Show HN: FeaturedFounder.io transparently showcases startups seeking co-founders

by remyp • 8 years ago

49 21 8 years ago

remyp3• 8 years ago

FeaturedFounder.io creator here. As a developer I get approached all the time about potential co-founding roles. Too frequently the people I speak to are cagey, vague, or unclear about who they are, what they're building, and what they have to offer.

I created Featured Founder to add transparency to the cofounder search process so people can stop searching and focus on building their product.

Clubber• 8 years ago

My favorite is, "I have this great idea, if you build it for me, I'll give you a cut."

"What are you going to do?"

"I have the great idea."

"..."

samcheng2• 8 years ago

Thanks for this!

I'm in the other boat - I have a pretty good experience base to start a company, but am waiting for the right subject-matter expert to come along with the idea, passion, and background to make the other half of the startup.

I've subscribed to the (sometimes interesting) Opps Daily, but this seems like a more direct mechanism.

Thanks again!

remyp3• 8 years ago

I plan to feature people like you too! Please feel free to reach out via the info in my profile if you're interested.

fourseventy• 8 years ago

Are you in Boston by any chance?

samcheng2• 8 years ago

Unfortunately not - I'm in Silicon Valley.

manav• 8 years ago

Interesting, I usually find the opposite harder to find. I may be in touch if you are in the Bay Area.

wgerard• 8 years ago

Heavily biased question: Does this sort of matching work out for founders?

I'm curious because I would only consider starting a company with someone I knew personally and was quite sure I could work with.

Still, I realize I'm risk-averse in some ways and willing to admit maybe I'm being a bit stodgy here.

tosterhaus2• 8 years ago

Travis here, I'll let you know if this works or not :)

The reason I am trying this approach is that I don't have a big (or any) connections to an app co-founder so I have been looking for alternatives to finding one and this is one option Jeremy suggested. We'll see how it goes!

boltzmannbrain• 8 years ago

Any plans on expanding to match-making model?

remyp3• 8 years ago

It's a definite possibility if that's something people want!

I also created https://findkismet.com (which introduces two random HN users to each other every day or week), so maybe I'll fold the two together.

pilingual• 8 years ago

I feel like the best approach to matching founders is to have a list of trivial app ideas people want, and then let a team build that open source project. So it might take that team 1-3 months to build it and when they are done they can decide if each other’s temperaments are tolerable. Short of such a thing I have no idea how you’d know some random person is on the same wavelength.

jedberg• 8 years ago

This feels like Tinder for founders.

Much like Tinder, I suspect mostly what you will get from this is good conversation and if you're lucky, an all night hacking session.

But you probably won't find a long term relationship.

overcast• 8 years ago

If it's like Tinder, you'll accumulate a mile long list of "matches", and maybe talk to .5% of them. Of those, you might actually spend a night with one or two.

goatherders2• 8 years ago

I like this idea and I think you've done a nice job with the site. Kudos.

My question/concern is: most of the time when I see "seeking cofounder" posts, sites or apps it's a non-technical person seeking a technical person. Only they dont have the budget to pay full wage so the offer is as cofounder. I'm not knocking it, you go with what you've got.

But aren't most technical folks in this arena working on their own idea(s)? Will you have technical folks as featured who are looking for sales or marketing etc? My business is 100% B2B lead gen and biz dev for SAAS and digital companies and its never occurred to me to confound even the best idea; I'm working on (and getting paid plenty) for my own. Good luck to Travis finding someone, will be interested to see if he has success here.

As to his idea, I would pay for this right now. I love podcasts but the experience on android is garbage (or maybe I'm just used to apple). I have no idea how to download my favorite pods and play them later and find discovery to suck compared to iTunes.

That said, I dont know how viable this is as a business. Music is evergreen whereas many (most?) Podcasts are not. People can also consume a lot more individual pieces/tracks of music than individual podcasts due to duration. You'd learn more about me by seeing an hours worth of my spotify plays compared to seeing that i listened to a one hour podcast about basketball. Best of luck.

katpas• 8 years ago

But aren't most technical folks in this arena working on their own idea(s)?

I wrote a blog post* about this a while back. If you're technical and have the risk profile to start a start-up it just seems so unlikely you would do this with someone you saw online. Compared to working on your own idea or on something with a colleague/friend.

* https://medium.com/@aca10e5bf264/514381d9ad09

tosterhaus2• 8 years ago

>As to his idea, I would pay for this right now.

Thanks for the compliments, made my day :)

> Music is evergreen whereas many (most?) Podcasts are not

Good feedback and something I have given quite a bit of thought too. I agree to some extinct however I would take the other side and say that the majority of podcasts are evergreen (or at least have a long shelf life) such as story or research shows like This American Life, RadioLab or interview types like The Tim Ferriss Show, Joe Rogan Experiment. The minority of podcasts that are not evergreen would be current affair or political types of shows - which I agree may not be a good fit for this.

> You'd learn more about me by seeing an hours worth of my spotify plays compared to seeing that i listened to a one hour podcast about basketball

This is where Repod is trying to come in. I don't see myself wanting to see an hours worth of tracks that you listened, I may play one of two of your songs but it would likely end at that. In fact that would inundate my feed if I am following multiple users who also listened to the same amount of tracks. Rather, if you listen to 3x podcasts a week then that would be much easier to scroll through in a feed of many users that you follow.

Podcast episodes offer much more depth as well. Being a basketball fan I would want to know if your basketball podcast was worth the 1 hour long listen, or have a conversation with you about it (i.e. if the episode compared MJ vs Lebron then I might comment on your feed with my own thoughts - or see what you thought about it), or if I really liked it then I tend to share episodes via text with my group of friends/family.

goatherders2• 8 years ago

My point was that from a data gathering, targeting, and recommendation standpoint you can get more insights from an hour of my music than an hourlong podcast.

sharemywin• 8 years ago

I'm curious if you've seen bubble.is

I was playing with it and it seems like a good way to get an mvp up and running.

rhizome• 8 years ago

How is this going to avoid becoming a begging site populated by no-money "revshare" wankers like /r/inat is?

WSykora• 8 years ago

Oh hey, looks who's on PH today! https://www.producthunt.com/posts/featured-founder

Show HN: FeaturedFounder.io transparently showcases startups seeking co-founders

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