Should IH more formally facilitate 'co-founder finding'?
I'm on the look out for a technical co-founder, or at least someone that would be open to hacking with me in exchange for a mixture of cash/revenue share and a bit of my company.
I know there are sites out there and built by people on this site (co-hounder etc.) to help with this, but it feels to me that this community is perfectly placed to make it easier.
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Everyone on here has a bootstrap mindset (a lot of folks I'm speaking to want to raise, or are comfortable as FTEs)
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You can read people's comments and contributions to get a sense of how they think, shortcutting some of the alignment stage.
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There's a natural level of trust which I'm finding it hard to get to on platforms like upwork.
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Work-in-kind (for example me swapping design skills for someone's coding ability) is hard to facilitate ad-hoc, and probably wouldn't occur to most, but may be popular here.
Some sort of classifieds section would be really cool.
While I don't have any concrete plans to build a standalone co-founder matching feature, I'm working on something else at the moment that will, incidentally, help a lot with cofounder matching.
In the meantime, making forum threads is great. (Perhaps try making a weekly "co-founder matching" thread for more visibility, as it would be broadly useful enough for me to link to in the newsletter.) I also highly recommend attending or hosting a meetup in your area.
In the terms of being fully transparent, why not start doing a public roadmap à la Buffer? https://trello.com/b/PDIV7XW3/buffer-transparent-product-roadmap
I always see new little features popping up around here but they don't get announced/hyped
I've considered it. But my roadmap changes super often, and I'm also a very small team, so the overhead of maintaining something like this doesn't seem worthwhile at the moment. Already got a ton of overhead doing other things e.g. responding to email, moderating the forum, running the podcast, etc.
Hi Jonny, I put together a bit of personalized advice (as a tool) to help people like you find a great cofounder - you can check it out here: https://www.louisnicholls.com/cofounder-advice.html
If you want a technical co-founder, make a post! Everyone here is pretty down to collab and help each other and network. I don't think the solution need be technical, but social. Facilitating finding co-founders is just part of what we do here. We're already focused on dialog over simply sharing links.
which isn't to say classifieds is a bad idea - only that the tools we've got today can be used to address.
That's how I see it, at least.
That is exactly what I'm thinking and it seems more and more crucial to build business with someone instead of doing it alone. Plus, it's way harder to do everything on your own.
To cover this problem I build findamaker.io - essentially a job board to startups and side projects.
I think such a tool could be interesting for a majority of Indie Hackers.
I actually found my co-founder on IH. Although there are no specific features made to help you find a co-founder, the nature of the site alone makes it a great place to do so already.
Tell us a little more about who you are, what you're working on and what you're looking for. There's a good chance it will spark some interest.
Hey Jonny,
While I'm brand new to IH, "co-founder finding" is exactly why I'm here. Hopefully the post I just made announcing myself and intentions isn't frowned upon here 😰.
That being said, I am looking to be a technical co-founder and it would be super sweet if IH could get me there.
Hi Luke,
What are your skills?
Hey there,
I made a brief post with some information about me. I don't want to hijack Jonny's post, so you can go take a look if you like :)
Welcome to Indie hackers! - we're pretty friendly here. Generally, pro-social behavior and offers to collab / build relationships will always be well received. 🤗
Awesome, fingers crossed!