Recruiting a Technical Co-Founder

I’ve talked previously about the importance of having a technical co-founder. A friend of mine asked me today if I had any tips or thoughts on recruiting a technical co-founder. Here are a few ideas on finding one:

• Try Craiglist and post a job listing
• Look at local startup and networking/professional organizations
• Post a discussion on Hacker News
• Ask a professor at the local engineering school if he/she knows of anyone

Now, once you’ve identified a couple candidates, recruiting the person is even harder. Here are some recruiting ideas:

• Offer a contractor period of one to three months to try out working together
• Compensate with significant equity (e.g. 5 – 20%), but have it vest over four years (so that there’s incentive to stay) and include a one year cliff (meaning if it doesn’t work out in the first year, no equity is granted)
• Try recruiting two engineers that want to work together since they already trust each other

Finding and recruiting a technical co-founder is tough. Good luck!