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Ask HN: technical co-founder looking for startup

4 points by gingersnaps1 ↗ HN
I am 40+ year old CTO and co-founder of a firm that I sold a couple years ago. I'm ready to get back into a start up but I don't have any ideas ( I didn't really have an idea for the first company either ). I do have 20+ years of experience developing software as everything from dev to CTO. I also have significant capital to contribute as well as lots of time as I am currently retired. Spare me the lecture about finding an itch to scratch, even if I had that I still need to find a co-founder, CEO type to move forward. My company was in the ( puts on flame retardant gear ) HFT world but I'm not interested in working in that world. Most of my hands on development is low latency C/C++ work but in 20 years I've done some of everything. Any thoughts on how I should proceed?

5 comments

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crawfordcomeaux
I'm building an app to streamline the design process and looking for a co-founder. If you'd like to discuss the idea further, my number's 337-739-2846. Call any time that's convenient. - Crawford
Armslong
Can you provide some contact info?
gingersnaps1
You can contact me at poweredbygingersnaps at yahoo . com. I much prefer email to phone but crawfordcomeaux I will call you tomorrow afternoon. I live in Chicago.
[dead] doss
Hi, I'm looking for a technical co-founder for an innovative media startup. I've spoken with a couple of majors; however, they'd like to develop the efforts within their respective corporations (I'd be an employee), so I'm building a startup.

I'd like to communicate initially via email, if you're interested. I'll send an email to you with contact details.

argonaut
Allow me to offer a suggestion: Instead of having the mindset that you always need "to find a co-founder, CEO type to move forward" (a very self-defeating and self-fulfilling idea, in the sense that having this mindset usually means people make no effort to improve themselves in this arena), why don't you try to generate an idea and then take this opportunity to learn sales/marketing/business skills. There's no inherent reason you can't try to improve your skills in those areas. There's no such thing as being to old to learn something new. And even if you find yourself lacking in social skills, many aspects of sales/marketing have nothing to do with sociability - internet marketing, cold-emailing etc.

Also read pg's essay on getting startup ideas, if you haven't already: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html