Has anyone any tips or advice on how to source a technical cofounder for an app based start up?
I have a fairly well developed idea but struggling to find a connection with a talented developer due to a limited network.
Not expecting a a silver bullet but will highly appreciate any experience shared as I figured the Monzo community could be a good crowd for ideas.
Unless you have money or connections to get money I think it will be incredibly difficult.
You basically want someone to build your idea?
Do you have money to pay someone on Fiver or similar?
I want someone to buy into the dream, not to charge by the hour - accept this may be idealistic.
If there are talented developers out there routinely looking for viable business ideas then itās possible a partnership could be made.
Stumbling through personal networks is exhausting.
Paying for it could be an expensive option, and where does it stop, itās an iterative process so donāt see how I could control costs.
There are lots of talented developers but why do they need you?
Not suggesting anyone needs anything, but if there are individuals who are out there looking for projects they believe in then then a team can be forged.
Itās not uncommon for cofounders to form teams over little more than a common interest. The challenge i have is where to look.
Iād say it would be quite unusual for a talented developer (whoās talents letās remember have a monetary value) to ābuy inā to a project like this without there being a financial incentive. Your essentially banking on somebody being really really passionate about the project for personal reasons - thatās not impossible but seems unlikely.
When I was hiring developers I had most of my success through my LinkedIn network - you just have to put the hard work in to connect with a ton of developers which is obviously more difficult if youāve not got anything of interest for them.
Best of luck - what your suggesting seems quite far fetched to me but I bet someone said similar things to Bezos et al once.
Iām not that familiar with this sort of thing, but I thought that there were essentially āspeed datingā events for potential co-founders to professionally flirt and get to know each other.
To the folk asking whatās in it for a technical person, usually equity. They might not have the idea but could end up with 50% of a potentially lucrative business. But it all depends on the chemistry and the buy in, I suppose.
The financial incentive is an equity stake in a company that may or may not be valuable in the future subject to collective effort/luck.
Any relationship would only work if there was strong interest, passion and belief in the idea/mission.
Although I concede that maybe it is farfetched.
These guys used to take a cut for developing your idea.
Do you have a working prototype? Some of the wire framing apps will let you simulate if you donāt have the skill set to code yourself. Itās so much better when you have something that āworksā to progress your idea.
Yeah youāre very much looking for the golden goose of someone with the skills you need who is really invested in your idea for some reason. Again, not saying they donāt exist but I think youād have to spend a lot of time networking and searching to find them. Sorry thereās not a better answer!
Yes this is my sort of thinking, itās a numbers game.
I suppose the kind of thing I was looking for insight on was potentially popular or hard to find forums or discussion boards where these sorts of things were discussed and connections made.
And you could look on Hacker News.
Thanks, maybe this type of arrangement is the best route to market and itās not to be ruled out.
I have a working prototype but itās frustratingly superficial, itās the leap from that to an MVP that seems like too far a stretch without the right team invested.
Thatās how people end up on r/ChoosingBeggars or worse, with a stolen idea
Not sure why everyone is making this out to be something so unusualā¦needing to find a co-founder is pretty common on the world of start-ups, and thereās a lot of technical entrepreneurs without the big idea who are looking for the right creative/business brains to partner with.
Obviously getting the right legal stuff going is important, but with a quick online presence you can put down an imprint of the idea which can help cement everything too.
Suggest you check out the major incubators as they often have things like speed dating nights or programmes that help pair founders up. Also if you have the time then you could do a few of the online start-up school type programmes which help with networking. Check out local start-up communities too and university tech/business communities etc which often attract people with the right background or vision who just donāt have the idea yet.
Yeah thatās not gonna work. Thereās no reason for anyone talented enough to build software to work on your idea for a extremely slim chance of a payoff when they can get a consistent decent income as a contractor (or slightly lower, but still good, as a permanent employee) and get paid per day regardless of how useful/profitable what theyāre building is. Remember that developers get pitched āideasā all the time by non-technical people (unaware of both the complexity involved in building it, as well as how much that developer can make on the market) so yours is unlikely to stand out anyway.
My recommendation is to raise money first somehow. Maybe get in touch with some developers/agencies and a quote for a cheap MVP (sometimes a landing page is all you need) that you would finance with savings or a conventional bank loan, and use the resulting product to test product-market-fit and/or solicit further funding?
