Finding a co-founder is hard, and sometimes it takes a lot of time.
Folks who have co-founders, drop your tips, hacks, and methods on finding one so that you can help fellow founders who are seeking one.
People you have worked with in the past make great co-founders - you already built trust, know whether you work well together and whether you complement each other well.
If you're considering someone you've never worked with before, I'd strongly recommend starting with short-term project with a clear outcome to see how it goes :)
@5harath@flobbgt we met some really cool people on the YC matchmaking platform. It didn't lead to finding a co-founder for our team due to timing/ other ongoing projects but definitely worth checking it out!
Hey everyone! We know each other for more than 8 years. @chin_seng (COO) and @alexey_olkhovoy (CTO)studied at high school together. Chongkal helped Alex to become the school president (lol). Chongkal and me met at University when we studied at Political science and dreamed to launch tech company. With @alisa_smelkova , we worked from day one in our first company.
So we know how to make business with friends😂
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I will go first.
While I'm building community at Product Hunt on the side I run a SaaS product called Shoutout Initially, I built the MVP and validate the idea in the market. Later when I was looking for a co-founder to scale things, I went on Twitter to put a bat signal and found @curtisjcummings!
Here's a detailed story on how to find a co-founder.
Hope this helps!
I don’t have one. Nocode might increase the number of solo founder in the future.
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@yusuke2424 definitely. It’s so easy to start and on both ends. If you are a Dev, there are thousands of mar/adtech growth tools. If you’re more on a business side, than you have an evolving market of no-code everything (from website builders to Natural Language processing). It’s never been so easy to build prototype and MVP
I was lucky to find my co-founders during school, but YC's online startup school is a really cool resource as well. They do weekly group calls where you can meet and talk with other founders in a similar stage as you. You can also check a box that says you're looking for co-founders so people are aware. Seems to be a really good virtual option for finding!
https://www.startupschool.org/
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1. Ex. Colleagues
2. Anglelist.io
Keep an eye on your
3. Suppliers / vendors &
4. Customers
3&4 can be as close as ex colleagues
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I met my co-founder during our studies in Barcelona 5 years ago. We've been flatmates since then and worked on many side projects and startup ideas before founding Wonderpath this year (https://www.wonder-path.com/). I definitely recommend side projects as a great way to get started.
Here's a post on how to find your co-founder from our blog, Flatmate Founders: https://flatmatefounders.substac...
TLDR:
- Startup School co-founder match
- Intense trial period
- First Round founder dating playbook
My co-founder and I met on YC Startup School's co-founder matching platform! (https://www.startupschool.org/co...). Highly recommend.
We're now building Whalesync - a super simple way to sync data across your no-code tools. (https://www.whalesync.com/)
When we met, it was obvious from the beginning we shared a passion/experience in no-code and had complementary skills.
That being said, we took the partnership decision very seriously (which I'd also recommend) and went thru a rigorous process to make sure we'd be great partners long-term. This included:
- a 2 month trial period of working together full-time
- days spent deep diving on core values, goals, and desired culture
- First Round's founder dating playbook: https://review.firstround.com/th...
Certainly feels like a bit of luck that Curtis and I were able to meet, but hope that's helpful!
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We don't have a co-founder. Sometimes one isn't needed. The founder of our company made it work without one. Sometimes a strong team is better than a good co-founder. With that being said maybe look for a few people you can build a team around.
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