Ask HN: Who Is Looking for a Cofounder?

[dontoni]

Please indicate if your ideal cofounder is or not TECHNICAL and what skills you'd like them to excel at. Also present your startup or idea here. Tell us what's it that makes you unique or distinguishes you from your competitors as well.

Don't forget to include an email people can get in touch with.

[eniveld]

Location Station — AI audio local + global news (equity-only, pre-funding) Building a hyper-local, AI-personalized audio news app. Daily spoken briefing with detailed follow-ups + convai; publishers paid by attention minutes (incl. conversational minutes via explicit citations). Potential patent around multilevel provenance chains. Think Spotify AI DJ meets Apple News.

Looking for:

Technical cofounder (LLM/audio + mobile): prod LLM/audio, streaming, evals, retrieval, latency/cost tuning. Stack: Node/TS, AWS, DynamoDB, OpenAI Assistants, ElevenLabs; mobile: Kotlin/Android, iOS (Swift/SwiftUI), React (web); ffmpeg multitrack mixing; HLS/WebRTC.

Non-technical cofounder (content/revenue): newsroom/media operator; publisher sourcing, licensing, payouts, GTM for SF + North Bay. Status: prototype components running; 10-min demo slice; early publisher outreach. Terms: pre-funding, significant equity-only; remote-friendly (PT), Bay Area plus. Email: david at locationstation dot net.

[moomoo11]

Don’t do this imo.

You can try YC co founder matching but that’s also filled with incompetent people at best or toxic snakes at worst who will waste your time end of the day, especially if you have made progress already.

Your best best (if you’re serious and not just a fan of calling yourself a FOUNDER) is to just learn, build, and sell.

Learn what you don’t know. Build what you can. You need to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Your cofounder is probably burning out at a golden handcuffs job and might see your progress and want to join.

Don’t waste your time or worse equity (yes 1yr cliff and vesting, but still you’ll meet complete idiots who don’t understand anything who just waste your time) on randoms who are probably 5% as passionate about the problem you’re trying to solve.

Hire people if you need. There are loads of people who are open to work right now and you can hire them on fixed contract.

[codegeek]

Unfortunately, this is the reality for the most part. My personal experience on the YC CoFounder matching app has been terrible so far as a bootstrapped founder who is looking to find actual doers and not just dreamers.

[moomoo11]

Keep going you got this.

[dontoni]

interesting take. thought something similar before posting the thread, but ain't that negative in general. what if you find someone that's even your competitor and you unite strenghts, like x and paypal did? unlikely, yet possible

in yc cofounder matching there's just too much noise and i wanted to sort that out posting this here directly

[moomoo11]

I’ve literally dealt with people who wanted to take my IP, who had contributed absolutely nothing by then.

It’s not rocket science to figure out how to do sales and make connections. I’m a highly “extroverted introvert” so I’ll force myself to step outside my comfort zone and do whatever is necessary for success.

I just hate freeloaders and scammers, and dipshits who cosplay as visionaries wearing turtleneck sweaters.

[dontoni]

Can I dm u? Have a way of getting in touch? My way of making friends is quite rudimentary: just dming people hehe. I wanna learn about your story and methods though, it sparks my curiosity.

[moomoo11]

I’m open to discuss here if that’s okay. If it can also help others who are in similar boat.

Biggest advice I can offer is that if YOU are building something you have the most to gain, and also lose. You give a shit, that’s why you are doing it.

The 50/50 equity split works for college students who want to do a startup. Don’t bother with MBAs, people who dress up as Steve Jobs, and people who have done only sales (add them on LinkedIn for their connections).

IMO if you’re a solo technical founder you should give yourself 60% (leave 40% unallocated). Until you find the right co-founder or early employee, you should own 100% of your company.

Keep building the IP, keep networking, and push through the negative signals (there will be many).

You should add as many people on LinkedIn as you can. Add other founders, people who can be your potential customers, and anyone in the middle who has 500+ connections.

Go through those connections of theirs and keep messaging and adding people. Warm up to them (takes time), don’t be pushy/salesy, and you’ll do well.

Also join any communities (slack, discord, forums, etc) that have your potential customers. Warm up there, hop in and add to off topic and such channels so the regulars get to know you. Then, when you do start pitching you won’t get banned lol.

At worst you will probably burn through the first few dozen as you figure out what works and doesn’t. Thankfully there are billions of people and probably hundreds of thousands or millions potential people who will talk to you.

[visekr]

I'm a product designer / dev - usually doing a ton of solo side projects. Looking for a cofounder with design and dev knowledge to collaborate on cool projects together. I have a list of ideas I'd love to share over a call

some recent things I've made https://www.mindthenoise.com/ https://www.realtimefascism.com/

I don't have an anonymous contact method so just DM me here https://bsky.app/profile/realtimefascism.com

[avmich]

I'm working on a project of next generation large manned space station, to replace aging ISS. Looking for cofounders - technical (aerospace, mechanical, electrical, software etc.) or business (skills in market of ultra-high net worth individuals, possible crypto funding, wide networking in the space or customer industry like biotech wouldn't hurt). Most important skills are enough interest in space and serious, cofounder-level approach to participation. The project is employing new launch technology - large payloads and low price to orbit, something which competitors are apparently undervalue. [e-mail] .

[dontoni]

--- I'll start ---

I'm a fullstack dev looking for a cofounder with contacts for B2B (coding skills not needed), maybe YC companies themselves, and that's good at selling. The project is about bringing 1,000 employees to your pocket, like Devin AI but for anything. The ideal customer are startups that need quick fixes in many different areas integrated in their environments (Slack, GitHub, Discord...) rather than big enterprises. Hit: [e-mail]

Recent projects I made: https://donsir.com/, https://arcalate.com/, Arcal language learning app

[moomoo11]

You should learn to sell and gather those contacts yourself through targeted networking.

[bilsbie]

Looking for a partner or three for doing a space tech company. I have an idea for a reusable, simple spacecraft that can wait in orbit and be contracted out to link up with orbital payloads and safely return them to earth.