Getting Hitched

Many people have likened finding a co-founder to searching for love. It is. But just remember that it's a relationship where you're immediately co-parents to a baby. Starting a company is an extremely stressful cooker-pressure environment. It's likely that you'll be underfunded, overworked, and have very little to show for it in the beginning.

How To Be An Attractive Co-Founder

Before we start, we know that many of you are probably interested in finding a technical co-founder who can help you build the website or app of your dreams. The thing is most engineers who are entrepreneurial-minded enough to take a risk and forego a cushy job will want to be more than just your code monkey. They will be evaluating you and your idea like an investor. Here are some steps you can take to be more attractive to high-quality prospective co-founders:

• Demonstrate an understanding of a market need, especially an ability to acquire customers - a vital skillset of the non-technical founder
• Show a willingness to get your hands dirty even if you aren't technical by hacking together a solution. Even if you don't need those skills in the future, you'll at least appreciate all the work it takes to build a product or feature.
• Show traction of some kind, even if it's merely feedback from one or two paying customers

Can I Be A Single Co-Founder?

Yes, you can be a solo founder. However, not unlike parenthood, your journey will be much more challenging without a partner. In most cases, solo founders are solo not necessarily by choice but by circumstance and have succeeded in spite of being solo rather than because of it. We HIGHLY recommend having at least one co-founder. Why? You will:

• Move faster; it'll take you 3.6 times longer to scale if you're solo (startup genome project)
• Have external accountability; it can be hard to be accountable to yourself
• Raise money more quickly. Investors like proof you can recruit people to your vision (one of a high growth founder's most essential skillsets)
• Have a diversity of skills, experiences, perspectives, ideas
• Have support as you go through the many inevitable lows and share in the highs

Recommended Process for Founder Dating

In the process of looking for a co-parent, we want to apply the same experimental thinking we have to other areas of our business. Try working with different people and get feedback before moving forward. Do not be the person who falls "in love" with someone and immediately offers them fifty percent of your company. Break up the process into three parts: