Desperately Seeking .....a Co-Founder?

As an experienced ideas guy, finding a technical co-founder has been an interesting two year challenge, much more difficult than I would've expected, given my level of experience in past startups.

I've had these discussion with fellow startup exponents, guys like Troy Westley of CareMonkey, and its surprising how many of them have faced similar (though not the same) challenges.

I had started 8 projects in the past, usually with co-founders from within my networks. These were trusted people, with similar backgrounds, skills, or experiences to myself. But in each of these past projects, something was lacking within the partnerships. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Each had been successful within their chosen field, all were 'hungry' success-orientated people, all had great presence and drive, and none was a stranger to hard work or taking a risk.

At the end of my last venture, I decided that I needed something more in a co-founder. At the beginning of my search (without a venture in mind), I wasn't sure quite what my criteria were, so I decided that the best path forward was to immerse myself within the startup community and allow the universe to bring the next venture to me (which didn't take long, by the way). I decided that the venture would determine the right person.

To say that the last few unsuccessful ventures had knocked me around, was an understatement. To add to that, life had dealt me quite a few personal 'hits' along the way; those that know me, also know the journey has been difficult. Not for one minute do I imagine that yours hasn't been also difficult; when you take a beating in one area of your life, that can also spill over into other areas of your life.

I had lost my edge, my mojo, the very thing which had kept me in the game, and kept me driving forward. If you've been' swinging for the fence' more than a couple of times, you'll understand what I mean. 

So my first challenge was to get into motion, even without a clear plan. Inertia is a force of nature that takes time to overcome, but once you are in motion, course correcting is much easier, due to the benefit of momentum.

During my search for 'the venture', I recognised that it wasn't the right venture, nor the right co-founder, that I was really looking for. I was in fact searching for the right 'me' that would naturally attract the sort of person that would be an obvious and natural fit for the 'me' that I needed to be; I was first looking for the right founder - the right 'me'.

Once I realised what I needed to change, and started putting those things into place, the search became far easier. I was more willing to be honest about my skills and my deficiencies, which made it easier to determine what skills and core strengths my counterpart would need to possess. Because it is the founders of a business that decide and set the culture.


It became evident that, as well as having the a required level of technical expertise, he had to be of a similar age, have been exposed to lots of life experience, have a great passion for life, and very keen sense of humour. On the technical side, I wanted some-one who was across many different types of technologies and methodologies, and was platform agnostic. And it wouldn't hurt if he enjoyed a sherbet when the time to down tools came along (all work & no play makes for a dull company).

The story has a happy ending - it turns out that the right person was some-one I had known for almost 5 years, over a regular social game of poker, who had previously lived about a mile from me, and had some deep & similar experiences in terms of life changes.

I'll introduce him to you shortly - he's a real fun guy too.