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?
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.