Ask HN: Who's looking for a co-founder?

224 points by notoriousarun ↗ HN
I just stumbled upon an old Ask HN with the same topic from 2010 and I thought this could be useful to resurrect.

You should probably mention what you are working on, where you are located, what stage you are in, who you are looking for, what you can bring to the table and a way to contact you.

284 comments

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Recent Project https://pipecontent.com

Wanted to evolve this idea into a go-to platform for knowledge workers. (A second brain for the content)

Located in India, currently looking for a partner.

Also, wanted to share all my research on various markets, opportunities, tools.

That can help us uncover better opportunities together.

Let's connect on Twitter! @notoriousarun

Great work, you should also integrate with pocket. This reminds me of https://waldenpond.press/ as well you pricing is better though.
Pocket doesn't support public lists(URL)

We support public URL's (One-tab, Toby, Notion, Google-Docs, Twitter-Threads, Evernote, DropBox, Website Links)

Also, Email is username @protonmail.com

let's have a Zoom?

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Been working https://github.com/daptin/daptin since about 2 years

Goal is to build a opensource headless cms (did a show hn quite some time ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17357616 )

Recently built one of the end user product https://github.com/daptin/dadadash/ (will do a show hn soon)

Plan is to keep the cms opensource/free and monetize the products built on top of it

Located in India (mostly irrelevant imo)

Looking for someone with strong vision/execution on the non-tech side. My contact details in repo

I'm working on a non profit, collaborative knowledge sharing platform for personalised learning. It would be a kind of learning map allowing seamless and optimal exploration the knowledge space. I'm close to finishing the MVP. I'm based in Berlin but willing to move to the US, and I'm looking for a cofounder with great communication skills (I would be the CTO). Here's my Twitter if you're interested: @olivier_ramier
I'm building a music hosting + streaming solution with web, iOS and Android apps.

Currently running a closed beta with 50 ish registered users. Looking for a co-founder to help continue development of the apps. iOS and/or Android experience would be great!

Located in eastern Canada. If interested, feel free to email me at jsmith@hey.com :)

Link here -> http://relar.app

I'm not a developer, but this looks great! Just curious, how does it works for music rights?

Funny enough I'm looking for a developer too for my app about vinyl records, posted here too.

Thanks!! As for music rights, all music is uploaded by users :) I'd like to add the ability to purchase or stream music but it would take so much work. Your app looks fantastic btw!
Got it. Yea stream purchase would take your project to a whole new level, I understand

Ah, thanks!

I like the idea. Random feedback, there's something that makes the http://relar.app scroll very laggy in the area over the screenshot (Safari, recent Macbook Pro).
Thanks :) And thank you for the feedback. I'm also on a recent MBP and safari and haven't had that issue. I'll try to reproduce!
great idea, something like this (depending on the pricing) might be just what I need to quit my music streaming subscriptions (youtube, etc) and start streaming my files.
Thank you :) I'm hoping that some of the YTM crowd might be interested in Relar, especially since a lot have switched from Google Play Music.
This looks like something I wanted to build. Great idea.

Currently using YouTube music, and its pretty good, except for one annoying bug that drives me crazy.

Working on Couchmate (https://couchmate.com), a cross between TV Guide and Discord/Slack for a long time.

Trying to solve the problem of discovery and real-time communication for the live TV community in a fun and interesting way.

Currently on iOS and Android. Built on React-Native (Typescript) using Scala/Akka on the backend.

Looking for someone in marketing to own user acquisition, social media strategy, influencer outreach (podcasting primarily), etc.

Also open to a co-technical cofounder with either extensive RN/Typescript or Scala/Akka (cluster, persistence, etc) experience.

Contact details in my profile if interested.

I'm looking for a co-founder/iOS Developer/vinyl record lover to continue working with me on https://www.discofm.cohttps://apps.apple.com/us/app/disco-fm-vinyl-audio-preview/i...

It's an app for vinyl record lovers currently live in the App Store with over 3000 downloads, daily usage and downloads and that has been featured in many music related websites such as Resident Advisor, Dj Mag, Mix Mag and many others.

Currently the use case is limited, but I've been working on new features and ideas that I'd be interested in discussing with a potential co-founder.

The vinyl record market is bigger than it seems (https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-spending-vinyl-rec... — sales in this article are based only on US and without all the used market, which is huge) and currently the only player in the game is https://www.discogs.com

If you're interested, or know anyone who might be, contact me at filippo@discofm.co

thats really cool. I'd like to help somehow, being a volunteer if needed.
Hi! Sorry, just saw this — please send an email at filippo@discofm.co
Swymm.org is an interactive, crowdsourced timeline of all history that provides an open platform for discovering, learning from, and contributing to humanity’s understanding of history.

Swymm has two components: the wiki-like public database of history, and a freemium* advanced timeline tool (compare to i.e. Aeon Timeline) for writers, planners, law enforcement and more to lay out beautiful interactive timelines. (* Pricing model up for debate) Unlike Aeon Timeline and all others, Swymm is cloud-based, multi-user, shareable, and leverages Swymm's database of public history that can be easily imported into your personal timelines.

Located in NYC, closed beta, looking for a CTO. I have done all the design and development so far but I would like a CTO to take over development so I can focus on product and marketing, though I expect to also continue contributing to dev. @t3db0t on Twitter.

Do you have an email address? (I don't use Twitter.)
Sure—try swymm ~at~ swymm.org or gihaca8398@girtipo.com (temp email), trying to avoid spam :)
I'm working on https://develytica.com its a tool for analytics based on Github data. Some MVP features are completed at the moment. If anybody is interested in this kind of products then hit me up.
I'm working on https://pdf2qrcode.com

Looking for a partner who is great at marketing/sales or has connections to businesses which can benefit from this SaaS.

I can be reached via support@pdf2qrcode.com

Hey HN!

Andrew here (https://www.linkedin.com/in/agconti/). I'm the founder of Reactive Streaming, (https://www.reactive-streaming.com), a platform as a service that enables product and growth teams to create interactive live experiences through our easy to use APIs. We make it easy for you to build a live experience by taking care of the foundational live streaming technical challenges so you can focus on what differentiates your product.

- we have the fastest live video in the market, thanks to our propriety live streaming process.

- our interaction services, (a BAAS), lets you create deeply engaging visceral experiences with ease.

Want the skinny on what we offer? Here is a video: https://www.reactive-streaming.com/product-demo/

I'm located in NYC and I'm looking for a co-founder with deep sales and marketing experience. If you're interested, please reach out to me on LinkedIn!

I am working on a platform to make, run and share microservices. Want a co-founder who can focus on marketing and strategy. The person needs to have a good understand of PaaS space, serverless and (preferably) based out of India. Drop me a mail at ynafey at gmail if interested.
Hola,

I just launched https://noisycamp.com, an AirBnb for Musicians.

I'm trying to make it easier for music studio owners and musicians to reserve, pay and manage their practice spaces.

I just released the first version of the web app, and I'm starting to reach studio owners to create a base inventory of studios.

I'm looking for someone with strong sales and product skills, able to help me developing the business side of the project.

This is a cool idea. I searched a few major cities and didn't get any results though.
Thanks. I just launched the project last weekend. I'll start reaching studios in the next few days.
My first venture gingrapp.com was recently acquired (good kind) and am looking for a new adventure.

curbd.app is a MVP product I’ve been messing around with. Not sure if it’s got legs, though.

Also have this concept app that’s the anti-Amazon app. It’s an app that lists all local stores inventory/pricing that consumers can use to one stop shop brick and mortar. Haven’t built that MVP yet.

If you can’t tell, my passion is helping SMB owners compete with the bigger players. If this is your passion too, I would love to talk.

My info is in my profile.

> Also have this concept app that’s the anti-Amazon app. It’s an app that lists all local stores inventory/pricing that consumers can use to one stop shop brick and mortar. Haven’t built that MVP yet.

This has been tried many times here in Germany with little success :(

Yes, I’ve seen many variants tried. It’s so funny, because whenever I talk to brick and mortar SMB they tell me they want it _so_ bad with regularity. Perhaps there’s just not enough hunger on the consumer side?
I can't speak for everyone, but as someone who tries to buy local, I wish that existed. There's a few stores that have reasonable web stores, but most have a single web page that was updated in 2017.

Also helpful would be a browser plugin (or something) that would allow me to find the product on Amazon and see if it's available locally. I do this with books all the time (find on Amazon, find the ISBN number, and the go put it into the local bookstore website). The local bookstore also does local deliveries.

I also enjoy supporting my local shops, but detest browsing 5 websites in an attempt to see if they have what I’m looking for. Usually their website site is awful and I have to call. That’s usually when I give up and buy on Amazon.

I like the idea of doing it as a browser extension, definitely useful to nudge people out of their naughty Amazon habit ;).

Thanks for the input!

How would you prevent the Mom-and-Pop business from, eventually, becoming essentially a franchisee of the Not-Amazon system?

If you list everyone's inventory with one-click ordering (assuming that order fulfillment is solved somehow), it is going to be an immediate race to the bottom on pricing, perhaps accelerated by arbitrageurs. Consumers will initially be happy, until service suffers, but vendors will be hit hard on margins.

One niche where I could see such an app succeeding: less-urban areas. In the past year or so, Amazon has neglected my parents' market in the college town of Blacksburg VA. My Dad broke his computer mouse over the weekend; while I could get one in hours via Amazon here in Seattle, the earliest delivery Amazon offered via Prime on Monday was Friday, with no option to pay more for faster delivery. I guarantee that there are hundreds of computer mice in existing store inventory within an hour's drive.

I don’t think the app would do fulfillment in a traditional sense. Consumers would go to the brick and mortar and pay for / collect their item. Maybe there’s a DoorDash type deal where drivers can collect the item from the store and deliver to the consumer. Doordash for consumer goods?

Interesting point on rural areas- I’m also in the same boat. Amazon only delivers USPS, and any package that won’t fit in my mailbox has to be collected at the post office 10+ miles away. It always adds a day of transit and a drive. There are times where I would pay for same day delivery. There are times where I wouldn’t mind driving to shop X in town and picking it up myself.

Thanks for the input!

I think Amazon and covid (semi and full lockdowns, local shops closing etc) have exposed an idea that you touch on, decoupling the last mile shipping from amazon/doordash/etc; a market/depots/etc for peered-powered distributed shipping/delivery. I would guess the bulk cost of shipping is the fist and last few miles.
An analog would be doordash & restaurants, with the added difficulty being brick and mortar retail often don't have great inventory and cataloging. Most restaurants were already doing take out, so hooking that up to a logistics machine (doordash), was easy. Here you need to go in and get stores to take photos of inventory and track said inventory, THEN hook them up to a logistics machine. doable for sure.

This race-to-the-bottom rhetoric seems like a pessimistic view blocking actual opportunity; as we've seen with any marketplace (e.g., amazon, doordash, walmart, shopify) it's a balance...

You’re spot on.

I had 2 ideas to try and overcome the poor inventory system problem::

- at first, SMB would manually input their inventory into the app, kind of like an eBay listing. Eventually, we’d build integrations to common POS.

- alternatively, you could allow consumers to select a category+text box entry of what they’re looking for. When submitted, businesses listed in that category would get pinged. If they have what the customer wants they could click to let them know. Perhaps with 2 way messaging.

Second option looks the more scalable solution. Solves the 'why should I bother inputting all my inventory into this new website' and allows you to handle the problem of not having any inventory to show for a real time search or even any shop partners yet. Have seen this done successfully (including acquired companies) for quotes for services markets.
I think it could work and is superior to manual entry. But when I mention it to my local SMB they mostly scoff. Maybe just too small of a sample size.

Thanks for the input though! Encouraging to hear this has worked for others before.

what were the reasons it didn't work in Germany?
the anti-amazon thing has legs, but the angle of attack to get beachhead might be difficult. Open problems:

1) fake review/counterfeit problem 2) support mom and pop

Google Shopping is trying to go after the "amazon prime for the rest of the internet", which seems like a good idea.

On 2), One thing to do would be to do what doordash did, just go to 50 mom and pop retail stores in one region and talk to them. see what their problems actually are.

The fake review/counterfeit goods problem is actually pretty hard to solve, but it's interesting because it's not on amazon's top 3 problems list, so you could disintermediate. Ways to solve it that may be businesses: machine learning, limiting manufacture geo's, relying on video product reviews with trusted influencers, tracking PE acquisitions as a proxy for brand deterioration, reading negative reviews first, etc.

I agree with your assessment and that's basically where I'm at with the idea. There's absolutely _something_ there, but gaining traction is going to require _significant_ effort (money?).

Re: talking to users first - 100%! I am fairly active in my community and talk with local business owners all the time. This is where I got the idea in the first place ;). Agreed though that doing this formally and generating some user stories before any development could help focus MVP.

Negative review is definitely a big problem and I'm not an expert on that topic, at all ;). If such an app were to have a review system it would be imperative to ensure the trust-worthiness of reviews shown to users.

Though, I'm not sure you would need reviews at first, at all. I generally trust most of what I buy from a given shop X... I trust their purchasing and supply chain departments to have done the research for me. I never think twice about buying X electronic from Target, for example, wondering if that night light for my son's room is going to combust. One of the benefits of brick and mortar, I suppose.

Why do you need money? Go to 50 stores, interview managers/owners. If there's a trend in their pain and you can solve it with software or sweat, build it as simply as possible.

Doordash put up menus on a website and started delivering orders by hand.

That’s easy and free, sure.

I guess I was alluding to the needed(?) network effect for such an app to become popular with consumers.

For me to have this app on my phone as a consumer it would have to have 80% of the local shops I frequent listed.

how do you know it's 80%? have you spoken with other local buyers? Maybe the floor is something like 20%?

let's say it is 80, can you imagine a way to get 80% of the supply (stores) onto this platform? Or, could you chart a path to get to x% supply after y weeks?

idea 1: fake it, just list stores and items on a website and find out a way to get users to see it without paying for ads

idea 2: sign stores up one by one, using some interview-derived value proposition, and get your friends to help onboarding new stores, challenge them to sign up x% more stores per week

idea 3: post about it on hn :(

These are all great ideas, appreciate it. It could very well be 20 and I’m the outlier. And could definitely use the fake it til you make it approach for such an app.

I think this all warrants more investigation!

I’ve a portfolio of tech demos that I’d like to monetize, or use as a stepping stone to offer services. I’ve tech lead and public speaking experience. I’ve been mostly bootstrap and gov innovation for most of my career.

https://archive.harlanji.com/2019-08-26-demos/

I picture holding something like 5% equity of a B2B SaaS/on-prem based company and exiting around Series B with a team of successors after some years.

I’m located in San Francisco, can commute and maybe relocate to Santa Clara or Cruz or East Bay.

My IT situation is weak so contact will seem flaky... I’m working on it.

Biz@harlanji.com

sci.app

Sucks that the site is down at the moment, but if you would like to help me build a futuristic take on how science could be improved drop me an email.

Also, if you like/work on science in general, get in touch, there's plenty to do!

I'm throwing this out there on a whim. I have a neglected web property that has a small cult-like following of a few thousand members. It's a photo sharing community for a specific subject, with a moderator and community ratings and things like that.

I've had plans to take this property and use it as a proof of concept for a platform that will enable anyone to create this kind of photo sharing community. Kind of like a wordpress for photo sharing communities.

I'm currently busy with other projects, but If I can find the right person that can take my vision and run with it, I'd be willing to throw some serious resources into this.

I'm basically looking for a full-stack developer who can also do product development, OR a designer who can handle the product development and work with a remote developer.

If you're interested, email me at gregg@webstartup.com and tell me a bit about yourself, or reply here for any questions.

I’m Mauro ( http://linkedin.com/in/ideabile ), and I’m located in Amsterdam.

I’m looking for a Designer for a pet building a SaaS solutions to integrate design more into development, get in contact with me if you want to know more.

I’m also looking to someone to invest part time hours to build services that can create passive income together, a sort of business pattern of MVPs.

I'm looking for a business / marketing co-founder - https://unicv.io (professional resume builder w linkedin import) ~ 90% finished
I'm Anieke Lamers, Amsterdam based and am looking for a technical cofounder. If you know anyone who is interested, please share this link: https://www.notion.so/Tech-or-Product-oriented-cofounder-opp... Also feel free to like/share it on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peekabond_tech-or-product-ori... About me: playful, eager, people-oriented hustler with 8+ years experience in investing in B2C and impactful tech scaleups. Passionate about remote kids bonding https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniekelamersnl/ Ask: Hacker/Hipster cofounder who is aligned on the company's values (eager, playful, ethical).
What exactly does playful mean in this context?
Perhaps playful suggests someone who is down-to-earth.

Someone who finds a way to flip things around: turn something boring into something fun.

Seems like a great idea! Best of luck
Having worked on a couple of failed relationships, it’s also ok to be a sole founder. Perhaps the problem is with me, I personally like having 100% control over initial formation of the company.
I guess, a team is much more productive in the early stage. But one can’t ditch co-founders later when 95% of development work is done and the rest 5% are customization for particular customer.
Definitely. Also depends on the type of company you want to build. If you want to build something that's going to become the next big thing, potentially raising a seed round, its better to have a cofounder or two.
I'm Russell Ballestrini and searching to bring the right person in as a co-founder for my latest project Make Post Sell.

Free entry level digital download e-commerce shops for upstarts and small business.

I'm currently bootstrapping and moving to the marketing and sales phase of Go-to-market.

The MVP is finished but need to build out the sales funnel and pricing.

Currently in need of landing pages for target markets (HTML/CSS/copy writing).

Built with Python, Pyramid, SQLAlchemy

Remote USA

Details in my profile on how to connect, feel free to ask questions here too.

https://www.makepostsell.com