Alternative for finding technical co-founders
Hi all. I have been kicking this idea around for a while and thought I would do a little validation.
For about 10 years I made a living as an independent software developer. During that time the most exciting and rewarding projects involved small startups. On several occasions I was the 2nd or 3rd person they had worked with and I took pride in the fact that I was able to help them get to market. My secret had less to do with my technical abilities and more to do with a pragmatic approach. Over-engineering and poor communication were the most common problems and I was able to solve both.
My idea was to create a small team that specializes in startups (possibly serving both funded and pre-funded). Compensation could take the form of creative arrangements such as equity ownership or payment plans. The idea is I would take on some risk in exchange for long term revenue and future return on that investment.
Given that many here are non-technical founders, I was hoping maybe I could run a couple of questions by you all.
-
Do you feel finding technical expertise is still a pain point when building a startup? I realize this has become easier to access with services such as Fiver. Have these services filled the need properly?
-
As a founder are you willing to negotiate creative compensation in exchange for technical expertise?
-
This idea only scales as a short term partnership to get a product to market quickly. Given that the concept doesn't provide a long term partner (such as a CTO) would this still be an attractive option?
Thanks!
Thoughtbot does this, they have an interview on indiehackers which is likely well worth the listen: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/095-chad-pytel-of-thoughtbot
They managed to scale it quite well. As szferi mentioned, there are lots of other companies that do the same thing as well.
Awesome. I'll give it a listen today. Thanks!
There are a tons of development companies, startup studios, agencies etc. that help even early stage startups and get compensated by equity. From that point of view your proposal makes sense. My experience is that it is really hard to operate this arrangement after you made 1-2 hit. Either by getting one larger client which pays better than the startups or by having startups which become large and can pay. Talent allocation between projects become really hard eventually. Your short term goals (make your company sustainable) and long term goals (you have to be there to get return on the equities) are conflicting and your cashflow pressure will force you to focus on the short end unless you have long term investor in your company.
To answer your questions as well:
Thanks, that is really helpful. From a professional services perspective the challenge has always been how do you move away from project based revenue to a recurring model. Seems like on the startup side one has to have some level of technical capability to get off the ground. No doubt the best case scenario is to find an experienced CTO willing to invest time. I suspect that's not always a realistic option given that the CTO must share a similar vision to the founder - limiting the pool somewhat. Trying to figure out of there is another option.
I like your idea if you need more tech team members