What is the best way to go about finding a technical co-founder?

Nearly every high-profile speaker has a website outlining their process, fees, and requirements for speaking engagements. They also have instructions on how to contact and book them.

You have to be careful on selecting your co-founder. I know it's an already cliché to mention it, but selecting one is like selecting a spouse to marry. You need to know the person first, and even some investors and accelerators dismiss automatically startups because the founders didn't meet before working together in the startup. If you're doing a tech startup, the co-founder should have a technical background if you don't have it. That will save you a lot of money when you're bootstrapping as well as making sure you deploy a great product as soon as possible. Once you want to work with someone, my best advice is to hire them to do a project or a task inside the startup. More than words, you need to see them in action and that way you can evaluate your chemistry as a team. When you already worked the details and decided to create a startup together, you need to be smart about the plans. You need to sign a partnership agreement and put the equity in a vesting option. In Silicon Valley, the standard vesting period is 4 years with a one year cliff. After one year, the founders fully own of the 25% of their shares. That means if they leave the company before the first year, they will not have equity in the company. Having all that in mind, I think it will help you select the best co-founder possible and also be a better bet to investors if you ever decide to raise money. I hope it helps!

I have advised a number of Clarity members on this question exactly. LinkedIn can be a great place to find your technical cofounder. I would look for someone who has been at their current company longer than 18 months and has relevant experience or interest in the problem you're looking to solve. Reaching-out "cold" can work, if you keep your message short and relevant. Here's what a technical cofounder will need to see in order to feel comfortable joining you: 1) That you can fund and/or have raised sufficient money to cover the expenses up to and past launching the first version of your product. 2) That - in their assessment - you have what it takes to raise multiple rounds of funding (if the business is reliant on VC) or that you have what it takes to successfully bootstrap the business. 3) That you are realistic or at least credible in your assessment of the opportunity and have done sufficient customer development to ensure there is a viable market for your product or service. 4) That you and the technical cofounder have sufficient personal chemistry so as to want to and be able to survive an incredibly stressful and emotionally intensive journey together. Happy to talk you through any of this in detail in a call and go into the specifics related to your location, background, and type of product or service you're looking to recruit a cofounder to.

Congrats on the success you have achieved in just 3 years! That's statistically uncommon and reveals that the initial focus of the company was effective and worth reviving. Yes, it must be frustrating to feel like you are the only one carrying the company uphill. I've been in a similar position. First, I suggest you take responsibility for the position you currently find yourself in. It's easy to cast blame on people and circumstances outside of yourself. It's the most common first reaction. If you really think about it though, you will realize that where you are did not appear overnight. Every day for the past 3 years you have either consciously or unconsciously agreed to move towards where you are now. By doing that you are no longer a victim of circumstances and can move forward from a place of power. As the primary producer in the company you do have the leverage however, you also need a pro-active plan to promote using that leverage and it needs to be something that benefits everyone involved. First of all I would check your perspective on the whole situation by calling a meeting of stakeholders to recalibrate the company vision. The idea here is to get everyone to tell you what they see as the primary problems with the company right now and where they each would like to see things improve. You need to see what everyone else is seeing not only what you are seeing. This meeting in and of itself might change your perspective entirely. If it reveals nothing that profoundly changes your view then move on to the next step. If you are the star salesperson then you have a method by which you get results. Try creating a sales training program out of that method and then go to the team and present this training plan. There are books and resources online on how to create a sales training plan like this. The goal is to duplicate and systematize how you achieve your above average results. Frame the plan as a way to get all the other team member goals accomplished. Whatever those goals are, inevitably they will require more money. By using your leverage as the star salesperson and taking the initiative to create a program that will effectively create more star salespeople then you are bound to create more revenue for the company. This way your goal is a means to an end for everyone else's goals. This way you get unanimous buy-in. Set a goal of 8 weeks or so to implement this training across the enterprise. Provide bonuses and other incentives to participants to achieve this goal as well as longer term sales increase goals. Create company-wide perks for achieving these long-term sales goals. Maybe a retreat somewhere awesome? You get the picture. The idea is to create a win-win situation for everyone to get going in a positive direction that will, in the end, alleviate your present problem as well as achieve a greater success for everyone involved. Hope that helps. Best of luck!

Here's what you need to do to recruit any cofounder: 1) Prove or at least instill *high* confidence that you can fund the business or raise the funds required; 2) Demonstrate that you are someone worth following. What have you done previously that clearly shows to others that you have what it takes to succeed? 3) Credibly demonstrate that your idea can create massive success. An idea by itself, no matter how interesting is woefully insufficient. 4) Spend every day making outreach (cold emails, LinkedIn, dribbble, etc) to people, meeting at least 3 a week. You will "kiss many frogs." It's likely you have to meet at least 100 people to find the right person and that assumes you have 1-3. By the way, in order to actually *meet* 100 good people, you'll have to make outbound to at least 400 people. 5) Negotiate equity and compensation (pre and post funding) and ensure written alignment on how decisions are made between the two of you. Cofounder relationships are as intense as marriages. And just like getting married, it requires a lot of dating to build the trust. I'm *totally* unconvinced that two people can find a person they haven't known previously, and become effective cofounders. I think you're better off finding the money to hire someone than actually find a cofounder. The main reason? You probably won't find someone as passionate as you are about what you're building. And keep in mind, I have no idea who you are or what you're building so that's no judgement on you or the idea, just the reality I've observed over 20 years of startups.