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Getting a technical co-founder vs. hiring developers (alien.top)

submitted 2 years ago by Newfounder1@alien.top to c/entrepreneur@indiehackers.space

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I am wondering what others think... some podcast says "to want a cofounder so that you get a free software engineer is the wrong motivation". Ideally I would want funds to hire a senior developer to help with prototyping a solution. An alternative would be to hire a cofounder to do that... as a "free software engineer", which would actually be extremely expensive in terms of equity.

What do others think? Can a full time senior developer start and lead the development of an MVP?

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[–] SaltMaker23@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

While many try to approach it with the mindset of holding tight to your shares, for most people that will just jeopardize their chances of success.

"33% of something big is better than 100% of nothing"

A technical project won't get very far if you don't have expertise internally that would mean long term full time employees or a technical founder from day 1.

"It's quite hard to start a shoe repair business if you can't repair shoes yourself".

While building a tech product requires many skillsets, the main one required for an MVP being: Viable and Product.

Viable: You'll need someone that can generate large amount of money without a product.
Minimum Product: You'll need someone that can create a minimum product without much money

These two constraints are why a technical cofounder is almost a requirement otherwise costs for your product will quickly skyrocket way beyond reason and way before you have any kind of revenues.

Given your question: you don't have 1M$+ to start your company with VC friends that'll pour in 5M$ in a year or two. You won't be able to "buy" your way into a product, you have nowhere near enough money.

Our M[V]P (without the viable part) building took 12 months with 2 full time dev as founders. In our jobs we left (the 3 of us) were paid 12k€ (dev) 10k€ (dev) and 10k€ (biz) monthly.

if you were to pay 20k€ montly to have an MVP in about a year it would mean you are a PO of some kind. But it would still mean 250k€ for your MVP if you are an experienced PO. Myself as a senior dev, if I were to hire people it'd have been at least 1M€.

Startups need time in order to become successful, to find customers, get feedback, find partnerships until finally you become profitable. A 10k€/month burden might cripple your chances of success if you start small, you'll have to start BIG.