Ask HN: How to find technical cofounder who wants to start a small business?
I am presently making $144,000 salary as a Director of Product Management, but I really feel it is futile to continue serving the corporate masters. There is this void that I feel in going to work every day -- dealing with commutes, bad stress (not good stress), dumb co-workers, and the office politics. And I realized that while the paycheck sounds to be good on paper, the salary after taxes, living expenses, etc - it is really not that much. I really don't have that much real work per se ( so are the other peers -- no one would want to admit) - a lot of it is really busy work ; preparing Powerpoints, replying to emails, etc. But we all show our face and warm our chair from 9 am to 6 pm because everybody is afraid of being labeled a 'slacker'. Having been through one layoff and one micro-manager, I realize that working in a company is really not that stress-free, secure, or financially viable in the long run.There's no such thing as job security.
I am looking to create a startup / small business (funding can be optional) where we can be the sole owners and make good income over and above what we could earn from working at a day job. Ideally, we will start doing this on the side until it matures. For the past two years, I currently have a side online business where I net about $38,000 per year so I have some experience in starting an online small business, but it is not enough for me to quit my day job yet.
I am not shooting for millions or billions, simply a small business where we could earn $400,000+ so each of us can get $200,000 and then stop working at our day job and then grow the business.
I attended a lot of events and talked to a lot of people and read a lot of books. Some of my favorite business / work philosophy comes from:
. Founders of Atlassian (Jira and Confluence) -- try Google them
. 37 Signals' Getting Real . David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY
. 37 Signals' Re-work
. Blue Ocean Strategy book
My background:
. BS in Computer Science ( graduated with perfect GPA)
. Worked as programmer (software design engineer) at Microsoft
. MS from Stanford
. worked over 10 years as engineer and later product managers at various high tech companies in the bay area (Yahoo, PayPal, etc).
. strong SEO, online marketing, web app, viral, affiliate marketing, etc.
. smart and organized
What I am looking is:
* programmer / coder that could build beautiful web applications from scratch , say in RoR
* programmer / coder that wants to be owners
* you want to be in charge and are looking to break free from your modern day slavery ( day job )
Ideally: * you have enough free time on nights/days to do coding, perhaps aside from your not too-demanding day job
* you have the know-how and skills to build medium-scale to large web application from scratch
If all this sounds interesting to you, let me know please.. my email is: productguy09 (at) gmail dot com
Thank you for your time!
5 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 15.6 ms ] threadYou're making a hefty salary. Don't quit in a hurry. Save up a big chunk, slowly get going on the side and quit when you have some customers.
Also, I'd encourage you to solicit people that have similar interests (possibly expertise in something you wished you knew more about & enjoy), which can potentially turn into your product/business. If you want to spend a significant portion of your life working on something, it might as well be something you enjoy (cause you can grind out a living doing things you don't care about for anyone). When recruiting engineers, let them know what spaces / ideas you are considering. From my experience, passion for a space gets more responses then delineated qualifications.
Best of luck.