Finding a technical co-founder for your startup

June 2, 2012
Posted in Articles
June 2, 2012 Mircea Goia

Finding a technical co-founder for your startup

Here are some places where you can find a co-founder (technical or not).

 

Linkedin.com
Do you have a profile there? Do you have tech people in your network? If yes you can take a look at their profile and see if you find someone interesting and contact them.
If you don’t have some of those people in your network then you will have to find them and most probably pay Linkedin to let you contact those.

Techventure.com
You will need to apply there as co-founder.

PartnerUp.com
Using this site, somebody from my city found me. We’ve met, discussed and now became friends and maybe in the future we will start something (he needed someone who is more involved with the social media and online marketing – he is pretty technical himself). The site moved to Google+ community since then.

Founder2be.com
Over 20,000 co-founder candidates at last count. And growing. Like match.com for finding a co-founder.

Cofounderslab.com
Another site where you can look for a tech cofounder.

 

You can lookup also on this Google spreadsheet.

 

Hacker News
This is well known among developers, especially among those in Silicon Valley.
See here an example:
– https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=159648

StackOverflow.com
This place is swarming with programmers. Get use first with the site and see who are the experts there.

Meetup.com
This is a site where various groups from various fields are formed and have meetings in real life. I am sure you can find groups of developers there for your city. Try to attend their meetings and talk to people. Maybe, after sometime, you can find someone who knows his stuff and you click (it’s important to have chemistry with that person, otherwise it’s like a bad marriage).
Here is an example group from Austin, TX.
Or like these groups in Los Angeles.

StartupDigest.com
Register with them. They will send you tech and startup events in your area (if they have your area covered).

StartupWeekend.org
Almost the same as above but you have to see if there is something in your area.

Svase.org
This is for Silicon Valley only (it’s the entrepreneurs association from there). You have to register to get in. You can attend their meetings and through the contacts you are making there you can get maybe recommendations for a co-founder.

CollabFinder.com
Worldwide network of entrepreneurs and makers, including engineers, scientists, designers, musicians, artists, etc. Many successful, funded startups have come out of CollabFinder.

FounderDating.com
The same as above.

Friends and friends of friends
Maybe this should on the spot 1.
Maybe you have friends who are technical or know friends who are and can hook you up.

Your university or other universities from your area
Maybe this should be on the spot 2.
Does your university (if you are in one) has a computer science section? You can go there and talk to the teacher and maybe they can tell you who can be a technical good fit for you. But you still need to meet that person and see if you click.

Please also read these articles about finding co-founders:
Where can I find a technical co-founder to help build a social search company?
Co-Founders
Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring an idea to life?
How have non-technical founders found technical co-founders?
– Vinicius Vacanti (Yipit founder) posts here and here
– Venturehacks
– Techcrunch
– Quicksprout
– Wall Street Journal
– Hacker News post

 

finding-co-founders-startupIn searching for a tech co-founder you also need to be aware of what you are bringing to the table, beside the idea.

Maybe you have connections which can help the startup, maybe you are a good “salesman” (to sell your vision to people), maybe you have marketing skills, maybe you have the money…or all of these. A tech person will ask you these and wonder about these. You have to be prepared to respond. You have to win that tech person to become your CTO. Like I said (and others said), it’s like a marriage…and, like with all marriages, it can sometime go wrong so you have to be prepared for that too.

NOTE: This article was published first by me on Quora.com on Jan 29, 2011.