Ask HN: Where to meet non-technical cofounders?
I'm at a FAANG company at the moment and I'm finding it quite unfulfilling (nothing new here), and for the last several months I've been hacking away on my own projects just to keep honing my skills and to try to figure out what's possible in terms of turning technical know-how into commercial products.
The last one I built felt like a relatively solid idea but I quickly realized (a) how much of the difficulty in launching the product depended on having a good network and knowing how to utilize it, and (b) how much I felt poorly equipped to do (a). Moreover, I'm also understanding how deeply reliant tech products are on domain knowledge in the industry they're attempting to push into.
The conclusion here seems to be that I'd be far more effective at reaching my goals working in partnership with someone who checks the above boxes (which, in hindsight, was incredibly obvious). The problem I'm having now, though, is that none of my friends are similarly motivated to me, and networking feels nigh-impossible with the COVID-19 situation.
Does anyone here have tips on how they meet people and feel out whether there's any professional compatibility – especially in the current situation? While I'm not opposed to just riding this out and trying to network the traditional way when the world reopens, it seems like there has to be a more effective way.
98 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadJust to make this clear, I do not think "business" co-founders are useless. There are a lot of very good ones that bring a lot of value. All I am saying is that I have made bad experiences taking in "business" people to handle the "business" part of the startup. Most of the time you can (and should) learn the necessary skills yourself. Every startup needs technical co-founders, however most startups don't NEED non-technical co-founders.
In my experience, formal education tends to be very corporate-operations focused because that’s where most grads go. Most courses presuppose that the company has already found product-market fit - using these same behaviours in a new venture context could be dangerous.
Ideally, you’d find someone who recognises this difference and works to learn the differences between the environments, and brings the best of both worlds to the venture.
I would take my products, show them to as many people as possible, and find out who is interested. While engaging with those people, explain to them your situation and that you're looking for some help. Try to leverage your potential users' networks. (Just my 2 cents.)
All that aside -- I'd be interested in chatting about what you're working on and seeing if we might collaborate in the future. Feel free to reach out: vcinv10@gmail.com
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I have a personal website but am not comfortable sharing here - is there a way to message you?
Based on the detail you've provided, it seems one problem you're facing is access to industry domain experts who can both validate what you're doing and also perhaps help you refine the product and market access.
If that is correct, I'd suggest that you don't, at this point, look for a non-technical co-founder but rather just approach people with domain expertise in the industry that you're trying to target for advice and validation by requesting a short conversation. LinkedIn can be a very good source and depending on how you approach the people and your own profile you may get a very good response from people. Anywhere above 20-30% response rate would be very good just to set expectations, it can be higher or lower but don't be disheartened.
Depending on the domain you're targeting there is a much much larger pool of people who will offer you initial advice than who will be willing to join as co-founder. Once you get connected and they accept, just talk to these people. Get input, and also ask for further connections, as in is there someone you should be speaking to that they can introduce you to. Use them in future when you're looking to make a sale or for early adoption and again, for advice.
This will kick start your journey and you will find people. If you find someone truly awesome and nice, who is also interested in what you're doing, you can ask them to be an advisor. If you find someone who is interested in joining, then perhaps have them join. But be careful, and make diligent decision before having people join the team.
I realize now that my initial post may have implied otherwise, but I'm mostly looking to start establishing relationships that may lead to entrepreneurial collaboration in the future. I'm definitely not looking to jump straight into anything at the moment – it's not like there's a particular idea I'm in love with, and I'm naturally a very cautious person so I'd like to take the time to get to know people before starting a project with them.
My concern is moreso that it takes a lot of time and effort to build trust, and so I'd like to start meeting such people sooner rather than later.
Another option, often not considered, depending on where you are in your career is to join a very early stage startup that is doing something in your domain, for 1-2 years.
This may or may not be an option for you depending on your own factors, but that is a good option as it helps people migrate from the large company mindset to a startup mindset. Also, it helps extend your network with the right kind of people that may help when you go on your own.
I would suggest getting on twitter and communities like indie hackers. People share how they’re getting users, they’re first customers, marketing tactics etc
As you consume more of this information and hack on your own projects you’ll develop a playbook for how to do it yourself.
Good luck.
Not only will you learn a ton about shipping product in a startup (risking someone else’s money), but you will also grow your own network - including non-technical founder types.
This model worked for me. I spent twelve years with the US federal government. I had great tech and business skills, but it was all federally focused.
I joined the founding team of a startup, using my tech background. We got acquired 15 months in by a later stage startup. The resulting company IPO’d four years later. I joined another startup in the same industry as CTO just after their Series A, we got acquired two years later. Then I launched my own - 8 years after leaving the federal government.
It is a ton easier now, with all the relationships from the last two. (Not to mention the depth of knowledge on everything)
It is easy to think startups are all about the product & technology. But it is so much more!
Good options for maximizing your network 1) stay with a Faang and reach out to people internally - many of the best non tech people are inside Amazon, FB etc 2) consider consulting that blends you with larger teams or different functions, either with a company or freelancing.
Even if that startup itself fails you are likely to meet people you could start another company with and if it succeeds it will be an even better place to start a company from when leaving, most exceptional founders love to support their employees leaving to start something new.
FAANG is actually way better to meet cofounders. At Google you can have lunch with a talented person every day (there’s internal apps to network like this), plus countless other opportunities to network both formally and informally.
In contrast, at an early stage startup you’ll mostly work with the same people every day and your network will stagnate.
Furthermore, early stage startups tend to have a ton of work that needs to be done that they hire there engineers to do. Unless you get CTO title, you’re probably not going to get exposed much to the BD side or get investor access.
Finally, being able to work full time on your startup to get demo ready to pitch is super helpful. A nest egg from FAANG RSUs is key here, startup ISOs are probably worth nothing and will reduce your cushioning.
If you want to do a startup, go to networking events, apply to YC, etc but leaving FAANG to be an early stage employee w goal, not closer, especially if you don’t at least get CTO title.
Stay at the cushy high paying job and network on nights and weekends. Even better, make a point to ask a person out to lunch every week at the FAANG job once the pandemic is over.
"Networking" for me has just been hanging out with my music and YouTuber buddies. Turns out if you know how to SPELL PHP or HTML you can provide HUGE value to non-technical friends. Doing something as simple as fixing a typo in some JavaScript tracking code for friend's websites makes me look like I've shown them fire for the first time. Find a hobby you like that's non-technical (for me it's learning Chinese, salsa dancing, and metal), show up, have a good time, and within a year or two you'll have a high quality network of non-technical partners.
As an engineer for an early-stage startup you daily work and value add - shipping things and invest into deep engineering work, would not be very well aligned with networking and relationship building that would be beneficial to start on your own.
Another interesting idea to consider - as a FAANG engineer you would be able to angel invest already (or fairly soon). That would be a productive (quite expensive though) way to meet more people interested in the same things as you do.
1. It was easy to find people interested in startups at Google, but the quality of those interactions tended to be pretty low. The vast majority of people really did not have any experience with how startups actually functioned, and most people I talked to were more taken with the prestige and fantasy of being a founder than with actually seriously thinking about running a startup. I'm sure there are great and experienced operators at Google who are very competent and pragmatic startup folks - but those were generally not the people you found at internal events geared towards "people interested in startups".
2. I learned a lot cross-functionally when I joined my current team (which was < 5 people at the time). I was talking to customers in sales and support calls, helping to think about product and market strategy, and generally helping out on a variety of interesting things. You're definitely right that I wasn't talking to investors (at least, not on a regular basis - as an early employee, sometimes investors still want to chat to learn more about how things are on the ground) nor was I spending my days prospecting and finding BD partnerships, but I did learn a surprising amount about deal dynamics, selling B2B, and thinking about markets and customers in general. That said, this may have been because of the extraordinarily open and competent sales folks I worked with.
When I look on my list of "people I would co-found with", the vast majority of those people are the incredibly intense and competent folks I met working at the (now no longer early stage) startup I moved to. In general, I think about finding a co-founder less as "cast a wide net to find your one true partner" and more as "work alongside the most aggressively competent people you can find, and hopefully some of those people will mesh with you well enough that you would consider co-founding with them" (with the corollary that, if you find yourself in a job where you feel like you're mostly coasting, this is probably not a good environment for finding co-founders (although it certainly may be a good environment for you for other reasons)).
As usual, grain of salt - I was basically a new grad when I joined Google, and I expect the experience would be very different if I had a strong, senior network there. I also come from a position of unusual privilege - my parents are both engineers and I have lots of friends in engineering and I'm good at what I do, so I am unusually risk tolerant because "running out of money" or "being unable to easily find a job" is just not a thing I worry about.
Also, be careful of non-compete agreements by joining other start-ups.
There are several ways in which you can find good co-founders:
1. Don’t prioritise finding a co-founders, just start building something and reach out to people. They might love what you’re doing and come on-board.
2. Get recommendations via your network about people who want to build a company and have complementary skills / similar goals.
3. Increase your visibility, publish your thoughts, network and debate about the future - randomness / serendipity is a wondrous force
4. Accelerators such as Antler and EF - as a last resort.
I’m also looking for smart, relentless people that want to build a better future for generations to come. Don’t hesitate to reach out via linkedin - username: tudordragos
It's much harder to find these people than you might think, and it can be really hard to get rid of a bad one if you screw up. (As the Russians say, "Doveryai, no proveryai - Trust, but verify!")
> The good news is, choosing problems is something that can be learned. I know that from experience. Hackers can learn to make things customers want. [6]
>This is a controversial view. One expert on "entrepreneurship" told me that any startup had to include business people, because only they could focus on what customers wanted. I'll probably alienate this guy forever by quoting him, but I have to risk it, because his email was such a perfect example of this view:
> This is, in my opinion, a crock. Hackers are perfectly capable of hearing the voice of the customer without a business person to amplify the signal for them. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were grad students in computer science, which presumably makes them "engineers." Do you suppose Google is only good because they had some business guy whispering in their ears what customers wanted? It seems to me the business guys who did the most for Google were the ones who obligingly flew Altavista into a hillside just as Google was getting started.One example, from my past, abandoned self-funded startup: my co-founder (customer domain expert) and I (all-in-one engineering) didn't want to be the ones courting VC, but we were also too slow to seek out a startup business person. For maybe two reasons:
1. We had a couple outside-the-box approaches, which would only really resonate with users because we weren't doing something in the way every other CEO in that space did it.
2. We were busy, and didn't know offhand where to look for the kind of CEO we needed -- who we'd trust to embrace the approach, not twist it before launch, nor (ethically worse) bait&switch our users afterwards.
Maybe some kind of incubator would've helped us launch and get far enough for the right CEO to come to us. But we didn't have time to jump through the hoops of something like YC, for a small chance at a small amount of funding. And the process still seems oriented towards founders who want to be doing all the business stuff.
PG might've sought to mold technical founders into business people -- but some technical people already have some idea what business is about, and know they'd rather someone else (trustworthy!) do the business parts they don't want to do much of.
Putting the best tech person as CEO effectively makes it a solo founder effort. The ideal is the business person as CEO, or perhaps some multi-talented person where product development is fully delegated to a CTO.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin originally wanted Google to be a pay-to-use service and were against ads. I don't know how they came to their change in business model, but I suspect it was after they hired people that weren't engineers to help.
Schmidt joined Google in March 2001. For all of 1999 Google only had $220,000 in revenue (founded Sept 1998). Their early, primitive experiments in advertising worked well enough, they brought in $19m in revenue for 2000 (which would increase 300% in 2001, and then 400% in 2002).
[1] 2013: https://slate.com/business/2013/10/googles-big-break-how-bil...
[2] 2005: https://www.gq.com/story/google-larry-sergey
> Schmidt met all of Larry and Sergey's stringent criteria. He had a credible name, a Ph.D. (from Berkeley), and he promised not to push the boys aside or dismantle the quirky culture they'd engendered. "The board members told me, basically, 'Don't screw this thing up!' " Schmidt says. "They said, 'It needs some infrastructure, some growing, but the gem here is very real.'"
Has there been another company since Google that grew so fast? $19mil revenue in 2yrs, then tripling and quadrupling.
Slack - 3 years Twilio - ~5 years ServiceNow - 6 years Shopify - 7 years
[1] https://www.bvp.com/bvp-nasdaq-emerging-cloud-index
They had $583 million in sales for 1983. $1.5 billion in today's dollar. They hit basically $1b the next year, at $982 million for 1984 (in 1984 dollars). Inflation adjusted I'm guessing they hit the $1 billion mark at about six years in business.
I similarly recall that Compaq grew extremely fast. Dell's liftoff followed a similar trajectory (the start was a bit slower, due to how Michael Dell started the company).
Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GRPN/groupon/reven...
Seeking to keep the true nature of its work from the public, it adopted what its CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt, called a “hiding strategy” — a kind of corporate omerta backed up by stringent nondisclosure agreements. Page and Brin further shielded themselves from outside oversight by establishing a stock structure that guaranteed their power could never be challenged, neither by investors nor by directors. As one Google executive quoted by Zuboff put it, “Larry [Page] opposed any path that would reveal our technological secrets or stir the privacy pot and endanger our ability to gather data.”
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/thieves-of-experience-ho...
For years, they required that all their hires could program, even those in completely unrelated roles.
It's not actually multiple persons that you need on your team, it's different roles. The technical person, the product person, the management person, the visionary, the organized person, there's probably a dozen more personality traits that are helpful if not essential. They could all be in the same person, but it's more likely it's 2 or 3. They don't all need to be founders, but the more committed they are to the company, the better that aspect is reflected in the company, and the more succesful it might be.
Google didn't need any marketing, they just needed engineers, so they hired engineers, and people who could hire engineers, and people who could manage engineers. By the time they needed something else they were already making so much money they could afford to motivate excellence by monetary compensation alone, not every start up has that luxury.
You need someone who has the right network, and/or can network, and/or can comfortably network. While still contributing as a co-founder.
Usually extraverts are good at this. If you're an introvert, you could still do it, but chances are you spent most of your life avoiding and/or wanting to avoid other folks.
In my experience Indie Hackers has an unusually high concentration of people who get things done, the kind of people with grit who you might want to partner with.
Then I see great devs and tech leads that wonder how to break into engineering management or CTO of a credible startup because all they see is random people with no clue pitching them.
Reach out to me and if you're a solid engineer I'll find you a solid business partner. (email in profile)
Any ideas?
Either you recruit them to your idea, or they recruit you to theirs.
In the best case, you will jointly come up with a new idea.