How I found a tech cofounder to join my startup
When most founders hear “unicorn” they envision the far off mythical creature they will eventually birth through their blood, sweat, and tears. As an early stage startup CEO, the mythical creature I went to bed dreaming about was more like a Griffin — a creature with the body of a lion, the tail of a snake, and the head and wings of an eagle — also known to many non-technical founders as the technical co-founder or CTO.
As evidenced by being a common question on Quora, topic on Reddit, and often written about in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and VentureBeat, I realized that finding my mythical tech cofounder would require a real strategy.
For perspective, I started my company in July 2015 and finalize all negotiations in early March 2016. I am sharing my process here in order to support other founders looking to build their team and ultimately their dream company.
1. Assemble an advisory board- Realizing my deficiencies in technology development, I formed relationships with current CTOs, technical consultants and advisors, and the full stack instructors from my Galvanize full stack program who would be willing to coach me, provide feedback, and answer (sometimes dense) questions. I assembled 7 advisors and valued their time by being clear about my asks, expressing gratitude often, and keeping them informed of my progress. (Note: All 7 members of my tech advisory board continue to engage in my progress through my 2-week updates I call “Brag and Moan”.)
2. Develop a position description- Next, I gathered a collection of sample job descriptions for CTOs, technical cofounders, and senior developers and gleaned the relevant structure, roles, and skills applicable to my company. In every section of my PD, I worked to manage expectations and convey our company’s mission and culture. As CEO it was important for me to be honest from the beginning: this will be really hard work, require sacrifice, and is likely to fail. I asked my tech advisory board to review the final PD before distribution. Here is what I asked:
1. do you find this PD adequately and clearly addresses the core competencies needed by The Food Corridor?
2. do you find the language and general communication resonates well with the tech community? Are there terms that should be included/avoided?
3. are there items/specifications that are missing that need to be included to attract the right talent?
4. do you have any other feedback or comments?
Finally, if you have ideas for networks or places to post the PD, please let us know. Once the description is finalized and I would be grateful for you help disseminating it.
3. Distribution — The next (and most challenging) step was getting the word out. But how was I going find the right channels? I attended a ton of meetups and happy hours where I announced the position. I posted to online communities and groups like New Tech Colorado, Galvanize, CoFounder Lab, and various technical Slack channels. Finally, I published the PD on AngelList and asked our network to share the post from our Blog. The PD was distributed in December 2015.
5. Evaluation Matrix — As a seasoned academic, I felt I needed a tool to systematically evaluate each candidate. My co-founder and I drafted an evaluation matrix with 6 Key Criteria, all weighted by importance. We used this to evaluate each candidate individually and then compare them. The ratings changed as we accessed more information through interviews.
4. Interviews — I scheduled one hour with each candidate (7 total) by phone, Skype, and/or in person to get a better sense of each person’s understanding of the vision, skills, personality, and future goals. The final 2 candidates that ranked highest were asked for a second round of interviews. Here, I had my tech advisors conduct technical interviews with the candidate on my behalf AND individually evaluate their LinkedIn and Github pages and projects or code were asked to provide. This was a critical step in evaluating technical philosophy and architectural skills. We finalized the process with in-person interviews with the whole team to ensure a cultural fit. Sample questions from those interviews included:
· What motivates you?
· Describe your working style in a few words?
· What are some of the products you love and why?
· Describe a decision you made at [previous job], the impact it had, and what you might do differently today
· If you had to come up with 3 words to describe the culture you want to create, what would they be?
· How do you prefer to communicate?
· How do you think we should give feedback to each other (and the team)?
· How do you deal with conflict? Compromise?
· What are your expectations of the other co-founders?
We also collected 3 references from each candidate and asked for a variety of coworkers and managers. I called each reference using a set of standard questions, including the common ‘describe their strengths/weaknesses’ which provided the most valuable insight.
6. Final offer and negotiation: At this point our final two candidates were neck and neck. Moving into compensation negotiations helped to elucidate the right choice for our company. I had a target equity percentage in my head that was fair and valued the fact that my company was worth nothing without this critical position. It was also important to me that our chosen tech-cofounder felt ownership of the company and was wholeheartedly dedicated to winning.
Ultimately, the final decision came down to intuition and a conversation I had with an advisor where she reminded me to start with why. (Note: see Simon Sirek’s Start with Why)
To summarize, you can’t teach the why. Our company’s mission is to be the world’s virtual food hub, enabling efficiency, growth, and innovation in local food systems across the globe. We do this by creating a marketplace that brings increased access to commercial kitchen spaces to food entrepreneurs (think Airbnb for commercial kitchens). Surprisingly, one of the final candidates was a long time advocate for local food systems: he had been a member of a Slow Money Investment group and (in his spare time) managed Farmshares.info, a site that connects Community Supported Agriculture farms with consumers.
In the end, I offered a bit more equity than was asked for and I couldn’t be happier with my decision. After a few weeks of legal charades, we signed our Operating and Founder Restriction Agreement and are on to product development (the what). Our tech co-founder Dan Moore recently wrote about his experience on his blog mooreds.com. And while Dan doesn’t have the body of a lion, the tail of a snake, and the head and wings of an eagle — he will always be a Griffin to me.
