Finding Co-Founders.

Today we’re talking about how to find a co-founder.

1. Work on it every day.

This is a really hard problem to solve, and the right person is unlikely to fall from the sky. Expect to put in lots of effort to make this happen.

2. Make use of every channel and tool that you can.

Don’t be precious — explore all the networking opportunities you have: local, industrial, alumni, etc. There’s also tools like Y-Combinator’s co-founder matching system and even accelerator programs dedicated to solving the problem like Entrepreneur First.

3. Keep making progress on the business.
The more progress you make on the business, the more attractive the co-founder role will become to an excellent candidate. So keep building!

3) Then, if our initial customer research indicates the problem is significant and ideally urgent for some segment of those surveyed, we can put together a demo. But don’t try to build a whole product at this point, use a tool and put together a simple visual workflow. It shouldn’t be more than 2 days of work, max.

Best of luck out there.

Today we’re talking about the daily work of finding a co-founder.

Finding a co-founder is a very tough problem, but it’s recruitment, and that’s a skill every founder has to hone. Recruitment will be a big part of your job as you scale, so here’s a framework of the daily tasks.

1. First, most of your day-to-day work should be around candidate research, outreach to generate new meetings, and doing the actual meetings. A lot of founders don’t like doing the research and outreach pieces and so don’t make good progress.

2. Talk to other founders. The recruitment market in technology is often changing, and it just went through a huge change with the shift to hybrid workplaces. If you’re talking to other founders about what worked for them to find a co-founder or researching the techniques people have written about, then you might take advantage of new or overlooked opportunities.

3. Do it first thing if you don’t like it. Not many people like all the elements of a co-founder search. If you’re in the same boat, schedule time each day to complete your co-founder search tasks first before you allow other, potentially more interesting, distractions to interfere.

Best of luck out there.

Today we’re talking about the channels and tools you can use to find a co-founder.

In general, this is such a hard and consequential problem you’ll want to test every opportunity you have.

1. First Networking — the most effective but hardest to master. Mostly based on showing up and social skills. However, most founders limit the networks they explore when actually you should try as many as you can. Local — your hometown, your current location, any places you have lived — tap any that have startup communities. Industrial — anywhere you’ve worked, any trade associations. And Alumni — this one is the most important — you can go back as far as high school, reaching out to both old friends directly, mailing lists, and sub-organizations like departments or clubs.

2. Software Tools: Y-Combinator has a co-founder matching platform, CoFoundersLab claims a network of over 500k founders. There’s even quite a lot of activity in groups and forums on LinkedIn and Reddit.

3. Accelerator Programs: If you’re looking for a more structured approach, then you can now get help finding a co-founder, and even an idea, from dedicated accelerator programs, e.g., Entrepreneur First and Antler. These programs usually require significant time and equity commitments, plus not everyone makes it. But they are effective.

Best of luck out there.

Today, we’re talking about continuing to build while searching for a co-founder.

This is important for a few reasons.

1. First, you don’t know how long it will take to find someone. If we’re holding off on making progress while searching for a co-founder, we may kill the business by waiting.

2. Second, you need to create the impression of momentum. When you meet a great co-founder candidate, you would ideally want them to feel this is a great opportunity but also only available for a limited time. That comes from continued progress. They simply must buy a ticket now, as the train is leaving the station.

3. Lastly, it is ok to delay fundraising while you’re looking for a co-founder. Many investors, including myself, will almost automatically discount a solo founder, so you may have better luck with a more complete team.

Best of luck out there.