a founder with XYZ skillsets, or that you're available to be a cofounder, other people could search for you based on keywords or tags plus their relation to your zip code.
http://www.igwyn.com (I've Got What You Need).
Not meant to be shameless self promotion, but it might actually be helpful for people.
Mark
Thanks for sharing the awareness Louis.
* A little structure could go a long way (for scraping).
* A field for startup name
* Picture
* "Next >"? Sometimes I wish I could just page through profile pages by karma descending. Random might be fun too.
* Last N tweets? (The Hacker News twitter list http://twitter.com/tlrobinson/hackernews is fantastic, but I wish the linkage between twitter profiles and HN profiles were more transparent)
Fashion, e-commerce, education.
You could find someone with experience or interest in education, read their comments and submissions and get a feel for how they think.
Maybe an 'open for solicitation' checkbox.
Basically that's all I can think of. Some way of finding people by criteria.
I could certainly add this myself, but it wouldn't be possible to see all info on one page for many people - that kind of thing requires scrape-friendly format that enforces some kind of structure on the input text.
You'll need an API to access it, or else a viewer on site that presents as a sortable, paginated table.
I don't want this to turn into a mini-facebook.