How to find a Technical Co-Founder for your Startup
Advice for non-technical founders for finding a serious CTO for your startup
Finding a co-founder is hard work. Finding a technical co-founder is even harder.
Yet, the benefits of having a technical co-founder make it all worthwhile. A good co-founder will serve as a powerful force multiplier. Think how much faster you will be able to go, and therefore have more runway to iterate to product-market fit. Crucially, if you plan to fundraise, any serious investor will know this.
As a serial technical founder, I often get approached for co-founder opportunities. Often, these approaches can be amateurish, yet when they’re not, I simply don’t have the time to help out all the great founders out there. This prompted me to write this list of tips to help founders find a CTO like me.
Background
So why is it really hard to find a technical co-founder? Simply put the reason is mainly down to supply and demand.
It goes without saying that being a startup founder is more popular than ever. Consider all the smart business people who want to start tech companies, all with an idea or unique insight. Yet they are a dime a dozen when compared with the number of talented technologists who have the skills to build and ship a product and who can essentially choose their opportunities as they wish. A quick glance into founder dating sites or startup accelerator applicant pools you will see that in most cases the tech founders are outweighed by at least 10 to 1.
Therefore, if you’re seeking a technical co-founder, there needs to be a compelling reason for why they would choose to work with you. But that shouldn’t dissuade you. Like most things in life, there is a process, and that process involves work.
Broadly speaking, this can be broken down into the following: building traction for your idea, finding the right person, and then actually convincing them to join you.
Build momentum by yourself
Don’t wait until you have a co-founder to start working on the idea, anything that you can do beforehand will make you stand out to potential co-founders.
Traction
Think about what you can do to test the underlying business proposition? How can you validate your idea? This can take numerous forms, such as engaging with potential customers via surveys or focus groups, building a pre-launch website (think Wix or SquareSpace) or creating a newsletter (Substack). If this is all new to you, take a short course on Entrepreneurship or read The Lean Startup.
Pitch Deck
Get your idea onto paper; it’s far easier to convey that way. Outline what is the problem, solution and the market. A pitch deck is a teaser, where its goal is to create an appetite for further conversations and this can work equally well with prospective co-founders as it does with investors.
If you’re not good at design, seek input from a designer to spruce it up, this won’t cost much if you use a service like Upwork or Fiverr. You’re not going to win anyone over with an ugly deck.
Even if you think you will end up pivoting, then at least it serves as an example that you know what you are doing and can put a convincing deck together.
Maybe even write a basic financial model to demonstrate that you have fully considered the commercials.
Create an MVP
Consider first, are you already technical enough? This really depends on what you are building. Granted if you are developing a new cancer treatment then you will likely need to be quite technical with biology! However, as I suspect most people reading this blog will likely be considering building an iPhone app or website, then you might not need to be that technical to do the first version.
No-code or low-code tools have come on leaps and bounds in recent years (such as Bubble.io). You can probably patch together an MVP with these tools and start testing it with some users.
At this point, it will be far easier to get a potential CTO excited and wanting to join you vs when you just have an idea.
Mockups
If all of that is too intimidating, then perhaps consider building some product mockups instead. Again, cost-effective designers should be easy enough to find on any of the freelancing marketplaces. Or use a tool like Mockingbird to get started. Having cool branding and mockups of what you intend to build will entice people and look a lot better than an idea in thin air.
Enlist help from a developer
Perhaps you have a developer friend that can help you get started with the MVP? Or you could consider connecting with Universities to see if any of their students can help you. Whilst they may not be suitable or in fact even interested in a co-founder position, they might be keen to bolster their portfolio by giving you some help.
Upskill
There are now countless resources to enable you to learn basic coding skills for little money.
I’m not suggesting that you do this instead of finding a co-founder as it will likely take years of dedication to get to the right level. However, it will give you some of an understanding of how it works, what kind of effort is involved in building an app or website, and crucially you will be able to demonstrate to any prospective co-founder that you have taken the time to learn the lingo and therefore have much more productive sessions when building your product.
If you don’t want to learn code there are plenty of more product-focused or UI/UX courses available too.
Work at a startup
Taking a job at a promising startup or tech company is an excellent way to not only meet tech people but also gain some industry experience.
The important part here is to find companies with strong engineering cultures, i.e. in-house development team and are vocal in how they operate such as publishing an engineering blog.
Technical advisor
There is sometimes a split opinion on this as bringing on too many advisors can be seen as a red flag to some investors, but that’s a topic for another blog.
However, having an experienced technical advisor from the very beginning who has already been on a startup journey, can provide an invaluable sounding board for an early-stage startup. This could be a friend or an introduction through your network or a more dedicated CTO for hire.
Here you would want to leverage their experience to provide direction on building an MVP and vetting potential co-founders.
Just remember, building relations with potential co-founders can take years. Do not put your search completely on hold whilst you work on these suggestions.
Get the pitch right
Tell a great story
Startups that tell a great story get funding. Practice and refine your message of why this is going to be the next big thing and why working on it will be a great experience for them. Demonstrate that you are passionate about the product and are mission-driven.
But this still needs to be grounded and supported by data. Most developers can smell BS a mile off so you need to do the leg work. Research the hard numbers relating to the industry that you are in. Demonstrate how many early customers you have, how much it costs to acquire each one, and that there is a need for your product. This will be a tedious and time-consuming task but well worth it.
Your skills and experience
Don’t neglect to talk about your background and what makes you most suited for your role in the business. Any previous startup experience, whether good or bad. Mention career highs and achievements but don’t neglect the low points either. What they taught you is very important.
This is important to see where your strengths are compared to theirs and ideally they will be complementary.
Know the role
One common issue I see with job ads is founders looking for a co-founder that has the exact skills for what they are working on right now, but hiring a CTO is very different to hiring an iPhone developer.
Sure, if you’re building an iPhone app it makes sense to team up with an iPhone developer. However, there will be instances where your potential co-founder might not necessarily have built an iPhone in the past, but are still an excellent developer and a good fit for you and the business.
Not having the exact skills you need today is not a good reason for ruling someone out. What matters most is that they are willing to learn the relevant technology stack and also learn the things that might be less glamorous. Typically in startups, it’s often a case of grinding out the boring jobs to get things off the ground.
Fundamentally, your tech stack and skills needed are likely to change throughout the life of the business, so it’s far better if that person shows a willingness to learn and adapt.
Where to look
Now that you’ve taken the time to build traction and have a compelling story of what you’re building, it’s time to start looking for co-founders in the right places.
The important bit here is to build on the work you’ve done in the previous stages as having a good pitch will get you better results.
Get involved with startup communities
Most big cities have numerous startup communities. Do your research and find out what is going on local to you or within travelling distance. Obviously, due to Covid, a lot more is now happening online, but this can give you the advantage of having a much further reach.
Some of the ones in London that I have attended in the past are Silicon Drinkabout, Google Campus, Startup Grind and Hardware Pioneers. But there will be many more.
Networking apps and websites
There are a number of networking apps specifically for this purpose so worth checking out. Some that spring to mind are workinstartups.com, cofounderslab, shapr.co, lunchclub.ai. If anyone has any other recommendations here I would love to see them in the comments.
Intros from friends and network
The success of this really comes down to the strength of your own personal network and your friend’s willingness to help. This can be entirely hit and miss but still worth a go.
Cold emails, LinkedIn or Twitter reach out
This is also worth a go, it’s unlikely that the response rate will be high, just avoid a generic email as it’s always obvious and it’s doubtful you will get replies from the calibre of people you are looking for.
Avoid NDAs
Seriously this has to be one of my biggest bug bearers and it’s a red flag to me if an entrepreneur asks me to sign an NDA before sending me their deck.
A pitch deck is a teaser, not a document containing trade secrets and an idea on its own is useless, it’s the execution of that idea that counts. Use something like Docsend if you’re really worried. But if you want to find investors, you’re going to have to get comfortable sending your deck out without an NDA.
Avoid silly low ball offers
This is another common mistake I see is where non-technical founders post ads with ridiculous low ball offers and hope for a miracle. Is someone really going to join your startup, which is little more than a landing page, for £0 cash and sub 20% equity?
This highlights a big issue you sometimes see in non-technical founders. There’s often the flawed thinking that because they had the idea they should keep the bulk of the equity. However, this ignores the fact that they do not have the skills to get the startup off the ground themselves and just because they are the one starting the company they are entitled to 80% or more of the equity.
In reality that’s never going to work, startup equity needs to be proportionate to each founder’s contribution to the business. I recommend reading up on the Slicing Pie equity model if you wish to delve into this deeper, though typically something close to 50/50 works best.
Personality and culture fit
So now you’re at the point where you’re getting interest or maybe even found a potential co-founder, now you need to figure out if you both want to start a company together.
Trial the relationship
One way to de-risk it is to allocate a block of time where you can work together on something. Come up with a task, such as an MVP, new feature or prototype of something you want to test. Ideally something you can then go out and pitch to customers and convince them to pay you for it if you were to build the product.
These are the kind of things that you are likely to do when starting a new company or testing out an idea anyway. At the end of the time you’ve set aside, have an honest conversation and ask yourselves, “Did you both enjoy working together on this”, if so, then great, it might be time to make the leap and work together. If not, be honest and it might be time to go your own separate ways.
Trust and transparency
Generally speaking, you should be opposites in skill sets but like-minded in values. This means a co-founder should not only replicate your output but actually enhance it by allowing you to double down on what you’re good at. Less time spent on work you don’t enjoy or don’t naturally excel at is nothing short of liberating.
The best co-founder relationships are built on radical transparency, anything else will cause distrust to slowly consume your startup like rust.
Under pressure
Understanding how your co-founder handles pressure is crucial as it goes without saying that startups are stressful.
Your co-founder will want to know, that when the chips are down, how you are going to react and that you’re not going to be someone that screws them over or become nasty and self serving, as you will want to know that of them.
Your co-founder will want to know, that when the chips are down, how you are going to react and that you’re not going to be someone that screws them over or turns into an a**hole, as you will want to know that of them.
Pitch them an offer
Now you’re ready to work together so make them an offer. It’s unlikely there will be a salary to begin with so make the offer based on equity. Something like, “I will offer 50% of my startup and x salary when we raise money.”
Getting the equity split right is crucial. There are numerous ways of determining what is fair (like the aforementioned Slicing Pie). Fundamentally all this boils down to is making sure that both of you are happy with the equity split and will be motivated to keep working on the company for a long period of time.
I typically feel that a 50–50 split works best if you both possess a similar level of experience and time commitment. Yet some people advise against a 50–50 split because it can sometimes result in gridlock. I disagree as having a co-founder feel like a true equal is the most motivating thing you can do. At this early stage in the startup, you’re both going to have to be equally motivated to work incredibly hard for the company so there is little reason to deviate from the 50–50. Ask yourself what is most important, more equity or creating a successful business.
It’s a good idea to get this in writing but you don’t want to kill the buzz by going too formal too fast either. The SeedSummit Founders Collaboration Agreement is a good start and SeedLegals have decent founders contract’s as well. Typically, equity will reverse vest over 4 years, with a one year cliff.
My experience
This advice closely mirrors my own experience. My co-founder Scott, messaged me on one of the co-founder networking apps. His initial pitch was convincing, backed up by an early deck and some initial data from a test site he had cobbled together.
Having met up a few times to chat we had a go at working together and decided we liked it enough to continue and form a business together. As of April 2021 we’ve been working together for over 2 years now at PF Nexus. The business is going strong and so is our working relationship 💪
Final thoughts
Finding a technical co-founder takes much effort and perseverance. Be proactive, get out there and make it happen!
Let me know how you found this article or how you found your co-founder in the comments below, and as always, good luck with your startup.
I offer consultancy and pro-bono advice to startups and scaleups. You can find out more about me and contact me here mikesmales.com
Finally, let me know what startup topic you would like me to write about next.
