HACKER Q&A
📣 bluefits

Why is it so difficult to find a co-founder?


To tell you a little bit something about myself, I've joined a fair amount of startups, worked professionally as an engineer in bigger companies., have had my own startup, but ended up leaving due to internal problems. And still, the question that I find myself asking, how do I find the right co-founders? In your personal experience, what are the methods that you use in order to find your initial founders? What are the most effective ones in your experience?

  👤 zepto Accepted Answer ✓
Your title says ‘co-founder’, but then the body of your question says ‘team’.

In my experience the two are quite different. Co-founder relationships are much more critical and also need a different kind of personal relationship from the rest of the team.

Team is very important and not easy to get right, but you can hire experienced professionals, manage them well, and get good results. You can also replace or reposition team members as the demands of the organization change, in a way that you cannot so easily with co-founders.

Which is your primary concern?

👤 ev1
If you want talent, loyalty, and commitment, offer significant amounts of money and significant amounts of equity. This reads like one of those "i have an idea i cant pay for it but i'll give you 1% of the profit it'll be bigger than facebook" posts to me.

If you want people to 'grind it out' and they have like, 2% equity, they have no skin in the game nor will they be willing to make large sacrifices for nothing.