4 lessons I learned trying to find a tech co-founder

Conventional advice from Google doesn’t work. Because it’s not supposed to.

— Hi Ana, thank you for your time. I really hope you’d help me with this one. —

I see that the girl’s eyes even with poor lighting and video noise of the Zoom screen look sad and hopeful at the same time.

— I have this great startup idea but I’m not a techie person, and I don’t have anyone in my circle who is. Where do I look for a technical co-founder? I should probably just hire someone but it’s not an option too as I’m very tight on the budget.

I’m looking in the girl’s intelligent and inexperienced face — and see myself four years ago. I was much older than she is. And had four names of non-startup businesses in my CV to back up my experience. It didn’t save me from making every possible mistake in my co-founder search. Here’s what I learned after numerous failed attempts of finding someone using “recommended” tools (more on in below), four broken contracts, heavy depression, and — finally — two great partners that I work with now.

Lesson #1. “Recommended” ways are not for you if you’re a non-US founder with no strong connections in a tech community, you have no tech college background, and/or you don’t work in a startup now.

If you google up “the best ways to find a co-founder” there will be pearls of conventional wisdom all around the internet. What’s recommended most is:

Friends and or/family (college, school, from the neighborhood — whatever). However, if you had tech-savvy friends you wouldn’t be googling up ways to find a tech co-founder, right? You would go straight to your friends, offer them a deal or ask for a referral. So, if you’re not a techie yourself and don’t have friends in tech circles, scratch out this option.

Founders matching platforms. There are some players in this market. The most popular are:

1. CoFoundersLab — undeniably the largest and most elaborate platform to find a co-founder. They offer founders search (you can choose what skills do you need and browse options), mentoring, some education, many online and offline events, personal profile creation, and other useful features. They even have a free plan, though it offers almost nothing aside from you being included in their mailing list.
2. FoundersNation, is a smaller platform. But at least they are totally free and offer free legal support and consultancy if you want to draw a co-founders agreement with a person you’ve found through their service.
3. Founder2be used to be another one, but it’s closed.

I can’t say that matching platforms are inefficient. There are just not for my use case. There are probably plenty of founders out there who’ve managed to find a partner due to these websites. But, firstly, the problem with these platforms is the opposite of those with friends and family: there’s no background check, everyone can create an account or post a fake CV. I’ve heard stories when people started receiving spam scam offerings as soon as they created an account on one of the platforms. Secondly, as many useful online services, the platforms are heavily focused on the US-based audience. The legal support implies that paperwork will be done according to American law. If you want to establish your startup, say, in Vietnam, and offer someone equity in this company, platforms will wash their hands away.

Hiring platforms (Fiverr, Upwork)- not a bad option if you have a budget. Go there, post a job, collect offers, give test assignments to 3–5 candidates. Pay and try to convince any of them to be your cofounder (I have an article on how to do it here). However, if you don’t have a budget to pay at least a monthly fee of 3–5 devs — it’s a no-go. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket and hire just one candidate. You can’t hire 5 for 1 day each — it’ll tell you nothing about their work ethics, skills, personal qualities. So if you decide to try out this path be ready to spend $10K-$15K on this experiment — mind you, with no guarantee that at least one of the candidates will agree to proceed with this journey with you on a no-pay basis.

Social media. Reddit or LinkedIn — in Reddit there are subreddits for founders search. I’ve been there, spent several months posting my offers. Did not work out? Why? Because of Lesson #2 👇

Lesson #2. Co-founders are like customers — you have to establish personal connection long before attempting to sell on something (in this case — the idea of partnership).

Indeed, put yourself in your co-founder’s shoes: someone comes from nowhere and offers to do the unpaid job. Pretty unattractive offer, eh?

Ok, but what tactics actually work? Lesson #3 👇

Lesson #3. Use the power of large numbers

To win the lottery you have to buy a ticket. To increase your chances of winning — buy more tickets in different places. This approach works with co-founders’ search as well, as with the lottery. What you have to do is to talk to three different people daily for several months. I mean it, every single day. To get the large numbers to effect you have to be consistent. Begin with your close circle, then ask for referrals — whom can you talk to about your project. Then ask for the next ones. Don’t pitch. Just describe passionately what you’re doing, why it’s important and what outcomes do you expect. Be precise with numbers (when do you expect to get to breakeven, what’s the cashflow will be) and with expectations (don’t say “I’m looking for a co-founder”, say what skills and qualities exactly you’re looking for (“I’m searching for a college student who would like to do some coding in React as a side gig”). In 3–4 months o daily communications you’ll get up to 5 quality candidates to choose from.

But the most efficient way that worked for me and that I know has brought amazing results to most non-techie founders with no direct connections to the software community — Lesson #4 👇

Lesson #4. If you don’t have a direct connection to the software community — go and embed yourself there

As simple as that! Now, you don’t have to go to MIT or Stanford to get connected to top people from tech. You don’t even have to be a US citizen or live in the same time zone. There’s a strong tech community on Twitter. There are plenty of amazing tech people in Slack channels. The advice is pretty straightforward — if you want to sell to, say, football players, you don’t barricade yourself in a submarine and wait when they come. If you want to find a tech co-founder, don’t sit and wait in your virtual space full of great but far from tech people. Go where your prospective co-founders hang out. Start communicating, commenting, ask questions, establish friendly relationships. It takes even longer than daily meetings (probably, up to 8–9 months). But the upside is that when you find someone you’d love to be your co-founder and reach out to them, and get “Yes” — you’ll be working with a person you already know, whom you trust, and who trusts you. It’s a much stronger connection that will help your startup to last.

If you’re still looking for a partner for your startup — check out my digital course An Ultimate Guide To Courting a Co-Founder And Hire Top Talent For Less. It will give you all necessary tools for hunting a courting a co-founder for free. Don’t pay matching palatforms! Learn how to find a perfect partner on your own.