Why is it so hard to find a co-founder?

I'm not going to lie, I've had almost universally negative experiences with non technical people wanting to partner up.

I mostly feel annoyed when non-technical people ask me to team up because they can't actually explain in any concrete way what value they'll bring to it. To be blunt, most of the non-technical people looking to do a startup that I've met have been experts mainly in bullshit, have little to evidence that they can actually bring in customers, and just generally are expecting a fantasy life. All for the low low cost of half of my dream 😅.

Anyways, now that I've ranted. If you're a non technical person looking for technical, I'd say that the absolute best way to get technical people to take you seriously is to prove you'll be able to bring in customers week 1. Maybe that's just an email list or some verbal commitments, but make it undeniable that you'll be as valuable as they are and things will be a lot easier.

I think it’s difficult to find a good one because it’s a very complicated partnership. In a lot of ways it’s much like marriage. You have to have trust, motivation, mutual belief, balance, aligned ethics, compromise, and complimentary roles and personalities. Finding someone like this is like finding a long term partner. You’re not going to find a cofounder with the drop of a hat.

I have tried bringing people on board at the ground level before, and the only success I’ve had is when I found a partner prior to starting the product. I think there is more motivation and a shared sense of ownership when you actually start at ground level 0, rather than partially through the product building phase. This seems to be the highest success rate for me in my experience.

I just left an incubator programme, which is focused in the beginning on finding a cofounder -- it's extremely early stage in that way.

Having spent such an intense amount of time mainly working just to get a cofounder, here's a few things I learned and maybe you find useful:

1. Finding a cofounder is hard because you need to find someone who you connect with personally, who has skills that complement yours, has aligned interests and is excited by the same topics, and is ready to go at the same time you are. That's a lot of stuff that needs to perfectly line up, and they usually don't.
2. It's generally better when both people build up on an idea together. It's OK to have one side bring an idea to the table, and then both flesh it out together etc. The reason is that this creates a sense of ownership of the concept. Without this, one side will probably feel like they are working for the other
3. Unless there is a super duper good reason, you should split equity 50/50. Even if one of you created a prototype or did some work already. It's not about what you did in the past, it's what you expect them to give in the future.
4. In the early times, you both need to be extremely honest with yourselves and each other. It is pretty normal for one to lose passion or belief for an idea, especially if you've pivoted a bit (which is also normal). This needs to be talked about as early as possible, or you're just creating a potentially bigger problem later.
5. Forget this stuff about one person being tech and the other person being business (or whatever). Sure that's the skills you bring, but first and foremost, you're both founders. This means that you both do a lot of jobs that probably is not your core skill or interest. You're in it together, and as things get more established, then you can get back to your roots. The more you create a divide between you like that, the more you should expect to have issues.
6. You should expect there to be times where the focus is on tech and building, and other times where the focus is on validating and getting customers. Don't mistake this as one side is slacking or not bringing value. It's natural that workload is not always perfectly balanced. Ideally you can both help each other and chip in where you can.
7. Ideation should be coupled very closely with finding a cofounder. You might find someone really great, but you just have different interests. For that reason, it's good to work on ideas together with someone, and if you can't find common ground that excites you both, then maybe it's just not a good fit.

Maybe I'll think of more things later, but hope this helps :) Feel free to ask anything, I'm happy to chat more about it.

Tried twice with two different people, now I just operate on my own it's the best way in my opinion

I've been thinking about something similar, and I wanted to go via personality tests(big 5) and some other questions that match people up based on some fundamentals that need to be the same or very similar, and then other traits in which being completely different is actually positive. But from what I've found this is ridiculously complicated because people don't work logically. You could give someone who is a 100% match in terms of traits and such, but people work with people they like for reasons that aren't necessarily productive. I've worked with a lot of founders and lots of different types of founders and learned a few things.

Feel free to holler at me.

found mine on reddit /entrepreneur, we're doing good. obviously, he's a tech guy, I'm a sales guy, so we had to find our groove, and we def had challenges, but we're still standing, hungrier than even

b/c good things require the hardest decisions... and a cofounder SHOULD be a hard decision...

... in fact, if you make it too quick, that's a bad sign.

I think getting them excited about your project is the hardest part. I have some developer friends whom I tried to partner with in the past but they didn't really show much interest, mostly because I'm not a good sales person.

Sometimes it's hard for them to see the endgame/benefit for your idea. So, maybe entice them some other way. Perhaps they are a frontend person who wants to learn backend and your project could be the one to get them to do that. So even if the project goes nowhere, they have learned backend.

@Temujin2795 make a good post about it. Check it out it’s may be helpful.

I think it depends on your situation.

I've got quite a few former acquaintances from my EY days that started their own businesses together. One of them started off doing just consulting work and eventually moved into the product space (Gotham Digital Science). The other is still pretty much a straight player in the consulting world (Bishop Fox). Another that I didn't work with but we were still there at the same time has turned into an extremely successful serial entrepreneur - George Kurtz (he founded both CrowdStrike and Foundstone). All of them met their co-founders at EY and left at the same time to start their companies. George took the entire national attack & penetration team (like 10 people) when they left.

The point being that they all had common interests, vision, knew each other and their capabilities extremely well, etc.

Just adding to what others already said which is the number 1:

• It's tough to find someone that you trust enough to enter this kind of relationship, it's not just about trust but about also knowing that someone won't just leave run when things get tough. That's why those "mingling" co-founder type things were smart people get put together to create a business rarely work out.

• From my experience it's a lot of times that there is a missing/skewed understanding of what the worth a person brings to the table, for example I've had tons of people reaching out to make their app or help with their MVP and then offer almost nothing in return or pay with exposure or whatever you wanna call it.

This is definitely people that have no clue how these things work but also just "Business people" that think devs are "Coding Monkeys" but I think there might be some learnings here in terms of your idea how much I need to see that the person has done their homework and the feeling of being treated in a fair way in the relationship. It also works the other way around of course a good team should be balanced in skills.

This might seem a bit odd but I think it's a big source of friction down the line if this is not done upfront.

Why? Because it's like a marriage.

Sounds like a great idea.

On a lighter note, this is also happening -

It's because you haven't established credibility/trust yet.

I believe at the core we need to motivate more people to follow their dreams.

There are so many potential co-founders out there, but unfortunately they are not trying to pursue their dreams.

If you have an idea in that direction, I'd be happy to help.

Well, I can tell you the story of how I found my co-founder, or more precisely, how he found me.

He posted on Reddit and Indie Hackers that he is looking for a co-founder. That's it.