I have been building a startup for the past couple of years. Before any development work was done we sold our idea using a website, Typeform w/ Stripe, and manual delivery of the solution. We made a few thousand dollars doing this, and along with some other tests we had enough validation that there is a market we can build for.
We found a technical cofounder and by the end of 2022 (~4-5 month build) we had a bare bones MVP. The technical cofounder moved on with other projects, so we went looking for another. It was a 3 month process and while the replacement we found was competent, they didn’t have the time to move things forward substantially and left the team just recently.
Building a startup is tough. You need time, often around other commitments without being paid. The process from idea to MVP/beta takes months or longer, to find product-market can take years (and many examples in this post actually took much longer than they documented).
So I’m in the process of looking for a new technical cofounder (view to CTO) and I’d be interested to hear the experiences of others.
If you are a non-technical founder, how do you find an engineer/developer who can commit 20-30 hours per week before you build revenue or attract funding to pay the founding team salaries?
If you are a developer, what is the most important signal that a startup is worth spending that amount of time on around your other commitments?
We have some financial validation, we’re in an incubator program, operational costs are covered (from some early investment + incubator stipend + ecosystem grant), we have a solid deck and whitepaper that outline the vision, prepared to work with someone locally or 100% remote, maybe there is something we are missing…
I am doing the following:
- Posting to industry specific job boards
- Checking through YC Cofounder Matching (+ Cofounders Lab)
- Searching LinkedIn + cold outreach to local developers with experience that is a match
- Reaching out to contacts in my network, i.e. through the incubator and beyond
Where else would you be looking?
It seems that many developers, even joining as a cofounder, expect a salary right out of the gate. Where do I find those with realistic expectations and an interest to bootstrap, even if we don’t secure investment capital?
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If you’re bootstrapping with limited runway, build your MVP yourself on a no-code platform. Then when you find product/market fit and get some traction, you’ll have the resources and opportunities to solve all these other challenges.
It’s something I’ve considered. But we are at a stage where the MVP/beta product is fairly advanced, which would make this a huge backwards step. There are some technical hurdles that would make using no-code particularly difficult to get the product where I think it needs to be.
Also, even if we could get the product traction using a no-code MVP (then raise funding and hire a CTO), I’d rather find our technical founder who is dedicated enough to join during the bootstrapped phase as, otherwise it’s a bit like a rich man looking for a wife… you never really know if she’s around for the vision or just for the money / security 🙂
So it sounds like for the 12 months of 2023, you’ve had/will have almost zero productivity on your app. What’s to say you’re not going to have those same results in 2024? 2025? If you find this magic man, are you really certain they’re going to be able to get you there still?
At least explore the idea of building it yourself on a no code platform. I have no idea the complexity of what you’re selling, but 95% of the apps I’ve built in my lifetime, for startups, SMBs, and enterprise, I could have built on sometime like Bubble.io. I now use no code to launch 100% of my SaaS platforms, the largest getting ready to scale past $5m ARR in 2024 on Bubble Enterprise. As a fellow startup founder, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not contemplating all possible channels to get to market.
Excuses are easy. Building, grinding, and succeeding are where the real challenge is at. Just do it now and you’ll thank me later.
We have had some forward progress on the app, just not as much as I’d like.
I did contemplate no-code and have explored it. I spent a day working through various Bubble introduction videos and guides, then another half day exploring the limitations. Everything points to integrating three.js into a HTML canvas on Bubble being code heavy (for which you still need a developer or learn to code) and with very poor performance even if achieved.
How much equity are you offering?
A developer can get any job and be paid relatively well. You’d need to convince someone to invest their time in this product so that it will perhaps grow and be worth something, most likely it will end up being worth nothing, therefore people will rather work for real money rather than equity.
Open to an equal split among cofounders if we find someone with an equal level of dedication, e.g., not trying to fit the startup around full time work.
I am currently working 0.6FTE (to pay the bills as we bootstrap) and taking a 40% hit to a more or less guaranteed income, so I understand it takes sacrifice.
I need to find developers with the risk tolerance to take a salary hit upfront (even once funded, salary is likely to be less than full market rate).
Then you’re not doing the proper fundraise and investors will care. If you don’t raise enough money to pay all of you decent salaries then you all will not be focusing 100% on startup and that might be a red flag for a lot of people.
“We are building a design studio for NFTs”. That’s all I needed to read.
The hard truth here is that it’s a red flag that you haven’t raised capital after being around this long.
Just like you, a technical co-founder is looking for the best possible team to join. When so much of a CEO’s role revolves around raising money, the fact that you have none is a bad signal. While you might find someone, you won’t find a person of the quality you need for this role (and without pay, it’s unlikely they’ll stick around).
I would suggest raising angel round if you have an MVP. If no one will invest, you’re going to have to assume no one will down the line either and start thinking about how to get profitable with no outside capital. It’ll be a tough journey ahead.
Fair point. I have raised some capital. Some F&F investors, an ecosystem grant, a stipend through an incubator program, just not enough that it would support full time salaries for the team.
We have an MVP that needs perhaps a couple of weeks work before it’s next release and then the aim is to raise a round with angels that understand the sector. I just don’t want to try for that until we have a ‘complete team’ that I am confident can build/show momentum.
If you are not technically proficient how do you accurately project how much development time will take? With previous technical expertise leaving, the issue is starting to make sense.
Through experience and because the features are already built and working in a dev environment.
We still have a front-end engineer working with us, and we will get the MVP completed with their help, but I’d still ideally like to onboard someone with greater availability and stronger backend experience so we can build momentum prior to putting our hand out for capital.
If you are not able to generate any profit nor any investment for the company in the span of couple of years, and yet you say you need a developer who’s committed to work as you are, what do you really expect?
What have you done in this time that would tell us you’re as productive as a developer who will work 6-8 hours a day on the application for the foreseeable future?
The signal I look for with potential roles is a “salary.”