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Find a Technical Co-Founder

The most frequently asked question I get on a regular basis is from nascent tech entrepreneurs asking how to find a technical co-founder.  In general, I think there are three approaches I’ve seen people use successfully:

  1. Build it yourself (see this awesome blog post/series by Yipit co-founder Vinicius Vancati)
  2. Commission an MVP from a freelancer or agency.  Launch.  If/when you have traction, you’ll have lots of interest from developers, co-founders, investors, etc
  3. Meet potential technical co-founders where they congregate.  I’m a huge fan of meetups, and there are tons of meetups that attract developers.  You’ll need to do some research on which technologies your startup might use (eg is it a mobile app on iPhone, Android or Windows Mobile?  Will you use a CMS like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla?  Will you use a language + framework like Ruby + Rails, Python + Django, PHP + Cake/Code Igniter/Zend?).  Find out where these meetups are and attend them regularly.  Tell as many people as you can what you’re working on to increase your odds of making useful connections.