Personally, I’m looking for a co-founder.
I need someone with skills in sales/PR
But finding a co-founder is hard.
It’s like a marriage so you cannot just meet and begin.
You have to find a great fit. Someone that compliments your skills and has a similar passion for the startup.
You have to be able to work together and live together (cause a lot of time will be spent together)
But the problem is that
It’s hard to judge the skills of someone in a different field. I’m a developer and idea guy. How do I judge someone in sales, or PR, or graphic design, e.t.c. Passion is all well and good but I need someone who is good at what they do too.
Founding a startup is for crazy people. The total amount of Nigerians that may be willing to join you are very small. Makes meeting the right one much harder.
So all my Ogas in the house.
How did you find a great co-founder?
The articles on the internet seem more targeted to foreign settings and we know that Nigeria is very different.
How am I to find a co-founder ?
Tell me about your experience… please
Great guys typically have great friends. Be great at what you do, and you’ll naturally have smart people in various areas wanting to be friends and work with you. The best coders know the best coders and designers and business people, a phone call away. Vice versa.
Have you heard this quote that goes: You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. If you can’t find anyone to qualify as a co-founder in your circle, draw a new circle and start again.
Founding is just a natural for 2 friends with complementing skills building a service/business together and making money because they can. It’s not a big deal.
If you can’t find a Cofounder, it means you don’t know great guys worthy for the endeavor which implies you are not that great after all, or that you do, but your idea or pitching skills suck so much you can’t even convince one of your best friends to join you.
I mean, getting a co-founder is just first sales or pitching job. If you can’t close that deal, how do you hope to convince investors, employees and customers that you have something worthy.
If anyone have to post a request for Cofounder, it means one thing: go get a job. You shouldn’t be founding a business. With all due respect, you don’t qualify yet. Get a job with a tens of Internet startups in Lagos, enhance your skills, meet new people and make money while doing it. Then come back 3 years later.
About my experience, I have never had issue getting people to join what I am working on. I believe I can easily call another 10 great Engineers extra in a day. None active on Radar or even Tech Twitter, and all Nigerians.
It might be harder to run a business without a co-founder, but it’s not impossible.
Also, you don’t absolutely need to have a co-founder before you start.
If you refrain from starting a business because you don’t have a co-founder, you should actually
While that’s generally true, it’s not always correct. It mostly depends on where you grow up and how social you are. If you grew up in the desert and you’re as anti-social as I am, odds are that you won’t have great friends.
My advise for you if you want to find a co-founder is to be more social. Attend more tech events. Discuss your idea/passion with more smart people. Contribute to other people’s projects and have others contribute to your project. Getting a co-founder is not really a conscious effort. It’s like finding a friend. It’s not something you plan: it just happens. But you have to at least move out to meet with other like-minded people.
Plus, you can start without a co-founder and get one along the way. Just start up your idea as a side project at first. That way it will be a lot easier to ask people if they want to contribute to this “interesting stuff” you’re working on without sounding like you’re trying to convince them to commit to anything.
It’s a lot easier to get smart people to contribute to a project you’re working on free of charge than to get them to decide to be your co-founder, which is a very big decision. But while contributing, who knows, they may like the project or you guys might like working together and something can kick off from there.
My strong points as regards IT is the strategy, design (usability design and information architecture), analytics, and IT project management.
I generally prefer to work with big organisations and since I reside in Abuja, I mostly work with governmental organisations.
I write proposals and bid on relevant government contracts.
One day, I read about a developer that build a social network on Techloy. I checked out the site and read up on the developer’s bio. He also resided in Abuja.
A big IT government contract was to be given out and I wanted to drop a bid for it. I needed a complete team of IT specialist for that. I reached out to him and a few others and was unsuccessful with the bid.
Other jobs came and I involved him. He was quite good and we sort of understand each other. He is employed in another IT firm and work with me on contract basis.
I have a “startup” project I am working on and he was my first point of call. Naturally, since we have worked together successfully in the past, he is in.
The take away when you don’t have that “network of friends to tap into and get a co-founder” is:
Do as much work on your project as you can on your own
2)Talk to potential partners (freelancers, employees with side gigs) in the process and get them involved in small ways. Pay for services rendered where you can
Put in much more effort into the project
Make offers to partners that you seem to work well with and that could be committed to the project
The truth is you are the only one most excited about your project. Most likely, others are looking to be part of something great that challenges and offers them some sort of “security”.
It’s your job to make your project fit this and get others excited to be part of it.
A caveat. This might take time and it’s ok. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
My advice: Why do yo need a co-founder? Can you do without one? why not hire a consultant in areas you lack and agree on paying formula? Figure out Strategy to get at least 1000 paying customers to clear your debts for this guys.
