Thursday, May 21, 2015

How do I find a co-Founder?

Find your POV and you will soon attract the right potential cofounders. (POV stands for point of view.)

Unless you have been organically working with and talking to potential cofounders who want to work with you because you like each other etc, the main reason someone will work with you is because of shared interests. 

The POV can be in the form of:
  • Problem statement: e.g, you think the cab market is broken. You think mobile apps can help solve this. You will now attract people who like the space and have some ideas - you will have something to talk about. You get to know each other by solving the problem together.
  • Target Market: You think Obamacare is going to change healthcare. Now you have something to filter each other by. Ideas will come up. 
  • Technical Architecture: You believe that Hadoop is just plain dumb for real time analytics and the right way to do big data analytics is by using X. Now you can sit down and discuss Hadoop and X. You can then find some problems to solve with X. 

In short, act like a sole founder that has a mission - solving a problem, attacking a market, disrupting a company, leveraging a new technology - and you will find like minded cofounders, investors and others who are ready to sign up for the cause.

Before your startup is a company, its a cause. Identify the cause. Build a movement.

2 comments:

hipy said...

Hi, I like your insightful posts.

Ref: How do I find a co-founder ?

1) I have identified a cause but afraid to talk about it because of fear of somebody stealing my idea. But on other had finding a co-founder is also crucial. Have you yourself faced this in your mind at some time. If yes then how did you approach it ?

2) Just b'se there's a need does not mean there's a market. The cause I have found is based on a need. That means it calls for measured risk. If you have any experience like this please share the approach ?

Unknown said...

That makes a lot of sense. but why find a co-founder at all. I'm just hiring part-time contractors until I can get enough done to start making revenue. Co-founders are only important if you want to get into an incubator.