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Ask HN: How to find a technical co-founder

3 points by athan ↗ HN
I own a business that is bootstrapped profitable and proud, currently just <$1m in revenue. It's an online coffee subscription, and we've basically done what we can without the need of heavy tech. In order to grow, it's time to get a tech co-founder involved and progress the business. How do I go about finding someone suitable? Is equity with a company this small attractive?

7 comments

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gravypod
Email a local college. They'll be happy to forward your request to all the students in the college. College students will also be happy to work for pretty much anything above minimum wage.

They might not be the top 1%, 10x value developer you need right now, but in 1 to 2 years they will be.

smt88
I strongly disagree with this approach. A good technical co-founder needs lots of experience, ideally in both software and business. College students have neither.

Good places to look are local startup hubs and AngelList.

Honestly, this is a hard problem that lots of people face. There's no silver bullet. They'll solve the problem more quickly if they're willing to part with more equity, though.

athan
Thanks for all the comments. I definitely need someone with a bit of experience in knowing what to do. I'd be happy to offer equity, even for a remote CTO, just to help get this on track. Basically a lot of the opportunities lie in creating better experiences for customers, from on-boarding to self management and CRM comms. The business model works, demand is continuing to increase, and marketing is on-point and effective. Hence, a hands on CTO would really take the business to the next step.
greenyoda
The original poster is looking for a "technical co-founder", which is a business partner, not just a developer. As the business grows, this person will need to be able to hire and manage the technical team, not just write code. Hiring a college student with no full-time work or business experience doesn't seem like the right choice for this kind of position. You'd probably want someone who has a pretty broad experience in the kinds of technology that the company is using, and the ability to plan for the future based on experience and intuition. (Especially so since the company is bootstrapped - a technological blunder could cause the founder to lose their own investment, which feels a lot worse than losing some VC's money.)
smt88
How do you know you need a technical co-founder? What are some of your technical challenges? A good partnership might solve a lot of your problems.

Feel free to contact me through the email on my HN profile. I'm not looking for work, but I've been a first-technical-hire and/or CTO several times, and I could probably chat about this for an hour on the phone (pro bono, of course).

athan
Thank you! Will contact you. Basically a lot of the opportunities lie in creating better experiences for customers, from on-boarding to self management and CRM comms. The business model works, demand is continuing to increase, and marketing is on-point and effective. Hence, a hands on CTO would really take the business to the next step.
flukus
You don't need a co-founder, you need a senior developer/engineer. If you don't have the technical nous yourself then finding a good one is way too much of a crap shoot, so you don't want to hand over a chunk of the company.

Consider also that from a technical point of view, you prbably don't and will never need a big investment in technology anyway. Build as little custom software as you can because it's expensive to build and even more expensive to maintain (there is no such thing as a "done" phase). Have someone on payroll that can learn the business and it's users and customers that can gradually iterate.