How to convince my partner that we need a technical co-founder?
Hi there,
I was reading some very interesting posts on IndieHackers on how to find your technical co-founders.
And I think we already tick all the boxes.
We already built an MVP using Bubble.
We have viable acquisition channels.
We have customers: almost 1'000 customers and 170k in ARR.
We are already profitable (but reinvesting everything in marketing).
BUT I believe our UX is not at the standard of the SaaS market. And this was confirmed by a third-party that was looking to do some marketing partnership with us.
I do believe we need a tech co-founder to go the next level but my partner who has developed herself the whole platform with Bubble is still not convinced. I think she enjoys this tech stuff whereas her best skills are more in the vision and the content of the product.
I think she is also afraid to lose her baby software.
Does anybody has some advice to make her see the bigger picture or ways to bring in a tech co-founder that wouldn't scare her? It would really help!
Is your cofounder logical in her assessment of the situation? If she is, look at the numbers in your business and make the argument.
From your description it sounds like changing the UX is the main reason you see to make a technical change. If this is the case, you would expect this to increase your retention. Where is your retention currently, how much do you anticipate it would increase by making these changes, how long would it take to pay off the cost of re-engineering a working product?
Depending on your business model, it could also have an impact on your adoption rate for freemium. This should reduce your overall customer acquisition costs. However, if the users never see the software before purchase changing the UX should not change your marketing performance.
You're right. There is a case to make with our retention rate which is not that bad but could definitely be better with a better UX. Thanks!
As a Software Engineer, I'm of the opinion that eventually you'll need someone to help guide your technology long term, but some important questions I would ask yourself:
Is your growth limited by your current tech?
Would adding an Engineer to your team accelerate new feature development?
Is your current tech scalable to where you want to be in 5 years?
You can get by for quite a while without an Engineer, but the longer you are on this path, the harder it will be to add an Engineer to your team as most Engineers won't want to use platforms like Bubble and would have to re-build a lot of the infrastructure from scratch. So in a sense Bubble would be technical debt depending on your answers to the questions above.
If you are looking for a tech co-founder, I might be interested in talking with you more about your product.
Hope that helps!
Hi Kyle. I understand what you are saying. And I think I agree that the more we wait the more difficult it is going to be.
Totally agree with @ancil. Your co-founder doesn't need to give away her baby. More the opposite: she can make her baby grow faster by bringing someone extra on board. Looking at myself: my skills are also good enough to launch an MVP, but I actually get more energy out of briefing someone else my vision & seeing a much better end-result than I would be able to achieve myself if I did all of the execution. Just hire a good freelancer for an initial (small) project to introduce her to the idea of working together with someone & gradually go from there.
Thanks for your input!
First of all, holy crap 1,000 customers and 170k ARR is no easy feat, so congrats!
Sounds like you think it's time to bring some tech expertise in-house? But you can still do this without bringing that person in as a co-founder though. Have you considered hiring someone part time?
If you two have gotten this far without a tech co-founder, I suspect you can go a lot further without one.
With some help in-house, your co-founder can build trust with this person over time and delegate more and more responsibilities to them. That way she can still have oversee the build but also freeing her up to focus on bigger picture thing
TLDR: doesn't sound like you two need a co-founder. maybe consider hiring someone, that way you can get the best of both worlds.
Thanks Ancil for your intersting point of view. You might be right. We may not need a co-founder. I'll explore this option.
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.