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Single Geeky Male, 30 Seeking Same

8 points by fiftyone ↗ HN
I'm an old man 30 years old non-programmer with a wife and 3 kids.

I know most of the people YC fund are programmers still in school, and they don't like to take on singles.

My question is how do I find someone who I can work with on my ideas? I have many IRL friends but none of them really understand tech/computers/geek like I do. Where are you my secret geek friend ? :(

9 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 20.3 ms ] thread
ktharavaad
Well, posting on YC is a good place to start. There are also a lot of events tailored towards geeks, startups, programmers which you can attend and try to make some friends.

Also, Instead of emphasizing on your personal stats ( 30 year old, wife, kids ), why not talk about your vision and ideas, if people find them interesting, they'll probably be more willing to talk to you about them.

Good luck on your search.

[deleted]
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yan
Post your idea. Some people are willing to work on ideas they find interesting (myself included).
fiftyone
Well, lately I have been working on a "next-gen" social news website. I have done a lot of research over the last year or so into what is wrong with social news and what can be done about it.

I started out saying to myself "I wish Reddit had this, or I wish Digg could do this... I wish, I wish, I wish" until I decided that I would fix it myself. "Digg is like so last year"

If there are two things I can't live without in my life it's my RSS reader and my social news sites (Reddit primarily, but only because it uses direct links in Google Reader.I used to love the community as well but it seems to have gone down hill lately (IMHO), I rarely ever visit the actual site anymore.)

So, like I said I started doing research, reading what other thought about social news and its strengths and weaknesses and I set out to try and fix it as well as implementing a lot of my own unique ideas as well. I'm still working on it it's a constant work in progress I always getting new ideas.

Since I'm not a programmer, and i'm pretty good with Photoshop I decided to do a pretty detailed mockup of what I want my site to look like, how I want it to behave and what features I want in hopes that I can find a hacker or someone with some skills that would be willing help me take my ideas further. One of my biggest problems is I don't have someone to chat with to improve on my ideas or to offer their own to make a good idea really kick ass.

Anyhow, if anyone is interested in this kinda thing send me an email and maybe we can get these YC guys to give us some loot! :D

pclark
30 isn't old.
earl
Thank god there's another of us :)

Also, you don't have to go straight to YC -- pick an alumnus.

Mankhool
I'm in Vancouver, Canada and on the advice of my accelerator / VC partner in the SF Bay area, decided to try to find a developer who could become a co-founder in my venture on a part-time basis. I used Craigslist and ended up moving forward with the first person to reply that fulfilled all of my criteria. He's a hacker (I'm not), but he liked the opportunity I presented, and both of us are over 30 and really not able to quit our jobs to pursue the project full-time - yet.
pg
Actually only a small minority of people we fund are still in school. In fact we probably fund more people who are over 30 than who are still in school. It is good to have at least one person in the startup who can program though.
wheels
I think one thing that you'll have to establish to bring on any technical person is a strong case for what you bring to the table. "I had the idea" isn't enough.

Being 30 isn't a problem, but starting a startup will put stress on your family life. Make sure that they and you are prepared to not see each other a lot of days and for you to be very one-tracked for a long while, probably combined with little or no income for the first many months.