I am having difficulty finding a technical co-founder. What is the best way to find and validate a technical co-founder?

I feel your pain — I've been there several times in a couple of my companies. Each situation ended up being unique, and had to be handled differently. I think there are a few things to consider before you make your decision: -- 1. What is in your cofounder's way? Is you cofounder being held up by a lack of clarity? Lack of motivation? Lack of autonomy? One of my past cofounders was very good at getting the job done, but didn't naturally have the skill to lay out tasks in a manageable way. To get around this, I worked with the whole team (4 people) to write up process documentation that removed the need to "figure out what to do next" that was tripping up this cofounder. -- 2. What job was your cofounder brought on to complete? And is it being completed? One of my companies brought on a cofounder simply to give us a marketing platform — he had a huge online audience — but he did nothing else. At first, this caused tension; once we had specifically laid out who was on the team and for what purpose, it was easier to identify where responsibilities lay. -- 3. Is your cofounder capable of doing the job? One of the more painful ordeals I've gone through in business is bringing on a good friend, then realizing that — despite his talent and intelligence — he just wasn't able to perform the job I'd hired him for. His skills were better suited for a different job: he needs hands-on management; he works better with repetitive tasks that don't require big-picture thinking; he lacks assertiveness and confidence, which were critical for the management-level role he'd been hired to do. After I tried to clear everything in his way, it became clear the company couldn't survive if he remained on the team. I had to lay him off. -- 4. Do you just simply not like the way this cofounder works? In one of my startups, there was a cofounder who I didn't know all that well, but he had amazing industry contacts and domain knowledge. However, once we started working together it became clear that we had VERY different working styles. He drove me completely nuts with (what seemed to me to be) a very ADHD-style of planning, with projects starting and being dropped and then coming out of nowhere with a call at 21:00 to discuss something critical that would be forgotten tomorrow. I'm sure I drove him nuts, too. So eventually we ended up selling that company — it was that or shutter it — because we knew there wasn't a chance we'd be successful if we continued as we were. -- Working with other people is tricky in general. Our instinct is to assume that we're the best workers on the planet and everyone else is incompetent, an idiot, a slacker, or all of the above. Usually it's a combination of an organizational-level lack of clarity, poor communication, no processes, and (sometimes) plain ol' we-don't-see-eye-to-eye-on-things-ness. Hopefully that helps. Feel free to get in touch if you'd like to hear specifics on my situations, or if you'd like any help devising a strategy for resolving your cofounder trouble. Good luck!

No one is going to get motivated by a business plan or for that matter, a landing page. Your first step as a first-time, non-technical founder must always be to prove that your idea is not crazy. This means that you must do extensive customer development as comprehensively as possible. This could be that you build a landing page that converts into hundreds of qualified leads, it could be that you have a customer that has provided at least a verbal that if you build it, they'll pay for it or better yet, is willing to prepay. At the very least, it should be 100+ recorded or verifiable customer interviews all indicating that they want the vision you're outlining. From there and only after that has been achieved, would I begin by recruiting a technical cofounder. Search through my past answers on my profile to find how to recruit a technical cofounder. You want only a commitment that if you can raise money within the next 120 days on this idea of yours, a commitment that they will join. Anything more than that, and it's likely too big of an ask. Then, you need to raise money. Enough money to fund at least the cost of your technical founder to live while focusing 100% on this for 9 months. Being a non technical co-founder is REALLY hard. It can be done but I really don't suggest most people try it as their first foray into startups. It's better to join an existing team and learn so much from being with a great entrepreneur that you admire and respect. But if you really want to jump into this, happy to do a call with you.

Instead of looking at who does what .. why not look at the things that need to get done for a small techology team. Product: 6 people - 3 full stack engineers - 2 front end developers - 1 designer / product person Marketing & Community, 1 person - Full time hire, or CEO Support & Operations, 1 person - Part time hire, or CEO + Whole team I believe it's important for everyone on the team to help with support. Also, if you have a great product, then support shouldn't be that taxing. Q&A is usually needed when you have a bad development process (no unit testing or continuous integration deployments). Outsource everything else. - Bookeeping - HR stuff - Legal - Government program paperwork Hope that helps. P.S. I would put as many people on product as that's where you'll get the most bang for your buck.

A great team looks like this - 2 full stack engineers. They can manage servers, security, build features and code front end JS/interactions. - 1 visual designer focused on product, information architecture, UX and flows. - 1 front end developer who can take designs and built out killer interactions and can wireup any back end code to the UI The CEO can manage product + customer development and everyone on the team does support. That's 5 people and can accomplish a lot!

In my last two start ups I have invested heavier into my team than i have in the past and it has paid off big. Hiring an expert in their position has proven to be one of my most successful and stress free action in business. I will add this to my best practices. If you want to learn more about what I've learned and some resources on where to look, schedule a call now while my rates are discounted for the next 24 hours.