Ask HN: Searching for a technical co-founder

[jdsadow]

Who we’re looking for:

An extremely talented, self-starting engineer. A true technical co-founder who will challenge, influence, and ultimately drive technical product development; someone who wants to join for the long-haul and be a core piece of building this company.

What the business does:

Our product is an innovative way to collect and share media captured at live events. If you are a fan of concerts, sporting events, or generally attending live events then this would be for you.

Currently, sharing media from live events is limited to the people you “know” through social networks (Facebook, Twitter). This media is scattered in lots of different places, making it impossible to aggregate and difficult to search. We’re going to fix that by giving users a way to digest content centered on the experience itself, not just the people sharing it.

Note: We are not sharing full details of our plan in this post, but we have detailed mock-ups to share with the right candidate in a one-on-one conversation.

What we’d ideally like you to be able to do:

We are flexible on language and frameworks - one of the key roles will be to determine the technical architecture that best suits the current and future needs of the business.

With that said, here is what we think we might need that isn’t language and framework related: ● Experience with cloud hosting infrastructure (Amazon Web Services, Rackspace etc.) ● Strong enough front-end capabilities to build web prototype ● Comfort with developing in iOS & Android platforms ● Comfort managing the growth of an engineering team in the long-term

Most importantly, the technical co-founder should be a broad generalist who can work on all areas of the stack (front-end, back-end, monitoring, deployment), building and managing a team over time.

A final thought... We take recruiting and hiring a technical co-founder extremely seriously. We realize engineering is a priority, and this start-up will succeed or fail because of its engineering talent. We want you to be the leader of this team, and we are willing to do what it takes to create an incredible engineering culture and environment. How to get in touch:

Contact us at [e-mail] and let us know you’re interested.

[user24]

How do you differ from Color?

Where are you based?

How many are on your team?

Are you funded?

What are the other team members backgrounds?

Those are the questions I'd be asking if I was interested.

[jdsadow]

Great questions...

-Color is focused on proximity sharing & social voyeurism, we are focused on the content generated from events people care about. We're happy to share quite a bit more detail in a 1:1 conversation...

--Based in SF, but okay with remote work from the NY area

--2 of us right now -- one is a consultant at a top-tier firm, the other specializes in marketing/design and is currently working at a major tech co.

Also, main advisor was the founder of a former Google-acquired company ($70M acquisition)

--Not funded yet, working to build a prototype first and focus on efficiency (another major difference from Color)

IF you become interested, feel free to reach out to chat more. :)

[user24]

Thanks for the reply - good answers. I'm in the UK so location matters a lot to me, I'm also not really looking for new opportunities at the moment, but I thought it would be useful for you to see the kind of questions that I would expect to see answered. Good luck with finding a co-founder, and good luck with the prototype.

Purely out of interest, (and feel free to not share), what's your strategy on MVP and launching? I ask because it's been a common pattern at places I've worked to sink time into prototypes without proof of market, so I'm personally pretty sold on a fail-early approach.

edit: the 'focus on efficiency' sounds like it could be premature optimisation. No point building something that can scale to a bajillion users if you only get 100 on launch day. Just saying :)

[jdsadow]

Thanks for the follow-ups -- a few more answers for you...

First, appreciated the feedback, even if you're overseas! If you know any eng folks in the SF area, please feel free to put them in touch.

As far as MVP/launching --> we are very much focused on getting a prototype into users' hands (whether in Beta or publicly) as soon as possible. We've done a hefty dose of market research and have put a lot of time into sizing & outlining our go-to-market strategy (these things are in line with our strengths and skill sets.)

The fail-early approach is the best one in my eyes as well, and when I reference optimization it's really about stripping functionality to make sure we are offering a clean UI/UX & suite of features, and are not over-zealous. A lot of apps just try to do too much, and that's a trap we won't fall into.

Scale will come after our prototyping and launch, that's for sure...so you're point is well taken.

Stay tuned!

[user24]

Great answers again. Sorry you didn't get more exposure from this HN post, sounds like you've got a good idea where you're going and how to get there, and it's an interesting area you're working on. I'll look forward to hearing more when you're ready to show something in public. Feel free to tweet me @user24 if you update on HN or elsewhere. Cheers.

[jdsadow]

Any idea how I get the post to the "Ask" section and not just "New"?