Ask HN: Who's looking for a cofounder?
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.
128 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadI'm looking for a cofounder for a small business deal. I want to sell GNU Octave. Something like what the Julia folks are doing[1]. I do not foresee this will be a startup, not a build once, sell infinitely often kind of deal (I don't consider what the Julia people are doing is a startup either). We are in all probability not going to become millionaires. But hopefully we will be doing good in the world and we will find a way to fund others who are. Matlab is huge, and while Julia and Python chip around the edges of its market dominance, we need something like Octave that can take it head-on and be a drop-in replacement.
I do mathematics and programming. I know GNU Octave well, and I also know its community. I don't know how to do market research, advertising, how to negotiate contracts, or how to look for funding. If you think you could help me, contact me at jordigh@octave.org
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516298
Sure, publish the code to the person we sell them to, and no one else. If they want to take the job of rebuilding the binaries themselves, they're welcome to try, but I think the hassle of doing that is what we would be getting paid to do.
Maintaining an online version of Octave seems like another possibility. A couple of people have already built online versions of Octave, and when I approached one of them several months ago, they seemed receptive to the idea to commercialise it.
I have one question; how do you foresee the competition's reaction to any sustained success? Certainly if you are successful, they are free to subtly change how MATLAB functions in small ways to break what you do. Right? Or am I missing something?
My impression right now is that Octave is too small for the Mathworks to take us seriously. It will take a lot of work to make Octave grow into something big enough for the Mathworks to acknowledge our existence. Hopefully by the time Octave is that big, we will have the means to defend ourselves, if it comes to that.
It seems like there are a lot of interesting projects out there.
The idea is that nothing should come between a founder and the idea/MVP. Nothing. my ideal cofounder would have considerable experience with legalities, experienced regarding terms (since it's our model), and potentially on board for this as a future source of dealflow (i.e. someone who wants a source of investments personally would be a match as well.). hit me up if you'd like to have this conversation.
Things that scale to 10,000 founders:
-> Incorporation process with standardized terms
-> Docker containers with hosting (that we host) that we can look into and judge actual traction (to keep founders from wasting any time whatsoever on a seed round, no matter how disconnected they might be - traction unlocks it automatically, they should just build, build, build)
-> collective service agreements on behalf of all our founders, so that we can take care of service integrations. For example giving all our founders stripe integration so they can start billing for whatever they put up.
-> Basically everything that can be taken off of a startup checklist, when someone is first starting out and doesn't want to be distracted for weeks with business and service arrangements that are not about building product!
-> Streamlining a PR process by having key contacts get a steady stream of stories of traction by our founders.
However, the financial model I had been thinking about was that I would charge the founders at cost for time and materials for all the initial set up. With scale you could do it much faster and cheaper than they could and would reduce their risk. Max implementation time frame of 2 months. Hard limits on scope creep/late changes. Use frameworks to make implementation as fast as possible. Probably cost the founders $20k - $30k. You want them to pay up front to make sure they are committed to the project and aren't just wasting your time. I would head towards having standard code bases for various types of start up models.
Retain 20% equity in the start up that you've helped create.
Worst case scenario, the start up goes nowhere and you've covered costs. Best case start up does well and you've got 20% equity.
It's a good deal for founders because they reduce their risks, they get speed to market and they have access to a development team for further development if they get traction.
What would be your financial model? Bear in mind that I'm in Australia, so $20k - $30k to me might be something completely different to you. From my perspective, if you can't find $20k, you aren't serious about your business. Also, in my model, $20k gets you to a point where you have a business that you can market, run and start taking orders.
AFAIK, YCombinator doesn't build you an MVP, or provide you hosting or do all the items on your start up checklist, so I don't think this is a fair comparison.
As for valuation, at the point that you walk in with an idea and nothing more, I think your idea is worth about $1. Valuation at this stage is fairly meaningless. They are paying $20K at cost for the services I'm providing. I forgo making a margin on these services in exchange for 20% equity. So, in effect we share the risk. I reduce my risks by making sure I at least cover my costs. They reduce their risks by knowing they'll get to MVP stage without any hassles caused by their inexperience or lack of technical prowess.
Maybe 20% is too much equity, I don't know. What I do know is that I want a potential piece of any large upside I might help create. That's my price for forgoing margin on the initial services I provide.
Yes, for the model you envision the marginal costs should be low. However, you are looking at requiring a very long runway. How long do you think it would take before you start making money? You've got to include the time not only to launch your own start up but launch the first customer's start up that makes money. Considering a potential 90% + failure rate, you might be waiting a while. This is why I think you need to at least try and cover your costs.
I wish you the best of luck with your start up.
I am genuinely curious as to how an incubator/accelerator model makes money. Maybe somebody else can answer?
I'd be interested.
I think those barriers that come between founders and MVP are important obstacles to learn to overcome. IF you can't get an MVP off the ground, with all the distractions like incorporating, how the heck do you hope to survive the real challenges of a startup like figuring out how to make payroll when there is no money in the bank.
Maybe i'm wrong, but something about removing these barriers strikes me as self-defeating, and would likely lead you on a journey with lots of folks who never should be doing startups in the first place.
It's not like the barrier to entry is so big right now...but your belief that "nothing should come between a founder and an MVP" is fundamentally flawed. A better mantra would be, "A good founder wont let anything get in the way of launching an MVP."
Just my two cents.
Edit: Grammar
http://www.orbert.io/
iOS game launching in December 2015. Written in Swift 2.0 with mostly SpriteKit. Team is two: graphic designer + digital musician, also both programmer.
About you: have a Mac, use XCode, have been learning Swift. Want to download the most recent El Capitan beta and XCode 7. Are excited to work on a game for iOS 9, which includes the brand new Gameplay Kit and updated SpriteKit. BONUS POINTS: Have a game on the App Store. Are an Objective C ninja. Know how to use storyboards and GameKit for social add-ins.
E-Mail me if you're interested: joe@orbert.io
Compensation: We have no budget. You will earn 33% of the profits from the game.
Stage: Funded, seed stage, with Tim Draper as lead investor.
Where: SD, LA, SF, and currently: Provo, Utah.
Who: A co-founder that has an academic/technical background and industry respect in databases, and wants to do more administrative/business/Series-A/enterprise/sales/marketing side of the coin.
Offer: 20% of the company, a small "cover your needs" $60k salary to start.
mark@gunDB.io
Location doesn't matter right now except would be great if you were in a (relevant) major city. I'm in Bali right now, Malaysia & Singapore next week, Tokyo for the rest of July.
Product is there, currently talking to people about it.
Best to get me on advgeoff@gmail.com (Intentional obfuscation)
Me: a full stack developer with some startup & business experience
Why: I have savings and a drive to launch a startup, but no good ideas
Where: NYC currently
Contact: me@morgante.net
The plan is to enter an incubator to pilot a proof of concept and then seek seed investment. I also have a strategic plan (hires, etc) on taking the seed to a series A with MVP potential.
Requirements: Passion for the idea of expanding open source. You're also willing for the company to make 1 billion, instead of 10, but leave the world a better place. An ability to understand and communicate either biology, code, or both.
Bonus points for experience in law/IP materials.
Contact info in profile.
If you're a UX or Interaction Designer with an interest in business dev and marketing then I'd be keen to hear from you too.
my email is eli@ux-app.com
We will pitch consulting services in VR to universities, hospitals, retail spaces, reception halls, etc., to continue to build out the framework. The framework will be the core technology to games and applications we create.
I'm looking for help with biz dev, marketing, sales, systems ops, and software development.
Contact me through my HN profile.
I've refused money from, among others, NASA and Google.
http://www.robots-everywhere.com/
Stage: Self-funded, bootstrapping
Where: NYC, but willing to talk to people elsewhere
Who: Django developer who wants to help take the site and community to the next level. I'm the only person in the company, I work with freelancers, so I can offer very fair equity and possible stipend/contract work to start.
Contact: jonathan@hypedsound.com
I develop Streamus, https://streamus.com // https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/streamus/jbnkffmin...
Streamus is a browser extension alternative to Spotify powered by YouTube. I have been developing the software for ~3 years and it currently has 300K active users. I'm interested in working towards a first round of funding after having misc. angels express interest in the past.
I live in San Luis Obispo, CA (smack dab in the middle between LA and SF).
I'm mostly looking for another developer fluent in JavaScript to aid in development. Bonus points for having a business/start-up background.
I'd like to think I bring a lot to the table. I'm currently coasting on savings while working on Streamus full-time, unpaid. I contract ~12hrs/wk to cover bare necessities. I have 4 yrs xp as lead developer of a small software company and am an active contributor to Backbone.Marionette, one of the leading open-source JavaScript frameworks. My efforts on Streamus are well known on Reddit with my latest marketing efforts resulting in the #4 post of all time in r/music, http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/2sypcn/seven_months_a.... My efforts have also been featured on TechCrunch, LifeHacker, TheNextWeb, Product Hunt (twice), and many other tech. blogs. I've declined a potential position at YouTube Music in order to pursue this project further.
Feel free to hit me up at admin@streamus.com for any business inquiries, or if you just want to chat and learn more about the product. :)
Cheers
It would be great to see support for easier sharing of user-created playlists (beyond copying/pasting URLs), such as an official & searchable repository with ranked lists of playlists for different genres and purposes (reading, coding, etc.).
You can see a full list of feature requests here: https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusChromeExtension/issues. I haven't embellished on all of the ideas yet, but the list should give you a general idea of what I think needs to happen -- including improving the UX of sharing playlists.
I've known about the issue since day 1 and went into this project with the mindset of, "If I make something cool enough to get shut down then I'll consider it a success."
A few years into the project I garnered their attention and was finally able to setup some talks to figure out what my options were for fulfilling their ToS.
My initial suggestion was to allow Streamus to follow in the footsteps of the Google Hangouts extension which uses Chrome Panels to display a tab-independent window over your browser. The intent was that the YouTube video could be displayed there and minimized when not wanted. However, this functionality is being deprecated and Google didn't have much interest in expanding the usage of it.
So, what I've got going now is some code which injects itself into YouTube's iframe and sniffs the responses from YouTube's server, https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusChromeExtension/blob/Devel.... This allows me to pass around a pointer to the array buffer of video data being rendered in YouTube's iframe. Using this data I'm able to sync and re-render the video inside of the popup without having it coupled directly to the audio.
So far this seems like a satisfactory response to the issue. It's akin to having a YouTube video player running on an inactive tab. The user has the ability to watch the video, but isn't necessarily viewing it while listening to the audio.
I'm aware that I'm playing with fire a fair bit, but I think that's the case when using any API. YouTube has been nothing but completely understanding throughout all of our talks.
Fallback options include migrating Streamus to a Chrome App, which would not suffer the same issue but, IMO, has worse UX, or migrating away from YouTube in favor of other sources such as SoundCloud, MixCloud, SFX.io, etc.
They might be ok with it now, but there’s nothing stopping them from changing their mind in the future.
However, it's worth noting that there are much larger fish in this pond already! http://plug.dj/ employs 9 people and has 2.5 million in funding while being entirely dependent on YouTube's API for their business model.
I don't think that validates my decision, but it helps me sleep at night a bit. Plus, YouTube is trying to get into this sphere with software such as YouTube Music Key. They're failing to win over the general public with it, but Streamus doesn't seem to have any trouble convincing people to give YouTube a try as a more genuine music player. I'd like to think that they'd be more interested in acquiring the software than forcing it to sink alongside their own.
Looking for a bizdev / co-founder with experience on bootstrapping this kind of service.
The company is located in Paris, France but your location should not matter.
Contact me at tug@nirror.com
I'm looking for a co-founder who would like to focus on back-end so I can get back to design/marketing/etc.
I'm looking for someone primarily with business/marketing experience who's done this before, or someone technical who knows security and/or iOS. But above all, I need someone who believes in developing more privacy-focused tech. I'm trying to build a long-term business, and this product is just the start of a bigger picture I have in mind.
I'm based out of Jacksonville, FL, but location shouldn't matter. My email is matt@write.as.
Hint: ODB bus, distributed network. At the backend, we use Postgres and Rails.
working on: The rebolder, an online social news site with a focus on donating to charities and providing an experience worth paying for in itself. There are no upvotes/downvotes but instead voteable tags, signup requires donation to charity, enchanced paid posting options and VIP accounts with more vote weight.
Stack: Rails + Postgres + ES
I live in Philadelphia.
Who I'm looking for: deeply ethical pragmatist and social capitalist, willing to make a living serving a public good on multiple fronts, not a build & flip. Interest in news and newspapers and associated history. Absolute unwavering loyalty to the users and their best interests.
What I bring to the table: everything that's not financials or legal, more or less.
Stage: mostly designed and built, a few integrations and tweaks to go.
Contact: r.rebolderco@ruru.name
We have over 1M downloads on iPad and everyday tens of thousands of young students use our apps. Recently I hired some contractors to help build the next gen of our products with a proper backend. We have our first school client for the platform and they are rolling out an app for all of their grade 1 students using this technology (in place: contract iOS dev, backend, front end).
I've realized that I really need a technical partner so that I can trust someone to really own the technical side of the business and I will focus on raising a seed round and growing the customer base. I'm planning to move from Toronto to the US in the fall (either NYC or San Fran) depending on how my accelerator applications go.
Even though i've been at this for 3+ years i'm open to bringing in a cofounder. Seeking full stack expertise (bonus points for ML experience) with a desire to make a huge impact in the learning space. Drop me a line (email in profile) to chat about how education will change in the future.
I've got a website and a working prototype. If interested, email chroem@uw.edu .
We are located in sunny Singapore. We just got our first seed funding.
We are looking for another developer that is fluent in Javascript and interested in Webgl and WebVR. Or, Graphic (opengl) guy that is interested in bringing 3d to web.
It is an interesting project, the project will be open source (good career boost) and we got the funding! We will be providing Singapore working visa.
My email is jia@vrcollab.com
But I want to build a modular html like standard with the power of web component. Drop me an email if you wan to discuss more!