Bring in Non-Technical Partner?

1 points by maunaloa ↗ HN
I am a software engineer who has been working on a B2C product full-time for most of the last year.

It's not a product that will change the world, but it closely matches existing offerings in the market so I think it has a decent chance of generating revenue. Ultimately, I think it will come down to marketing execution.

I've been talking with a serial entrepreneur I met online who is interested in partnering. From my research he looks like someone whose career focus has essentially been online marketing and hustling. My hope is partnering with someone like this could drastically accelerate growth and unlock a lot of value.

I'm trying to figure out how to safely bring this guy in and test him out. In conversations, he's indicated that he sees this as a long-term relationship with us as equal partners. This partly makes sense to me, but other variables make it less clear. For example, I have been all-in for most of the last year working on this, and he will be joining with the product mostly built. Also, my leverage mostly decreases moving forward, since I'll have already built the product.

I'm hoping I can get some input on - whether I'm overthinking this or setting myself up for disaster - are there better ways I should be approaching this? - are there ways to protect myself going into this?

3 comments

[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 22.6 ms ] thread
There are incubators that pair technical and nontechnical founders, or provide advice to technical founders about marketing etc. You may want to consider something like that, where you can meet and evaluate people in a more structured way.

Maybe its unintentional, but the way you described the person you met - serial entrepreneur, online marketing, hustling, makes them sound sketchy. I'd take them out for beers (or whatever today's equivalent is) with a few of your good friends and see what kind of vibe they get. For this kind of thing, I think gut feeling and other people's impression goes a long way.

Yeah I agree with this, go with the gut. Please do keep us updated.
First you should try to diversify. I.e. try to find another 3-5 business partners and see if he is the one. Not unlike dating. If he so good, why not offer him to work on commission ?

Second you should not give any sort of control of the board (not the company).