So Veeky Forums I'm in the process of starting a business that does IT consulting and I've already found my first customers. The problem is: I have no other co-founders and starting an IT business by myself rates somewhere between hard and impossible. I have thought about going to networking events but I live in the middle of no where and I can't move due to family which makes it hard for me to meet anyone.
My only options are to try find someone online but every website seems to be designed for normalfags to meet IRL and all I want to do is find another programmer like myself who wants to work remotely and be our own bosses. All the tools exist to do this like Slack, Git, Github, and Squiggle so I don't see collaboration being a huge problem.
You would think finding someone with some programming skills and spare time to join a promising business would be easy but this has turned out to be basically impossible. So far everyone I've found either doesn't have the time to commit to a business or is completely useless (like they can barely speak English or use a web browser kind of useless.)
What would you guys do if you were in my situation? I don't really want to burn out doing the work of 2 other people and nobody I know in real life has the time for this.
Isaac Lee
Bampu
Carter Rogers
I would be interested in being a co-founder, OP. I'm a programmer and CS student. What state are you from BTW?
Ryder Reed
Look no further OP, recent computer engineering grad here with lots of free time, I've used those collab tools and am looking for basically exactly the arrangement you're talking about. Shoot me an email: [email protected]
and grab this guy too. Nothing possibly could go wrong with sourcing your professional talent from Veeky Forums don't even worry about it
Lucas Lopez
That's the thing user -- you can't really run a business when you're a full time student. I'm not dismissing your skills as you're probably a better developer than myself. Just saying that it would be far too hard to do this on a part-time basis.
I admit its a bad idea but honestly -- there has been successful startups that were founded remotely. I know that we post a lot of stupid shit on Veeky Forums but surely people can be mature when it comes to making money. I'll email you later but I'm not sure if you're taking the piss out of me.
Ryan Smith
I am a database admin.
can you provide more info? maybe about the client
John Miller
Yeah, I was just joking with the last bit. The people I've met in person who used Veeky Forums were all competent and I'd have no problem working with.
Dominic Ross
I'm interested in being a co-founder. I've working in a software development job so I've got a ton of experience working with workflows and best practices. Send me an email here: [email protected]
Jaxon Martinez
Global labor arbitrage opportunity reporting in. If you need to outsource something we've got a team here.
But user, how will you have time to work two jobs?
I worked with a guy a while back and he only worked part time while I did virtually everything. It's just not a good mix. The business doesn't go any where and the guy doing all the work gets burned out.
Nathaniel Powell
Maybe I'm being unrealistic in expecting full time since everyone with any skills is already working a job ... but I dunno, there's got to be a NEET that's interested
Camden Bell
If I were you I'd send overall job description and information to myself at [email protected]. I've been looking for a job like this.
Hudson Baker
I'm interested in what you're doing. I'm familiar with 7 programming languages, including scripting. I'm maker/founder of both studentdebtclock.org and feministsoftwarefoundation.org.
Let me know if you're interested.
Noah Nelson
Hey OP, I can help you out. I'm familiar with the tools you've mentioned and I'm in IT as well. If you're interested, hit me up at [email protected]
Dylan Robinson
Well this thread seems promising. I didn't expect anyone to be interested and posted this mostly to vent ... would be incredible if I found a business partner here.
I have some stuff I need to take care of today but I'll get back to the anons who posted soon.
Ian Gray
Should drop a throw away email before the thread 404s.
Anthony Gray
Reminder that statistically it's better to be a solo founder than to just get a random person to be your partner.
"You want someone you know well, not someone you just met at a cofounder dating thing. You can evaluate anyone you might work with better with more data, and you really don’t want to get this one wrong. Also, at some point, the expected value of the startup is likely to dip below the X axis. If you have a pre-existing relationship with your cofounders, none of you will want to let the other down and you’ll keep going. Cofounder breakups are one of the leading causes of death for early startups, and we see them happen very, very frequently in cases where the founders met for the express purpose of starting the company."
Sebastian Rivera
I've had a series of moderately successful apps. I have access to investors in Silicon Valley. I would like to be growth strategy guy. I would take no salary just stock. Please let me know
Sounds interesting. You should drop your email here and we can get in touch.
Hunter Williams
Sure, let me know what your email is
Nathan Fisher
It's a consulting firm that develops software for small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs. It's not productivity software but financial software, and we're a very specialized company so I at least need to find a partner who can code. teach themselves new skills, and has enough time to contribute this per week.
If that sounds like you let me know what your email is and I can tell you more about it.
Jaxon Ortiz
I see lots of guys already posted. Meh, fuck it, I'll chip in. Can use some freaky math and code in C/C++ and Python, currently working as in-house PHP dev, also playing around with SQL.
notsooldone [at] gmail (dot) com
Luke Collins
This seems pretty neat.
I'm a devops guy, just finished current contract (i spend most of my time working in finance) and i'd prefer to go back to working in my pajamas instead of a suit every day.
But why bring on a co-founder and give up 50% of your equity? Why not hire some offshore freelancers for $5/hr?
Wyatt Nguyen
I haven't accepted any clients yet and I don't really plan to without having someone to discuss key decisions with and who can help out with the work load so I don't end up burning out trying to do the work of ~2 other people. I also think it would be a mistake trying to outsource everything to start with when I have little experience managing these kinds of projects / being a technical lead.
I've worked at a few software companies now and I never used to respect anything that went into building commercial software that wasn't coding: like getting requirements, organizing the project, determining market fit, etc ... until now. There's so much more to it behind the scenes than just coding and I guess these people must have been really good at their jobs for everything to work so flawlessly. Makes me feel kind of bad for being such a critic now ... but I'm learning.
Will do.
Will email you in a bit.
Austin Harris
I do UX/usability testing, project management, marketing. Also would like to pitch in.
How do you start something like this? How do you go about finding customers?
Christopher Martin
It's incredibly easy if you're doing something people genuinely want and the market isn't already saturated. After that its just a matter of using some marketing to find more people.
I think where people mess up is that they try promote something boring, useless, or high competition which is what makes business so hard: you have to be at the head of some trend that few people saw coming and the timing needs to be perfect. Too early and there's no momentum, too late and you've missed the opportunity.
