TechCofounder.com: Meet Technical Cofounders for your Startup

by byrneseyeview • 16 years ago

57 38 16 years ago

I like the idea. Important point though (I think): the yellow/orange you used is both hard to my eyes and difficult to read.

HTH.

ryanhuff• 16 years ago

Agreed. If it was paired it with a darker color (foreground or background) it would be easier to read.

techcofounder7• 16 years ago

good feedback! I'll go for a darker orange and see how that is.

I like the black and gold b/c it's kinda unique. looks different than most other sites.

sachinag• 16 years ago

Great execution. I know it's supposed to be anonymous, but I wouldn't require that. Have optional fields for a website, blog, GitHub (or Google Code or whatever the hell) public code repository, and projects they've worked on. I noticed a number of people have links to one or more of these in the Short Answers section; that to me shows that the site's focus on anonymous communication may not be the right choice for everyone.

tom_ilsinszki• 16 years ago

Have to live in the US to register (properly). Asks for state name. Oh, well...

discolemonade• 16 years ago

Great idea. This definitely solves a real problem.

techcofounder7• 16 years ago

@sachinag, thanks for feedback. good point on not requiring anonymity.

@tom_ilsinszki, I will add int'l support shortly. In the meantime, please go ahead and create a profile and choose arbitrary location. I can update it for you later.

mixmax2• 16 years ago

You're basically dismissing everyone outside the US since it's not possible to pick country in the sign-up. That's a lot of market potential you're wasting.

techcofounder7• 16 years ago

@mismax, I hear ya and getting similar feedback from many others as well. I will def build in int'l support asap!

mixmax2• 16 years ago

No worries - and good luck. We Europeans look forward to joining the party :-)

christonog• 16 years ago

Congrats Ben! I think there's definitely a need for this type of thing. Good domain name too.

jasonlbaptiste• 16 years ago

This is really great. It gives me a lot of the information I like to see in a clear and concise manner. A link to twitter+blog would be nice. Also questions that are similar to what you see on the YC app would be cool ie- "tell us about the time you successfully hacked a non-computer system".

reynolds• 16 years ago

I'd like to second the links idea. Let me link to my blog, twitter, github, etc.

Looks pretty interesting; I signed up to see what happens.

davidmurphy• 16 years ago

Good work! I suggest you have sections for NorCal and SoCal (not just states -- CA is a big state!)

camccann• 16 years ago

Have you considered letting the non-tech users post profiles of some sort as well? I can certainly see some difficulties, but it could be useful if you found a way to make it work.

Particularly, I'm thinking of people with specialized expertise or connections in a specific domain--people who know a niche, and could build a business, but need technology to make it happen and don't have the resources to just go hire a team to make it happen. Advertising to such an ill-defined demographic would be awkward at best, though.

As someone who is, for most purposes, a pure technologist, my ideal in a hypothetical cofounder (given basic things like "being able to work toegether") would be someone older, deeply familiar with some business domain populated by companies that are a bit behind the technological curve. Tech startups drive innovation in markets that tech people care about--but there's a lot of markets that get ignored, when a tech startup-style approach could seriously shake things up.

tlrobinson• 16 years ago

Am I the only one who dislikes the term "coder"? I'm a programmer, dammit.

cool-RR• 16 years ago

I like how it's shorter to say and write.

techcofounder7• 16 years ago

Yep, "programmer" is too long, which is why i used the term "coder". I'm a programmer too and never thought it had any negative connotations.

jasonkester3• 16 years ago

Possibly. I'm a programmer, software engineer, developer, coder, or anything else anybody wants to call me. For some reason, different terms mean different things to people who do hiring, so you need to be flexible in your definition.

All it means is "somebody who programs computers". Translate it in your head and move on.

webwright• 16 years ago

Well done. IMO, there are three things that matter when scanning through a list of potential co-founders. Skills (which you have well covered), markets/areas that you love/hate (some people won't touch the enterprise, others would never do a Twitter app), and availability (some people can't afford to go without a salary and some can).

The anonymity angle is interesting, but I don't think it's critical. In fact, it probably hurts. If I can't read their blog, check out their tweets, or scan their LinkedIn profile, there's generally a lot less for someone to get excited about. There will be a lot of "toad kissing" to find a prince.

gridspy• 16 years ago

Looks like a nice resource.

- I'd also prefer optional anonymity.

- I'd rather that the page views (such as the list of all coders) showed 50 or 100 items at a time.

rwhitman• 16 years ago

Hmm I kind of think having the reverse relationship for profiles would make a lot of sense. "I'm looking for a tech cofounder, let me pitch you in my profile"

In the non-tech to tech cofounder match, the tech guy actually has more leverage in the relationship on some level

subbu• 16 years ago

Is there anything like this for meeting designers? Programmer => Designer

kalid• 16 years ago

http://programmermeetdesigner.com/ ... not sure how good it is, but it's there :).

andrewstuart2• 16 years ago

This site seems to assume that only coders are valid cofounders. I would have thought that the site would allow people of any area of expertise (business, designers, finance, marketing, tech) to seek people to cofound companies with. Why are coders the only valid cofounders?

zach• 16 years ago

Now now, I'm sure there are coders who have those areas of expertise as well!

Seriously, coders are not the only valid cofounders for this kind of company, but they're the only necessary ones.

For example, I don't see a lot of coders begging for "a guy with the vision" who can provide them with a "can't-miss idea" they can put "sweat equity" into. It's always the other way around.

TristanKromer2• 16 years ago

Umm...there's a hell of a lot more than "guy with the vision" necessary for a startup in my opinion. But I guess that's from the perspective of someone who spent days trying to learn contract law for his own startup until realizing it would be better to bring in a qualified lawyer as small equity partner to do it.

TristanKromer2• 16 years ago

I agree, but there are other sites that focus on non-tech specific co-founder dating such as http://partnerup.com, http://startupsquare.com (in development), http://efactor.com and such. So I can see the reason to focus this one on just tech.

andrewstuart2• 16 years ago

This basically seems to be a job board.

If I was building a system like this I would allow people to post an ad about the company they are starting, their location, the people currently involved, something about the vision of the company (without giving away too much), the expectations of how much work is involved, are the other people full time, equity on offer, the skills, experience and qualifications of the other co-counders, does location matter, do you need to be in the same city etc etc etc.

Instead this odd site assumes that searching for cofounders is about placing job ads. A bit strange.

jasonkester3• 16 years ago

I wonder if that's just emergent behavior.

It's possible that the first several postings along the lines of "Smart programmer wanted as co-founder for new social networking concept (that also shortens urls)", but it has since been noticed by recruiters as a "free job board" and thus is filled with "Programmer/Analyst III with J2EE" positions.

Perhaps they need to work on the tech a bit to discourage the job postings and encourage the actual entrepreneurial stuff.

alain94040• 16 years ago

You mean like http://fairsoftware.net ;-)

techcofounder7• 16 years ago

Hi Andrew -

Techcofounder.com is not a job site. It's meant to help entrepreneurs find technical people who are interested in doing a startup. Engineers create profiles listing skills, experience, etc. They aren't posting job ads.

-Ben

jasonkester3• 16 years ago

I'm troubled by this idea, since I imagine that any decent programmer with an entrepreneurial drive would already have his own startup. That programmer would possibly need a site like this to meet business-side co-founders, but then any good businessman with an entrepreneurial drive would already have his own startup.

Since all the good minds on either side of the equation would already be locked into their own thing, I can't see how any of them would show up on a site like this (or its natural counterpart, BizCofounder.com).

As a result, all that's left is a pool of developers who either don't have any good ideas, or have been to afraid to make the leap on their own. Neither of those qualities are ones you'd look for in a potential co-founder.

tomh-• 16 years ago

I like the idea, but the execution can definitely be improved. It lacks too many features to be interesting for me. Such as being able to login and edit my profile, international support (why not do this from the start??), ability to provide some links and stuff.

but its a good start! Iterate your way to the top ;)

Oh: looks like I can edit my profile!

necrecious• 16 years ago

Wish there were something like this for finding good business development/marketing cofounders. I want someone else to do the nuts and bolts of biz dev so I can focus on the product dev side.

ANH• 16 years ago

Nice work. How about having all skills that registrants list accessible in the 'Browse by Skill' box? I would expect the 'View All' link to show me all skills people had tagged themselves with, e.g. 'C++', 'Python', etc.

techcofounder7• 16 years ago

International support deployed. Have at it!

TechCofounder.com: Meet Technical Cofounders for your Startup

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