Can't indie-hack my project any longer, now looking for co-founders
HIT CTRL + F to find all the [UPDATE]'s in this unavoidably long post.
I'm Daniel, a software developer and university dropout with 5+ years of experience working for a good number of clients in various industries and now working full-time on building my start-up.
[UPDATE]: It seems my very humble intro is making some people think I'm looking for technical co-founders to do all the work for me. I have 2 years of experience working on chatbots in hackathons and 4 years using Python in projects -- a combination of Botman, TensorFlow for ML/AI (image recog and word embedding to be specific) and Wit.AI for NLP all in agile envs. So when I say AI/ML, trust me, I'm not bull-shitting you + I know the difference between rebase and merge 😉
When I started working on the project, It was convenient doing most of the work by myself. I'm a full-stack guy, with strong brand design experience so you understand why I thought I could hack it all away, outsourcing small tasks when I got too busy. The project has been developed to a stage where I need to find cofounders -- so I thought, why not put up a post on IndieHackers to attract a few great Indies?
This is not the regular "co-founder hunt" post, but one aimed at finding high-spirited, sedulous, goal-driven people to join a promising tech startup. If this sounds like you, please read further to learn more about the product, the market and the roles I'm looking to fill.
It's a common fact that a well-formed partnership between co-founders is key to startup success. Especially when the startup is based on a validated idea using disruptive technology in an industry valued to be worth $14.2b by 2024 -- according to Zion Market Research. Oh yeah, you read right -- but that's enough introduction 😃. "Let's get to know more about the product, shall we?".
Think about the benefits of being able to work with a team of developers by generating platform-agnostic content that's readily available without having to wait for the developers to build the actual product. I'm talking about a Headless Content Management System or HCMS (as it's popularly known as) Video Explainer, that leverages Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at it's core with a B2B/B2C business model targeted at digital agencies, developers and enterprises in Europe, North America and Africa looking to supercharge their content infrastructure. In summary, it's Kontent on steroids and that's what I'm building because I want to greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to build and ship digital products to users -- and the prototype is halfway done. The start-up is a registered UK limited company with two directors at the moment.
MORE ABOUT THE TARGET MARKET:
I initially started with plans to only target ready markets in Europe and North America and take our competitors head-on (since I am confident of entering the market and gaining a considerable amount of the total market share) but I have now added emerging markets in Africa as a target with greater emphasis on Africa. According to Quartz Africa, "Africa is the world’s fastest-growing continent for software developers" and only last year, $1.163b was raised in equity by tech startups. These African tech startups require a repository to store content, but there's not a single Headless CMS platform providing localized services to tech startups in Africa. I currently have over 100 businesses/developers signed up for the beta and a few of them are African startups including one of the biggest digital media companies in Africa, Big Cabal.
Despite being a bootstrapper, I have been approached by several Venture Capitalists offering money for X percent of the company but turned all of them down except one, which I have strongly considered because of their seemingly humane motives. I've gone on to have a few interesting discussions and I'm not too far from closing a $25,000 pre-seed deal but I will only accept the offer after finding the right cofounders and deciding together on whether it's the right move.
[UPDATE]: Well, it's obvious that everyone has different opinions on what $25k pre-seed can do. I just had to explain to a few commenters on this thread that $25k is not enough money to hire talent. The plan is to use this money to take care of servers, subscriptions, marketing, etc... basically company growth without paying cash salaries, YET.
I think many people missed the point here, I need a team because I need to go at a faster pace and while I'm not bothered about getting investment, investors mostly only invest in companies that have co-founders. $25k feels like the right amount of money for a motivated team that doesn't want to lose a large chunk of shares to investors.
I'm looking for 4 people at most that can join as a co-founder working on any of the two roles listed below:
-
A front-end engineer (Preferably ReactJS), with experience building Single Page Applications. You will be working hand-in-hand with me on the backend.
-
An English speaking, technical content strategist with content marketing skills with a knack for writing to manage, publish and market content on the website and social media channels.
Equity is all I can offer you at the moment, but I assure you that negotiations will be based on your anticipated contribution to the company's growth in value.
I'd really love to go into more details about the product but I can't, because I've learned the hard way, not to share unique business details and the benefits of an NDA while working on an old project -- but don't worry, you can send me a direct message on Twitter or reply to this thread and I'll let you know how to proceed.
If you read through and didn't find a suitable role, please help me share this. My future co-founders may be in your network.
Looking forward to working with you and a big thank you for the time spent going through this 🙂.
[UPDATE]: If you look closely at one of the screenshots I posted relating to an investment opportunity, you'd find that the Investor stated they had invested in Contentful in the past. Contentful is a DIRECT competitor and that was the reason why offers like that were turned down. The other investment-related screenshot was from an investor running a very similar startup and wanted to "partner/invest".
[UPDATE]: I've added screenshots of some conversations with investors and some other people. There's a screenshot of a request from Nathan to feature on his show and another from someone that showed interest in helping out. I blanked out names and other sensitive info except in Nathan's convo because he's a public figure and not an investor.
I could only find two convos with investors, the others happen to have been buried/I can't just find them. I've had to take these down to upload newer screenshots as IH has a limit of 5 images per post.
[UPDATE]: Here's a link to the product's page; https://bit.ly/2quoSax
I had to use a link shortener because I don't want potential investors to find this post.
[UPDATE]: 1 out of 4 people have signed the NDA and completed the process. Things are getting more interesting because this person is actually from Andela 😄
[UPDATE]: 2 out of 4 people have been vetted and on-boarded.
[UPDATE]: @loreaua in her/his comment asked me to post evidence of the $25k deal so as an unprofessional CEO that I am, I've fulfilled her/his request. I will, however, take down this post in the next three days. It seems IH is not actually one of the best places to find smart co-founders, an Indie-hacker even claimed to be able to code AI/ML features, CLI and multi-platform app features all in one weekend. I think the world has been fucked so bad that most people now see startups like mine as a scammy/shady business with alternate objectives when we actually do have great intentions.
Human wants are insatiable, so I'm gonna assume some people will come at me asking for more screenshots of detailed convos between these investors as if I was discussing porn with these guys.
[UPDATE]: 3 out of 4 people have completed the on-boarding process. We're looking for just one more serious content strategist.
Best Regards ✌🏽,
Here's my thoughts on this.
You're considering taking a $25,000 pre-seed deal. What are you spending that money on, if it's not going towards paying people to help build your company?
You mention taking that $25,000 over all the other venture capitalist offerings because "of their seemingly humane motives." - I'd remove emotions from your consideration there. At the end of the day, all investment offerings are after the same thing, profit. No matter what way they word it to make it sound like they're investing for the greater good.
For some reason, I simply do not believe you've had multiple VC offerings. I think it may be because you've not said or shown anything that would warrant such offerings from VC's.
We cannot afford to pay everyone on the team. Do you know what the average salary of an engineer is? What about marketing and customer acquisition?, What about servers and DevOps?
Yeah, you're right... I forgot to mention that they're offering on-site business consultations, office space and access to their network. The other VC's just wanted to throw money in and their motives were skeptical because they're active investors in companies in the same space as ours.
My bad, I'd include screenshots in the OP.
Hey Dan. My eyes glazed over reading the first bit of your idea. Lots of buzz words.
What problem are you solving? Who are you solving it for? What have you done already?
Good luck!
Hit CTRL + F to find all the updates in the OP, thanks.
Good luck, your pre-seed investment isn't enough to pay me to sign an NDA just to decide if being a co-founder is a good fit.
Yeah I know, right?
-25k Pre-seed deal? How can you expect quality cofounders to come work for equity when you value yourself so cheap?
-You cannot use the argument "the market I am competing in is huge" - as a selling point for a business plan, this is an elementary rookie thing to do, and anyone who has any experience knows this - especially any VC you talk to - making your VC funding assertion, dubious at best.
-"Humane motives" for investment? Dude people that have money, invest it with a view that it will generate a return - otherwise they wont have money for very long. The "Humane" motive is to generate enough value for your customers in order to pay back the capital that you had to borrow in order to enable you to do it.
-Saying "AI" as a marketing slogan, has the exact opposite effect these days. No one is falling for that BS.
-Anyone worth their salt knows an idea isn't worth shit without the execution. That being said no one is going to sign your NDA unless your paying cash to either hire them or you seduce them with superior logic and business case for equity.
I don't mean to be overly critical - I am just highlighting the areas of consideration that you need to have when your looking for the quality people you want. (Everyone wants a technical cofounder that can do everything you say without you paying them - very few want to do the work to either learn the technical stuff or pay those that have learned it). No one worth their salt will take this deal - in fact you should be skeptical of those that even consider it. Most people wont even give you this honest feedback - the smart people will lurk, chuckle at your post - and move on, and you will be left wondering what you did wrong and why your not successful.
Well, it's obvious that everyone has different opinions on what $25k pre-seed can do. I just had to explain to another commenter on this thread that $25k is not enough money to hire talent. The plan is to use this money to take care of servers, subscriptions, marketing, etc... basically company growth without paying cash salaries, YET.
I think you missed the point of my post. I need a team because I need to go at a faster pace and while I'm not bothered about getting investment, investors mostly only invest in companies that have co-founders. $25k feels like the right amount of money for a motivated team that doesn't want to lose a large chunk of shares to investors.
In regards to your update to the post. I think they only further cement how dodgy all this is and it shows your lack of understanding. Maybe you're just misinterpreting what the emails you've been sent say.
The screenshots you've posted with 'investors' are not offers of investment. They are emails asking you to tell them what you're doing etc and they'll think about investing. These are standard emails and not investment offers or direct 'we want to invest' emails.
Secondly, you updated it to say that the $25k will be used for servers, subscriptions, marketing etc. No good investor would offer $25,000 to pay for infrastructure/marketing on a business plan that has no staff to build content and no engineer. Any investor would know that their investment offer would need to take into consideration staffing costs.
Can you post a screenshot of the direct email offer of $25,000?
Unfortunately, even with your updates, there are so many flaws, problems and suspicious things in everything you say.
Well, we now have two quality engineers on the team + me, so I think they'd be more willing to close the deal.
Do you know how far on, these investors and I went on talking about a deal before I backed out?, the numerous Skype calls? Maybe I should ask Skype for an audio transcript of our calls to "convince" you. At this point, I'm no longer interested in trying to convince anybody to join or support and I'm not a fan of this screenshot sharing of a thing, but I'd just proceed to post the email receipt for the $25k deal, to feed your feeble mind.
I'd just prolly go ahead and delete my post and account after that, the negative energy on here is way too much and thanks for not replying directly to my reply to your previous comment.
Best of luck on your project, but I see a lot of red flags. Others in the thread have mentioned some of them, but these are the ones that stand out to me.
Nice to see people asking for partners in the IH community!
I have to say though, very few problems seem to be "too large" for an Indie Hack. You can probably create an MVP of your product or at least a proof of concept. I suggest that you identify the smallest possible product that you can create that illustrates the value of your idea and that your team members have the capability to execute on it.
Build your product in steps and iterations instead of aiming for a feature complete release.
Hit CTRL + F to find all the updates in the OP, thanks.
Is there a good reason why you are not building your initial version on top of existing headless CMS by adding localization services?
That will only make the initial version too expensive and nobody will be willing to pay for the product.
Nice... I'm interested but neither am I a developer nor content strategist so I hit the share button. Let me.know if there are other ways to coontributw, Good luck.
Thanks, man! Currently not looking for any other skills. That'll probably change after the product gets out of beta and has paying customers.
Again, thanks 👍🏽
Regarding your screenshot update. You're not honestly saying that's your evidence of a 25k deal? An email from a company stating they invest up to $25k in companies and they would like to talk to you to discuss your project?
That's not someone asking to invest. That's not an offer of $25k. That's just a general outreach email that goes out to hundreds of businesses.
Secondly, you posted here on the 6th and it's the 9th as of writing this. In 3 days, you've found, selected and on-boarded 2 of the staff you need? That means you've put no effort into finding the best people for the job and that you just hire random people on a whim.
The reality with this project is that I believe you've not had an offer of $25k and I doubt you've actually got two experienced coders on-board already. You're either lying or extremely naive.
I didn't just get a random email from them, a member on their scout network connected with me first on LinkedIn and asked me to apply. It looks like I was cold-mailed to you but we actually went on to have a lot of conversations on Skype where the project and their intent to actually invest were discussed. No smart investor will ever send in a formal investment offer via email, they usually just onboard via email then move over to Skype/Zoom/Phone or a physical meeting to discuss the details. Are you suggesting that the screenshot of the X number of Skype calls I had with the investor isn't enough proof?
"You're either lying or extremely naive" - and you're just being extremely pessimistic.
"a promising tech startup."
Sorry but everyone says that. What have you built so far exactly ? The video that you linked to is about HeadLess CMS but what is YOUR product and do you have a working prototype that you can share ?
"Equity is all I can offer you at the moment, but I assure you that negotiations will be based on your anticipated contribution to the company's growth in value."
If you want to get cofounders on equity only, you should be willing to provide a range which should be in 2 digits at the least in my opinion. It seems like you already have 2 directors in the company and on top, you are looking for 4 more people ? Are you sure you are looking for co-founders or just early stage employees ? For an unknown person/company, no one will be interested in very low equity especially when there is no business yet.
"but I can't, because I've learned the hard way, not to share unique business details and the benefits of an NDA"
No one will sign an NDA for an unknown person/company/idea. If you had a working prototype with real validated customers (Even if small number), it is a different story.
I am just a stranger on the internet so I hope you don't take this personally but posts like these have tons of red flags and this is not how you find co-founders. It may be your inexperience but I recommend you to reconsider posting more details.
Whether "a promising tech startup" is clickbait is totally up to you and out of my control. You can be the judge of that.
I have updated the post with links to the product.
Again, I have updated the OP so an NDA should be worth it.
I'm sorry but there is literally nothing about your startup that says signing an NDA is worth it.
I looked over your landing page.. I can build majority of your startup in a weekend. Plus you're only targeting Africa... There's nothing about your product that is exclusive to that area. You're literally limiting your customer base.
I feel like I should invoice you $25k just for having to jump through these hoops to learn about what you are even building.
"Plus you're only targeting Africa..." - I think I'd be better off watching Rick and Morty all over again than clarifying what our target market is.
"I can build the majority of your startup in a weekend" - If you're talking about the landing page, well, not a big deal. But if you think you have the skills and discipline (especially coming from someone that posted this ) to do CLI app dev + Using ML to understand patterns in the way people manage content + AI chat-bot dev + Integrating a ton of apps (well one could benefit from plugging into Zappier though) in one weekend (not even a full week), then you're either The Joker from Batman or you're just one of those mediocre devs that can't stop talking about MongoDB, OR you're actually worth your salt and I'd be willing to save up to actually hire you and let go of the two engineers that came on board for equity.
I obviously left out key trade secrets and only shared what I could without the fear of brain rape.
Good luck with whatever you actually spend your 25k on. All the best, man 👍
From what I can gather, you pay very little attention to details and are behaving very hypocritical. I'd rather work with the two engineers I've gotten than bring you on even for cash.
Looking forward to integrating App Metrics once we get out of beta, is there an API or SDK one could use? -- Oh, I forgot, you'd prolly roll it out this weekend too.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
I see you've done your homework 😄... I have updated the post to sound less "cocky".
You're right about the $1.163b being raised by a number of companies in late-stage rounds but one of those companies is Andela, a company that recently laid out over 250 developers that went on to be hired by a very good number of tech startups in Africa. Most tech startups in Africa are bootstrapped and still in early-stage so I'm really not surprised if only a few companies attributed to the $1.163b. If these early-stage startups leverage platforms like Conteidon, then they can get to market faster and raise funds if they wish. And btw, Headless CMS is still a very new thing to most African startups.
I mentioned that my target market is basically Europe, North America, and Africa but we're only focusing more on Africa because I'm in Nigeria right now (was born in Nigeria actually) and have seen first-hand the amazing tech-ecosystem in Lagos. I've also visited tech-hubs in Kigali (Rwanda) and Nairobi (Kenya) and I'm confident that the tech-space is rapidly growing. Localization is not why we're focusing on Africa, I have connections in Africa and can easily convince some of the big guys to use my product. It's just part of the market strategy, really.
I have experience working on AI chatbots through hackathons organized by Facebook and my bot experience includes natural language processing (Wit.AI) and localization, it's actually not that difficult if you know what you're doing + I've also completed challenges on Codewars and HackerRank. There are certain skills I intentionally left out of my LinkedIn because I was not interested in using them commercially.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
Haha, just like thought.
Wasn't expecting you to have any real thing to talk about again. You preach something and do the opposite. Just take up the challenge if you've got the time and let's see who has the DK effect.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
I've got nothing to be embarrassed about... I came here with good intentions to find co-founders and instead of helping out, you criticized everything and couldn't see beyond "red flags". You've shown just how much of a pessimist you are. Have a good day bro 👍
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
Do you know how many battles I've fought to get to where I am? I validated over and over again and I'm sounding "cocky" to you because you don't believe I have the skills to build what I say I'm building. I got featured on betalist last year within a week of applying and without paying a penny. We got exposure from BetaList and did paid Quora ads from which I got useful feedback to validate and make product adjustments. Conteidon has been around for more than 2 years now and a lot of work has gone into it, so you should know how I felt when you were "bashing" the idea and calling me "cocky". Only a few startups based on products as complex as mine get to last as long as I've lasted -- it's not cockiness, it's the truth.
"I was helping out" - We were having an argument about the target market and some other things. You can't just be right all the time and should learn to admit when you're wrong. I don't see how that counts as "helping out". Oh, and you thinking I've been rude to you only makes you an egocentric pessimist.
Maybe if you had actually said something true and sensible, I would've listened to you. Your opinions are yours and mine, mine. 🤞
@alxcnwy I always run into your posts and I must say its like a breath of fresh air and I look forward to them everytime hahahah
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
Aren't we no longer talking about Andela and the Nigerian tech eco-system? What about not having AI/ML experience?
You need to stop thinking like a bot, and start acting like a human.