First of all, by far the best way to find a co-founder would be someone you already know, and ideally have worked with before. Second best would be a referral through someone you already know. That's probably pretty obvious.
But if you're starting from scratch, my advice (which hasn't been tested at all) would be to attend lots of meetups and other events, and just meet lots of people (off the top of my head: Startup School, Startup2Startup (invite only? also mostly people who already are in a startup), GitHub meetups, [insert technology here] meetup)
Or maybe hang out at some of the cafes frequented by hackers, if you're the kind of person who can strike up a conversation with random strangers (Coupa in Palo Alto, Red Rock in Mountain View, Epicenter in SOMA)
Oh and for the love of god avoid the "I have an idea, all I need is a coder" mentality. The kind of technical co-founder you want will hate that and run away, fast. Related: expect an equal (or close to equal) equity split with a technical co-founder in a technical company.
If your co-founder needs a small salary, then maybe make a small "investment" in your own company and adjust the equity split that way? I don't know how young startups handle that sort of thing.
Oh and for the love of god avoid the "I have an idea, all I need is a coder" mentality.
Now that I am privy to his idea, I can tell you that he is not one of those people. He just needs some business debugging and tough love to get a few things sorted out; but for actual execution, when he has the idea fully crystallized in his head, he will need about 2-3 months of developer involvement.
He is one of those people who are interested in a domain that developer types rarely pay attention to.
This extract from a recent blog post[1] by the OP suggests he may have a slight touch of the said mentality:
There’s another interesting paradox regarding the people who make many of these social websites, and the people who use them. The people who make them are the programmers. These are the quirky geniuses who took an interest in computer science, math, and other inherently geeky fields from an early age. Their peers looked down on them for this, and as a result they tended to have uneventful social lives. But in their 20′s, they realized there was a killing to be made in online social networks, and so they went to work, armed with the technological know-how to make whatever application their more social peers desired. So what we have is the people with the ability to create, but no understanding of the market, and the people with the understanding of the market, but no ability to create.
While certainly a generalization, the point remains that those who developed an understanding of technological evolution (the computer) tend to have a poor perspective on those whose understanding is limited to biological evolution (humans), and vice versa.
Comments
First of all, by far the best way to find a co-founder would be someone you already know, and ideally have worked with before. Second best would be a referral through someone you already know. That's probably pretty obvious.
But if you're starting from scratch, my advice (which hasn't been tested at all) would be to attend lots of meetups and other events, and just meet lots of people (off the top of my head: Startup School, Startup2Startup (invite only? also mostly people who already are in a startup), GitHub meetups, [insert technology here] meetup)
Or maybe hang out at some of the cafes frequented by hackers, if you're the kind of person who can strike up a conversation with random strangers (Coupa in Palo Alto, Red Rock in Mountain View, Epicenter in SOMA)
Oh and for the love of god avoid the "I have an idea, all I need is a coder" mentality. The kind of technical co-founder you want will hate that and run away, fast. Related: expect an equal (or close to equal) equity split with a technical co-founder in a technical company.
If your co-founder needs a small salary, then maybe make a small "investment" in your own company and adjust the equity split that way? I don't know how young startups handle that sort of thing.
Oh and for the love of god avoid the "I have an idea, all I need is a coder" mentality.
Now that I am privy to his idea, I can tell you that he is not one of those people. He just needs some business debugging and tough love to get a few things sorted out; but for actual execution, when he has the idea fully crystallized in his head, he will need about 2-3 months of developer involvement.
He is one of those people who are interested in a domain that developer types rarely pay attention to.
This extract from a recent blog post[1] by the OP suggests he may have a slight touch of the said mentality:
There’s another interesting paradox regarding the people who make many of these social websites, and the people who use them. The people who make them are the programmers. These are the quirky geniuses who took an interest in computer science, math, and other inherently geeky fields from an early age. Their peers looked down on them for this, and as a result they tended to have uneventful social lives. But in their 20′s, they realized there was a killing to be made in online social networks, and so they went to work, armed with the technological know-how to make whatever application their more social peers desired. So what we have is the people with the ability to create, but no understanding of the market, and the people with the understanding of the market, but no ability to create.
While certainly a generalization, the point remains that those who developed an understanding of technological evolution (the computer) tend to have a poor perspective on those whose understanding is limited to biological evolution (humans), and vice versa.
[1] http://zachjiganti.com/2010/08/01/why-groupon-is-successful-...