co-founder, hardwareI am developing a hardware product (solo), and one sub-component involves non-trivial analog/electrical design and signal processing. I have a BS/MS in the field, and could do the work myself – so far I have made some prototypes, done some feasibility studies, and come up with a reasonable system architecture. However, there are still many details to work out. Ultimately, I didn’t get in this to become a technical expert, but rather to solve the problem.
I imagine most engineers would find the problem to be stimulating/interesting. But practically, given that I only have enough money to support myself and material/prototyping costs, I am not sure how I would go about getting someone else (preferably someone with a PhD or a few years’ experience) to work on this full time. Realistically, I see my options as (a) get funding and hire someone, (b) consider this individual an equal ‘cofounder’, or (c) suck it up and do the rest (6-8 months) myself. I live near the university I went to, but I’m not sure if that helps beyond having a wider pool of technical people to choose from. Also, I am open to moving somewhere else if it helps.
Any advice on how to approach this?
Up to now, I have been very adamant about minimizing the amount of equity given out and doing most of the work myself. However, as I get further along, I am getting worn down as I realize all the necessary details to make the product reliable. I feel like I am going down technical rabbit holes instead of solving the end application.
Edit I am looking into doing an independent study course with a relevant professor/grad student at my local university. It would essentially be a $2-3k 4-month consulting session, hopefully without any IP ownership issues.
One man army will last no longer.
I use to be one man doing all job, however doing that delays timeline, minimizes the quality and also no market research.
Usually, in the co-founding tech startup, you should have a business and a technical person. This weighs you product equally on both perspectives.
(a) get funding and hire someone,
Hiring someone is not easy as it looks like. (good) people come for the opportunity not for money. You need to evaluate a product and then go the investors to get a funding. Who will do the product evaluation?
(b) consider this individual an equal 'cofounder',
You may consider it(it makes things more transparent). I did it for my own startup and it worked. It gave both of them the equal responsibility to work harder to achieve the business goal.
(c) suck it up and do the rest (6-8 months) myself.
The idea will be old, less useful and probably stolen. Do remember the 6 months is a long period and things can turn upside down. You need someone to constantly look at environment and change product/idea accordingly. In this way, your idea is never old.
How to find the right co-founder?
Find someone has the skills that you don't have. or the skills that you need to build the product and you lack in it. Here is a short list of skills that you may require to build a startup. This list also conveys a message that you do not need a technical co-founder.
However, you are best you decide what you need.
Hope this clears your doubt and help you decide better.
I’ve been working with a bunch of startups in the last 6 years and what we find in our agency is that when you have a tech based startup you need the balance between business and tech. These are two very different fields of expertise and so it is a job for two experts.
If you are more like the business guy, you will need a tech person to build your service or product.
A lot of times we found that founders, which are not themselves developers, tend to underestimate drastically how much it takes to build a service from scratch and what steps to take in which order to match every stage of business development. On the other side a lot of times the developer-founders underestimate what it takes to run a business.
Both then often focus too much on the technical side and neglect to build the actual business around their product.
If you have a person for each, both are free to do their craft.
They will level each other out and can push both fields to the max.
So no matter if you’re the tech or the business person, my advice would always be: Hire someone as employee or partner up equally (depending on how much shares or money you want to spend or how much you know and trust the other person).
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