I am wondering what others think… some podcast says “to want a cofounder so that you get a free software engineer is the wrong motivation”. Ideally I would want funds to hire a senior developer to help with prototyping a solution. An alternative would be to hire a cofounder to do that… as a “free software engineer”, which would actually be extremely expensive in terms of equity.
What do others think? Can a full time senior developer start and lead the development of an MVP?
Apologies if this comes across as strong, but as a technical person that is consistently being approached to be a “CTO” I feel like I need to clear some things up.
> An alternative would be to hire a cofounder to do that… as a “free software engineer”
This is not an alternative, full stop. To make someone provide services they usually charge for is a form of manipulation. Having a cofounder is not a technique for achieving access to free labor.
A cofounder is a partner, and even though their share of duties are on the technical side, they need to be viewed as an equal in responsibilities such as decision making, product direction, fund raising, etc. They should be excited to work on the problem that is present. If you already have a vision for the product in terms of what you think should be built by the “cofounder”, then you are looking for an employee, not a cofounder. And this is okay, if not better! The relationship between employe(e/r) is far more clear to both parties.