How to Find a Co-founder (CTO) of A Startup

I’ve been thinking and building a startup for months now and here is what I have learned so far. Finding a co-founder is hard.

I know how to code but my coding skill is not that great that’s why I need a co-founder as CTO but…. here are the problems.

1. CTO is expensive. Every time I ask about salary, they give extravagant amounts. When I don’t even have the money, I need funding from VC to pay them. Later on, I found out this is not the right thing to ask first, If they don’t want to work before you got the VC, just swipe and find another person. A pay cut is common for a startup to test if they will be loyal or not. Will stay in difficult times or not? So asking for higher than their current salary is a no-no.
2. Chemistry. A CEO told me that you need to find chemistry with the CTO. More than to your girlfriend, even wife. Because you will be together forever unless you sold the company. So, if someone disrespects you, curses you, or looks down on you. No point to work with them.
3. Full time. VC will invest only in people who do the work full-time. So your CTO or another member needs to work on your project full-time. If he has a freelance job is still ok, but not your project the freelance one. You need to show VC that both are serious about this. My ex-cofounder stated a high salary, only want to work on weekends, and wants a big chunk of stocks. Ridiculous. My fault for not clearing everything before we even start. I did ask but he did not want to answer. The answer later fascinated me.
4. Have the same vision and mission. This needs to be clear first. Mine was biased. One wants money right away after VC investment which is not good, I ask some CEO friends they said it is clearly his exit strategy which I think is make sense now.
5. Commitment. Saying that the money is small now but this could be bigger in the future is a good thing at the start. Better start small salary and the company grows bigger in the future than a big salary and then the company run out of money. The startup that I worked for before give plenty of salaries but not having enough customers to survive their first year. So it is a big no-no to be greedy. Take what you need, it is not a get-quick-rich scheme.

I think the best one is learning from your experience but better to learn from other’s mistakes. I did learn from my mistakes so I hope you found it helpful. I learn it the hard way.

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