I am laying down the ground work for a SAAS startup and would like to bring on a developer/tech guru as a co-founder. If you were in my position, how would you go about finding/approaching someone for this roll? I'm open to any suggestion. My location is Honolulu, by the way.
What is your role?
Meet ups and startup mailing lists seem like the most obvious answer. You could approach people at your current workplace for recommendations. Problem with finding engineering co-founders is this: engineers have to do a metric shit-ton of work on the project. Itâs very visible and easy to measure. You need to provide a comparable value to the project and often times itâs not visible or easy to quantify. As an engineer, Iâd definitely ask what your input will be and if I donât hear a concise well thought out answer, I would pass.
My job is to steer the business towards success. I see my role as CEO and CMO. I will drive innovation, investments, growth, and marketing.
An ideas man?
CEO material right here ! Knows all the right (and empty) words :) Before you have the business to drive towards success you have to build something that runs. So why don't you start innovating some code right away ? Otherwise your tech guru might feel lonely and run away.
You got me on Honolulu. When do I start? đ
I thought that might get someone's attention
It got mine.
Ha! Ok, cut me some slack on my lack of elaboration :) ..I have experience in management, as well as a decade in graphic design and UX. Plus I'm bankrolling this whole company in the beginning.
What do you do right now? Experience in the area etc?
Production manager at a commercial printing company. I don't have experience in running a company, though. Aside from being a sole practitioner in graphic design before I took the Production manager job.
u donât need a co-founder. U are bank rolling it. Hire someone and start building the app. If someone very good comes along u can hire him and give him a fancy title and some stock.
Fiverr đ You sound like an âideas guyâ which can be good, or just really annoying. Usually itâs really annoying. But if you can sell the concept, I mean really pitch it, then youâre on the right track. If you canât sell the concept to a dev, then you canât sell it to investors either. So what do you have so far? Consider this your first bout of hustling, of which there will be a lot. Build relationships and find someone youâre happy to hand over half of this thing to. Or, well, a portion equal to yours. Gone are the days of Jobs and Woz. If youâre full of shit, a good dev will know immediately.
I understand everyone is skeptical and probably annoyed by my vagueness. Let me clarify some things: I'm putting my career on the back-burner and quitting next month to pursue this venture full time. Backing it with $90K in savings to start. I also have a friend who's interested in investing at a later stage. Laid the ground works by crafting a basic site myself (plus UX diagrams for the SAAS portion), market analysis research and target audience interviews, some pre-sales, and an in depth growth strategy vetted by some experienced friends in the field. Pretty much everything I could manage to do after work and on weekends. Now it's time to make this my full-time focus.
So youâve covered the basicsâthatâs good, because many donât bother. Have you articulated a grander mission and purpose? That can inspire someone to join you. The value in this for someone should be more in that than the potential financial windfall. Write that vision down and use that to find someone who feels as strongly about it as you do. Honestly, Blind is a good place to seek out interested devs. Are you cool with remote? You might have to start with someone whoâs on the mainland.
Why dont you tell us your idea? Dm me if you want.
Learn to code. For most apps, it isnât that hard. No one cares about your app more than you do Unless you have money and funding, in which case hire a remote resource known to do good work.