Are you wondering if you should find a co-founder for your startup and what are the best platforms to find one? Then, this article is for you! We will tell you everything a startup founder should about finding the right co-founder for your business idea!
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To begin with, you may be asking yourself, do I really need a co-founder? Co-founders can help you to complement your weaknesses and grow your startup faster since four hands are better than two and two brains are always better than one! Co-founders typically become part of your executive team and play a pivotal role in your company's growth and decision-making process.
Is having a co-founder necessary for a startup? As an entrepreneur, you surely know that finding the right team to carry your ideas forward is hard to come by. Having a reliable ally with the capacity to make decisions, get things done and help you to see a different point of view can be the spark you need to start scaling your startup.
Do I Need a Co-Founder?
Growing your startup relies on many variables, such as the idea, funding, product quality, operational excellence, marketing, and sales. If you are building a tech product, you will also need technical and web development expertise. It is highly unlikely that you can master all the above as a solopreneur. Thus, in most cases, the answer is yes, you do need a co-founder (or tech co-founder)!
Recruiting the right co-founder can play an important role in growing your startup! The perfect co-founder will give you a competitive advantage and a much-needed edge when raising capital. However, not everything that glitters is gold. Having a co-founder has some important disadvantages you should be aware of! Here is a list of the pros and cons of having a co-founder to help you decide:
Pros:
Your co-founder will help you to get things done faster
Your co-founder will bring essential and complementary skills in-house
Your co-founder will enable you to raise seed funding easier
Cons:
You will need to offer your co-founder equity
It is hard to find a co-founder equally passionate about your idea
You will have to agree or compromise on all major business decisions
As discussed, finding a qualified co-founder can be difficult, but not impossible! First and foremost you will need a strong professional network. However, turning into friends or relatives is not always a good option, as any work differences that may come up in the future could affect your personal relationships. As a result, you should spend the time necessary to discover your co-founder through other channels.
Fortunately, technology and remote working have eased the process of finding the right co-founder for your startup. There are many platforms you can use to find your business match and you can even develop a startup with qualified people living thousands of kilometers away!
What Is the Best Way to Find A Co-Founder?
There are plenty of platforms you can use to look for co-founders. YC Startup School is one example, launched by business professionals dedicated to teaching how to set up a business and facilitating meetings with the objective of co-founder matching. It is run by the same people that helped Airbnb, Doordash, Stripe, Reddit, and Coinbase get started. They organize local in-person meetups and talks by YC alumni, co-founding matches, and networking events for founders looking for a co-founder in 50 cities worldwide.
Another example is Co-Founders Matching Singapore, aimed at those who want to build their startup but don't want to do it alone. Co-Founders Matching Singapore allows any founder to meet others with complementary skills and similar dreams. They create an inviting and safe space for aspiring co-founders to meet one another.
Moreover, there are platforms developed exclusively to assist you in finding your ideal co-founder. We will return to this later. As a first step, we will walk you through the important aspects you need to consider when choosing the right tech co-founder.
How Can I Attract a Tech Co-founder?
Tech co-founders are the hardest to recruit. Hence the first question you need to ask is "why should a tech co-founder work with me?" What do you bring to the table? and most importantly, do you have a solid business plan backed by data? These are just a few questions you could ask yourself before you start looking for a tech co-founder. To sum things up, here is a list of boxes you need to check to maximize your chances of finding a tech co-founder:
Become an authority in your field: Make it your mission to know more about your expertise and problem than everyone else. Do research about consumers' preferences and the success or failure of your competition. Gather evidence and qualitative data that allow you to accurately argue why your project is the best one for your niche. In other words, do whatever it takes to position yourself as the right person to make your startup idea a reality. Tech co-founders are looking for the reassurance that they will be working with people that know what they are doing.
Have a clear product roadmap: Understand the problem you are solving. Have a clear plan of action (product roadmap). Demonstrate a clear understanding of what needs to be done to bring your business to life. Make sure you are always able to share this information with potential tech co-founders at a moment's notice.
Set realistic expectations: Launching the next Instagram or Netflix is a humongous task. Make sure that you are able to set realistic expectations for your tech co-founder. Break down your bold vision into smaller, achievable, short-term targets. Study the tech behind competitive projects and learn as much as you can about the technology needed for your startup idea.
Raise funds: Tech co-founders will rarely join a startup where they will have to bootstrap their way to success. Secure your seed funding before you start recruiting for tech co-founders.
Be ready to pivot: Onboarding a co-founder means that you will have to let go of your ego and most importantly, of your exact startup idea. Be prepared to compromise, pivot, and adapt. Be mindful that your tech co-founder is a business partner, not a company employee.
As a next step let's examine more about what makes an ideal tech co-founder, but before we go there, we should clarify a tech co-founder's scope of work:
Unlike a senior programmer, whose responsibilities are mainly coding, the role of a CTO is to plan, strategize, recruit and guide the technical team. This means that a strong CTO should master the art of coding, but he/she should also possess commercial and entrepreneurial skills. A technical co-founder will need to share founder-level responsibilities such as defining the company's direction, branding, positioning, and pricing.
On the day-to-day, a tech co-founder will manage technical hiring, project manage technical deliveries, make high-level architecture decisions, and lead the product side of the company. Progressively, tech co-founders will write less and less code to focus on team management, as your technical team will scale in numbers.
What are the Qualities of a Great Tech Co-founder?
Team player: Making sacrifices is a necessary part of growing a startup. A great tech co-founder prioritizes the success of the team and product over their own.
Long-term vision: Rome was not built in a day. Hire co-founders who can look 2-6 years ahead while being able to execute right now.
Domain expertise: Hire tech co-founders who worked on similar projects before or have a tremendous passion for the problem you are solving.
Full-time commitment: Most technical people can find lucrative and stable jobs in reputable companies. Thus they are likely to view their involvement in startups as a side project. The lack of time and commitment may create various problems in the mid to long term. Always work with full-time co-founders.
A tech co-founder should never be your first hire. Consider hiring a tech co-founder once you are experiencing the first signs of rapid growth.
Best Platforms to Find a Co-founder
How can you find the perfect co-founder for your startup? Here is a list of the best platforms to search for co-founders:
List of best platforms to find a co-founder:
CoFoundersLab is a merge between CoFoundersLab and FounderDating, an online "dating" service that connects entrepreneurs with co-founders, mentors, and business partners. Their community has grown even more after it merged with CoFoundersLab.
People who have already started a project or have an idea and are looking for a co-founder are eligible to join the Co-founder Network. You can identify folks who have begun a project but have yet to find a partner through their website. They use a specialized search algorithm to help find the perfect co-founder to grow your business to success, and they can also help you build your network. When you sign up, you are required to enter your skills, location, and interest to make the match easier.
To join, you must answer numerous questions, including providing connections to your LinkedIn and website, selecting your abilities, and demonstrating your knowledge. Then, you must choose your monthly platform contribution; but you can keep to the usual one, which is US$9 per month. Following that, you'll have access to the platform's storehouse and weekly picks of people that best match your requirements. You can test out their service with a two-weeks trial.
This platform will assist you to connect with other founders, viewing community profiles, joining groups, finding deals or discounts, and finding professionals, freelancers, and service providers recommended by your network. Create a profile and go to the Co-founders page to find a list of people looking for co-founders, as well as a description of their startup and the problem they are solving. You can filter the results by region, stage of business, and kind of co-founder. Moreover, you can also browse through co-founder listings to find your next startup adventure.
Start Hawk is a new company that aims to build a network for entrepreneurs and co-founders to discuss and debate their ideas. Start Hawk operates by bringing together co-founders and founders from around the world using search algorithms. The purpose of this organization is to assist any entrepreneur in launching their idea, even if they lack the necessary abilities.
Create a profile on StartHawk with details about yourself and your idea (if you have one) to locate a co-founder. On the Find a Co-Founder Page, you can connect with hundreds of other entrepreneurs looking for a co-founder and team up with someone you meet on the platform to construct something. Best of all, the membership is currently free.
You can discover your co-founder on Reddit in various threads. The most well-known is r/cofounder, which exists precisely to connect entrepreneurs with potential partners. It is a very active community with over 31,000 members. This subreddit follows rigorous guidelines, reducing the likelihood of false or non-serious users. Furthermore, having a clear headline structure makes it easier to skim through unrelated messages and identify relevant chances. To find a co-founder, you should make your post with your ideas to see if any entrepreneur is interested.
YouNoodle is a service platform completely free to use. Its originality stands out, as it approaches things slightly differently and uses contests and tournaments to find co-founders, mentors, and business partners. Here, users can participate in contests to compete for investments. The platform is also used by accelerators to assess and examine applicants for financing opportunities, alongside governments and universities.
You may want to upgrade to a premium account if you wish to include an application form on your website, adjust design and email templates, use the applicant recommenders module, and get a lot of help with the setup.
While Lead Candy's purpose is not specifically to connect you with co-founders, it has features that can help you get in touch with one. Lead Candy connects all your social network accounts and keeps all your contacts in one place. You can use the platform to find any type of professional you wish to connect with and contact them within seconds. The Lead Candy tool examines your social media connections on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and their networks when you choose a name based on your area and your prospect's location.
Startup Weekend is a three-day event where potential entrepreneurs may get a taste of what it's like to work at a startup. Its community has more than 428K of participants, and it has a presence in more than 150 countries. The 54-hour events typically take place from Friday to Sunday. Here you'll find entrepreneurs, designers, marketers, product managers, engineers, and startup enthusiasts. The goal is to build and launch products in a single weekend. This is the ideal gathering spot for anyone who wants to connect with like-minded individuals passionate about starting their businesses.
Founders Nation is quite a basic platform, as it is a simple search engine for finding a co-founder. Using the platform's search function, you can screen people who want to be co-founders and are looking for opportunities in certain locations and has specified skill sets. You may use Facebook to log in and enable those who visit your profile to confirm that you are a real person.
As previously discussed, Co-Founders Matching Singapore allows you to start a new local group or join an existing one in your area. You can meet with other company marketers, product managers, developers, engineers, designers, and professionals in these groups to collaborate on topics of interest to you. Meetup is a popular platform for local gatherings and you'll be astonished at how many individuals want to help you develop your idea or put together the perfect team for your firm. Join a meetup group today, and you might just meet the perfect co-founder in your neighborhood.
WePartnerUp is a business partner finder platform that connects like-minded individuals who wish to start a new business or those who are looking for funding. This is the fastest way to launch a business, find investors, and team up with other entrepreneurs. You can reach out to entrepreneurs who match your search criteria after registering and setting up a profile. You can filter and narrow your searches based on selected skills, industries, and even distance from your location. In addition, you can utilize the intro feature to introduce yourself to potential investors or business partners via a short video clip.
Y Combinator's Co-founder Matching of Startup School works very effectively since it helps you locate a co-founder based on pre-determined criteria like interests, abilities, and geography. All the platform's users are vetted, ensuring that you only meet high-quality matches. As aforementioned, it is designed to be simple to utilize, as it provides you with recommended matches based on your choices once your profile is approved. If you find a match you like, the platform will assist you in crafting the perfect personalized message. All you have to do now is wait for your match to accept the invitation.
Indie Hackers hosts a community called Looking to Partner Up that helps people locate business partners, among other things. With over 16,000 users, there are plenty of recent and relevant posts from folks wishing to partner up. This is a well-known internet entrepreneurial group where you can post descriptions about your startup and ideal co-founder. Many people here are looking for tech co-founders; therefore, if you have technical knowledge, you'll have an advantage.
As the most used and popular professional networking site, LinkedIn should be included in your co-founder's matching process. Aside from your existing LinkedIn network, there are a number of groups where you can discover a startup partner, like Ideas Seeking Co-Founder or Co-Founder.
Intch is a unique AI-powered networking app that will connect you with the right contacts. Their algorithm will match you with five people who have the skills and knowledge you're looking for, or alternatively, those who are looking for your expertise. In this way, you can build your network with highly relevant people that can help you out with your needs. If the recommended people aren't able to receive your request, they are also able to introduce you to someone who can. Essentially, you can grow your professional network and build up your social capital by receiving requests, recommending other people, or getting recommendations. Hence, you can use their platform to find investors, mentors, advisors, and most importantly, co-founders for your startup.
Whilst it is technically a platform to find mentors, you can also find a cofounder with the right knowledge and expertise to complement your business through Growth Mentor. When you create a profile on their website, you can choose 'find a co-founder' as your networking objective. You can also browse through the list of mentors to see if anyone matches your needs and reach out to see if they'll be interested.
The mentors on the website are referred by other experts and go through a vetting process to become growth mentors, and you can see their reviews and ratings from mentees they have helped. With plenty of mentors on the site, you're bound find someone who can help you with specific challenges in your startup. Some mentors might not be explicitly looking for a co-founder, but through relationship-building, you might just find the person interested in joining your startup.
As a startup founder, you might already be familiar with F6S. It is a community of startup founders with millions of members, consisting of accelerators, investors, founders, and other relevant parties. You can make use of their platforms to find co-founders for your startup by browsing through their member directory or attending one of their events. You can also post an opening on your startup for members to apply.
No Code Founders is a community of founders building businesses using no-code tools consisting of 13,000+ members (and growing)! Through their Slack Community, you can meet with fellow founders, entrepreneurs, developers, and no-code enthusiasts who might have the same passion and dreams as yours. Some members are fully-fledged software developers, while others might not be technical at all, so if you're seeking a tech co-founder or someone more on the business side, you might just find one who fits the bill here.
Closing Thoughts on the Best Platforms to Find a Co-founder
Finding the perfect co-founder is not easy and it will not happen overnight. Choosing a co-founder and more so a tech co-founder is a decision as important as choosing a spouse! In a remote-first world, utilizing technology will help you to speed up this process! Simply create an account on all the resources mentioned in this article to find your business match!