Dan Martell - January 25, 2016


How To Find A Technical Co-Founder


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

211.78226

Word count

1,136

Sentence count

54


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about how to find a good technical co-founder and why it's important to have a technical person in your business to help you bring your ideas to life. I also talk about the 3 steps you can take to find the right technical person for your business.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 How to find a technical co-founder.
00:00:02.180 I'm going to share with you guys a three-step process
00:00:03.840 for finding world-class development support
00:00:07.260 and essentially somebody that could maybe
00:00:08.840 even be your co-founder, you know?
00:00:11.100 I really think the opportunity is amazing
00:00:12.680 to have somebody help you unlock your dream
00:00:14.820 and build that for you and bring these ideas
00:00:17.740 that you have into reality.
00:00:18.960 How cool is that?
00:00:19.980 Now, most entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking that,
00:00:22.560 oh, it's as easy as hiring a college kid.
00:00:24.620 I'm just going to go out there and find somebody
00:00:25.940 and it's going to be super cheap
00:00:26.860 and they're just going to build this thing.
00:00:27.920 Or even better yet, this one's my favorite, learn to code themselves.
00:00:32.340 Like, as a developer, I taught myself how to code when I was 17, and I've built five technology businesses.
00:00:37.700 And even though I know how to write code three businesses ago, I realized it made way more sense to bring somebody in to help me with that.
00:00:46.240 You know, and I mean, the last company, Clarity, in the early days was this kid, Justin.
00:00:50.720 And I just kept going, and I'm going to share with you guys those three strategies, but Justin helped me build the first part of Clarity.
00:00:55.600 And then, you know, Justin had other things he wanted to go pursue, so no biggie.
00:00:59.720 I had another guy, Scott, and Scott really became my technical co-founder in that business.
00:01:03.780 And what's great about working with people like Scott is that they can really bring whatever crazy idea you have
00:01:11.220 or whatever customer request comes into your business, they can bring it to life.
00:01:14.760 And the reason why a lot of investors like technical teams or co-founders is because no matter what happens in your business,
00:01:22.320 you really can't fail because as long as you're able to move forward as a business person,
00:01:26.940 maybe that's you, you're always kind of talking to customers, working on marketing strategies,
00:01:30.320 operational ideas, and the technical person's building the product and taking that feedback
00:01:34.540 back from customers and continuing to build it. So that's why I want to share this three-step
00:01:38.860 process is how to find that killer technical co-founder. Number one is prove your idea.
00:01:45.380 Before you even go out and talk to potential candidates, you want to make sure that you
00:01:49.960 you actually have enough to show them.
00:01:51.960 You know, it has to be more than just an idea.
00:01:54.080 It has to be potentially a clickable prototype,
00:01:56.080 something that you can show them,
00:01:57.780 or even customer orders.
00:01:59.780 But whatever you do before you go and start talking
00:02:02.460 to potential technical talent,
00:02:05.080 you want to make sure that you prove your idea.
00:02:07.320 That's number one.
00:02:08.160 Number two is you want to go and engage in the community,
00:02:11.620 or what I call, go to target-rich audiences.
00:02:14.140 And that, for you, could be a bunch of different things
00:02:16.260 depending on where you live in the world.
00:02:17.440 It could be one, going to developer meetups.
00:02:20.500 You know, there's actually, if you go online
00:02:22.300 and you look at some of the top programming languages
00:02:24.320 out there, there's meetups where they all get together
00:02:27.500 and the passionate ones amongst the group,
00:02:29.700 they talk about strategies to build better code
00:02:32.760 and more efficient programming languages
00:02:34.720 and they have competitions on who can write
00:02:36.900 the best algorithms and these are real things.
00:02:39.180 Like, the nerds out there nerd out
00:02:40.780 and I love them because I'm one of them.
00:02:42.420 So for you as a business type person
00:02:44.660 or maybe a marketing mind, going to these events
00:02:47.080 and talking to individuals that potentially could be
00:02:50.300 maybe a co-founder is the right way to do it
00:02:52.900 versus, again, hiring somebody for five bucks an hour online.
00:02:57.260 I wouldn't do it.
00:02:58.160 It's not the way you build multi-million dollar businesses,
00:03:00.640 and that's my world.
00:03:01.820 So engage with the community
00:03:05.000 or go to a target-rich audience.
00:03:06.700 That was number two.
00:03:07.540 Number three is really prove your value.
00:03:09.820 More than just the idea, who you are as a person.
00:03:13.560 Maybe it's the way you collaborate.
00:03:15.000 Maybe it's your track record.
00:03:17.140 Not knowing how to tell your story
00:03:19.060 in a way that doesn't feel braggy or boastful,
00:03:22.460 but just subtly in a conversation,
00:03:24.460 you might mention that you worked at Google
00:03:26.320 or that you've got 17 years experience in a certain industry
00:03:29.960 or that one of your advisors is somebody very notable.
00:03:33.760 Thinking about ways to prove your value
00:03:36.680 to the technical person is a key place
00:03:38.460 because here's the deal.
00:03:40.380 Both engineers, the biggest fear they have,
00:03:42.980 Developers, coders, the biggest fear, the number one,
00:03:46.260 which is essentially the filter they're using
00:03:48.360 when they're listening to you talk,
00:03:50.480 is I don't wanna build something that nobody ever uses.
00:03:54.500 All right, think about this.
00:03:55.340 The whole time that you're talking,
00:03:57.200 hopefully you're showing them a prototype,
00:03:59.000 you're talking about early customer's orders,
00:04:00.520 because those are the things that show to them
00:04:02.220 that you're valuable, you've proven your value to them,
00:04:04.700 and that you're collaborative,
00:04:05.880 and that you want their feedback and ideas,
00:04:07.940 and that will decrease the risk
00:04:09.900 that nobody's gonna ever use this thing,
00:04:11.420 Because it's easy for you to convince them
00:04:13.080 to spend the next three to six months in their basement
00:04:15.600 coding out the software, but at the end of the day,
00:04:18.220 they want to know that real people in the world
00:04:20.140 are going to use it.
00:04:20.980 That is the most exciting thing for a technical person.
00:04:23.960 So those are the three strategies.
00:04:25.240 Real quick, prove your value.
00:04:28.820 Prove that you actually can create and build something,
00:04:31.660 get customer orders.
00:04:32.640 Go to the community, engage with the community
00:04:34.940 of really talented individuals.
00:04:36.720 And then third, show them that you're somebody
00:04:38.860 that they want to spend more time with and collaborate
00:04:41.060 with in their business, because again,
00:04:43.200 a co-founder is kind of like a marriage, right?
00:04:45.160 So you want to start slowly and build up over time
00:04:47.480 and see how they work.
00:04:48.320 Now, bonus tip I want to give you guys.
00:04:50.260 It's a philosophy I call,
00:04:51.400 I can't work with you until I work with you.
00:04:53.540 So before you go from like, man, this guy's smart,
00:04:56.400 you want to be my co-founder?
00:04:57.880 Don't do that.
00:04:58.920 What you want to do is just define a simple 10-hour project
00:05:01.500 that you guys can work together.
00:05:02.380 That's why programs like Startup Weekend are just so great
00:05:05.540 because you can actually maybe find your co-founder there
00:05:08.220 by interacting and working on a project together.
00:05:10.340 So that is my strategy.
00:05:11.780 I wanna ask you guys to share this video with people
00:05:14.600 you no need to see it.
00:05:15.500 Subscribe to my channel.
00:05:17.120 I wanna, as usual, challenge you to live a bigger life
00:05:19.440 or a bigger business, and I'll see you next Monday.