7 ms·

Ask HN: How did you meet your co-founder(s)?

39 points by rblion 12y ago

Curiosity.

onion2k 12y ago
At a tech networking event.
supercoder 12y ago
Prison.
- jbrooksuk 12y ago
  Upvoting because I like that you found someone else in a usually "not so good" situation and made something from it :) May I ask what it is you do?
austenallred 12y ago
On /r/startups It's been 1.5 yrs, have been through hell and back with him, can't imagine a better co-founder. We'll start companies together until we die. I recognize this is not the recommended way of finding a co-founder; statistically the chances of it turning out like it did are very low. But it worked out, so I don't care.
travjones 12y ago
On the school bus; We've been best friends for about a decade.
nighthawk24 12y ago
School
weakwire 12y ago
Univercity
Fradow 12y ago
At a hackathon, we won together. On another one, she pitched her project to me and I decided to join her.
soukiab 12y ago
He's a friend, met him through is brother who is the same age as I, ~6 years ago. So we spend our weeks and weekends, on and off work, together.
pseudozach 12y ago
at our day job
philippnagel 12y ago
Reddit.
hugs 12y ago
One through a warm intro from a mutual professional acquaintance. And another through an awesome project they posted to HN.
mw67 12y ago
online, through a job listing website, to start making a prototype. that was 2.5yrs ago!
dopeboy 12y ago
Still looking.
- davemel37 12y ago
  In a HN thread...
BrentOzar 12y ago
Met one of my two co-founders during a project. In a room full of argumentative type-A personalities, she was the only one building bridges and moving the project forward. That really stood out for me as a huge asset in any team. The other co-founder and I met in a hallway at a database conference, then tried our first startup a few months later. It failed - but it was so much fun failing with him that I figured we should keep trying on other projects because at least failing wouldn't feel bad.
runj__ 12y ago
LinkedIn, they sent a mysterious message saying they were looking for someone for a "project". Wouldn't normally answer anyone on LinkedIn but it turned out to be one of the best decisions ever.
buttsex 12y ago
College roommate. We named our two-man agency after our old college apartment.
probablyfiction 12y ago
Church. She was a teenager and I was in my early 20s. Fast forward 14 years, and we find ourselves starting a company together.
david_p 12y ago
First startup: high-school classmates. Second startup: they were looking for a technical co-founder and talked to mutual friends of ours (who put us in touch) Third and current startup: former engineering-school acquaintances, reconnected via LinkedIn when they started looking for a CTO.
rhubarbcustard 12y ago
Blogging. We both blogged in the same niche for many years and exchanged a few emails, cross-posts and that kind of thing. Last year, I realised I was never going to make a successful business by myself and started to look for a non-technical co-founder - I emailed Geoff because I knew that he knew his stuff in our niche and he seemed like a good bloke. My email was something along the lines of, "I'm thinking of building something, no idea what, fancy it?", the time was right for him and we have been profitable almost from day one.
fla 12y ago
Previous workplace.
circlingthesun 12y ago
On a Kloofing trip. I invited a friend who invited her boyfriend who invited my cofounder. My friend never showed up, but her guests did.
crusaderwolf 12y ago
Was scrolling pages after pages of friends in facebook, found a friend who was my junior in college days, we then went on to create www.grepslash.com . One thing facebook is useful for.
preinheimer 12y ago
I used to work for eDonkey as their support minion, a file sharing program of yesteryear. We had forums, and a user there was far more helpful to all the newbs than I was. We started chatting from time to time, then more often, he even came up to meet me while I was down in NYC for the summer. We kept in touch, he helped me manage a dedicated server I'd bought somewhere. I felt bad because he was managing it and I wasn't paying him, he felt bad because he was using it and not paying for it. Then I started https://wonderproxy.com/ https://wonderproxy.com/ he was a natural choice for co-founder, and we've been growing ever since.
- merkury7 12y ago
  I felt bad because he was managing it and I wasn't paying him, he felt bad because he was using it and not paying for it. Cute, it's like a sysadmin love story
buu700 12y ago
I met my cofounder for Cyph in kindergarten. It was immediately apparent that Josh and I were destined for great things when we attempted to plant the world's first pizza tree (by burying pizza crust near the school playground).
altharaz 12y ago
We hacked the network of our school :). BTW, we have now founded a Cybersecurity company.
Beached 12y ago
I met mine at a swing dance event in Pittsburgh, a location more then 7 hours apart from our home cities. Later happened to run into him while we were both at a dance event in Chicago. Started working together 1 week after Chicago. It may be worth noting that I am not co-founder, but was rather hired on with partial ownership when his side project went to business?
charlesgreen 12y ago
I've had 3 cofounders over the years. 1. school 2. hired them a few times and added them to the team a couple years later 3. lean startup and tech event All in all, I recommend picking someone you have known for a few years. Can be friends but usually best when it is first a business relationship.
shubhamjain 12y ago
One little question to the posters here: Did you every doubt that your best smart buddy, might not have the same level of dedication?, might not pull through?
- scrabble 12y ago
  I'd like to apologize to my friend for whom I was the buddy who didn't pull through. But to be honest, I was at a different point in my life and had super low confidence. I'd like to think it would be different now.
pmelendez 12y ago
He was my first boss when I was a junior out of college. 14+ years later we are starting a venture together. Also my wife who I met when I was in college.
gdonelli 12y ago
Matt and I were intern at Apple in 2006. We shared the same apartment in corporate housing in Cupertino. After that summer, we never talked again for 7 years. I ended up joining Apple for 4 years in California. He decided to stay in the midwest, eventually got married and settled down in Minneapolis. About 7 years later we reconnected over Twitter and we started working together. Today we do http://astropad.com http://astropad.com
sarreph 12y ago
University — became best friends in junior year and realised our complementary skillsets (strategy/design, coding) could be put to good use fleshing out whatever startup ideas we had!
mokkol 12y ago
The founder met me when he was doing some freelance job in a startup where I was working. We are a perfect fit, he is the guy doing Design + Marketing and I am doing everything related to coding. We founded: nusii.com (Web proposal software)
misiti3780 12y ago
High school - he was my friend, now he is my brother-in-law - go figure
benstein 12y ago
in a bar
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
I looked through some of the technically minded sub-reddits for people who had posted interesting technology or demonstrations that they had built. Just so happened that my now co-founder home brewed an in home AR game with a laptop backpack and AR glasses and had put up the demo video.
karim79 12y ago
At a team day at eBay (Germany). While working there as a frontend dev, I had attended a "team day" which involved stunt driving, and was placed on a team with this new frontend guy who had just started. He told me about his (at the time, free) image optimization API, which is known today as https://kraken.io https://kraken.io We became friends, having frequent discussions about how such a service could be monetized. Three weeks later, he offered me a 50% split. Shortly afterwards, we founded a company and started serious work on Kraken Image Optimizer, without ever looking back.
Riley 12y ago
My SO brought me to a planning meeting for a non-profit, and I met their founder there. We hit it off, and founded a startup together several months later when the time was right. I think it was good to start off being friends first. And having a shared network of friends and business associates helped speed things up.
andersthue 12y ago
First ones I met in school, next through business partners, none worked out good. Now I am alone doing much better, starting to see what I did wrong and I am getting ready to consider partnering with others again.
ci5er 12y ago
First-first: Friend-of-a-Friend (FoaF). (I didn't have enough of the right kind of friends...) First-rebooted: Snagged from first/large customer Second: Snagged from the Series A VC team mid-transaction (that was weird) Everything else: sometimes my accumulated acquaintance list, sometimes FoaF, and often from a planning-stage target-market customer.
AbraKdabra 12y ago
A friend of a friend is the CEO, he is a really creative guy and I wanted to work on a new project, the other cofounder was her girlfriend.
jtfairbank 12y ago
College.
um304 12y ago
At university. Although we rarely interacted in the university, but happened to work on a project about 5 years later and realized we shared passion for startups.
skram 12y ago
via Twitter for a challenge.gov challenge. We ended up winning and turning the software into a company and got a government contract.
TomSawada 12y ago
College. We did a finance case competition and we won, so we thought it'd be a good idea to work together. We wrote/edited a book "Words of the Music Masters" (failed), then we coached a few seminars for college students/recent graduates (failed!) and finally some consulting (sucked). That was 6 years ago. We both took jobs, now we're back. It's really interesting, we've failed miserably together and starved, we're kinda bulletproof now. Besides, being hungry but not alone made us closer, we're like brothers now. seriously.

39 points by rblion 12y ago

Curiosity.

onion2k 12y ago

At a tech networking event.

supercoder 12y ago

Prison.

jbrooksuk 12y ago
Upvoting because I like that you found someone else in a usually "not so good" situation and made something from it :) May I ask what it is you do?

austenallred 12y ago

On /r/startups It's been 1.5 yrs, have been through hell and back with him, can't imagine a better co-founder. We'll start companies together until we die. I recognize this is not the recommended way of finding a co-founder; statistically the chances of it turning out like it did are very low. But it worked out, so I don't care.

travjones 12y ago

On the school bus; We've been best friends for about a decade.

nighthawk24 12y ago

School

weakwire 12y ago

Univercity

Fradow 12y ago

At a hackathon, we won together. On another one, she pitched her project to me and I decided to join her.

soukiab 12y ago

He's a friend, met him through is brother who is the same age as I, ~6 years ago. So we spend our weeks and weekends, on and off work, together.

pseudozach 12y ago

at our day job

philippnagel 12y ago

Reddit.

hugs 12y ago

One through a warm intro from a mutual professional acquaintance. And another through an awesome project they posted to HN.

mw67 12y ago

online, through a job listing website, to start making a prototype. that was 2.5yrs ago!

dopeboy 12y ago

Still looking.

davemel37 12y ago
In a HN thread...

BrentOzar 12y ago

Met one of my two co-founders during a project. In a room full of argumentative type-A personalities, she was the only one building bridges and moving the project forward. That really stood out for me as a huge asset in any team. The other co-founder and I met in a hallway at a database conference, then tried our first startup a few months later. It failed - but it was so much fun failing with him that I figured we should keep trying on other projects because at least failing wouldn't feel bad.

runj__ 12y ago

LinkedIn, they sent a mysterious message saying they were looking for someone for a "project". Wouldn't normally answer anyone on LinkedIn but it turned out to be one of the best decisions ever.

buttsex 12y ago

College roommate. We named our two-man agency after our old college apartment.

probablyfiction 12y ago

Church. She was a teenager and I was in my early 20s. Fast forward 14 years, and we find ourselves starting a company together.

david_p 12y ago

First startup: high-school classmates. Second startup: they were looking for a technical co-founder and talked to mutual friends of ours (who put us in touch) Third and current startup: former engineering-school acquaintances, reconnected via LinkedIn when they started looking for a CTO.

rhubarbcustard 12y ago

Blogging. We both blogged in the same niche for many years and exchanged a few emails, cross-posts and that kind of thing. Last year, I realised I was never going to make a successful business by myself and started to look for a non-technical co-founder - I emailed Geoff because I knew that he knew his stuff in our niche and he seemed like a good bloke. My email was something along the lines of, "I'm thinking of building something, no idea what, fancy it?", the time was right for him and we have been profitable almost from day one.

fla 12y ago

Previous workplace.

circlingthesun 12y ago

On a Kloofing trip. I invited a friend who invited her boyfriend who invited my cofounder. My friend never showed up, but her guests did.

crusaderwolf 12y ago

Was scrolling pages after pages of friends in facebook, found a friend who was my junior in college days, we then went on to create www.grepslash.com . One thing facebook is useful for.

preinheimer 12y ago

I used to work for eDonkey as their support minion, a file sharing program of yesteryear. We had forums, and a user there was far more helpful to all the newbs than I was. We started chatting from time to time, then more often, he even came up to meet me while I was down in NYC for the summer. We kept in touch, he helped me manage a dedicated server I'd bought somewhere. I felt bad because he was managing it and I wasn't paying him, he felt bad because he was using it and not paying for it. Then I started https://wonderproxy.com/ https://wonderproxy.com/ he was a natural choice for co-founder, and we've been growing ever since.

merkury7 12y ago
I felt bad because he was managing it and I wasn't paying him, he felt bad because he was using it and not paying for it. Cute, it's like a sysadmin love story

buu700 12y ago

I met my cofounder for Cyph in kindergarten. It was immediately apparent that Josh and I were destined for great things when we attempted to plant the world's first pizza tree (by burying pizza crust near the school playground).

altharaz 12y ago

We hacked the network of our school :). BTW, we have now founded a Cybersecurity company.

Beached 12y ago

I met mine at a swing dance event in Pittsburgh, a location more then 7 hours apart from our home cities. Later happened to run into him while we were both at a dance event in Chicago. Started working together 1 week after Chicago. It may be worth noting that I am not co-founder, but was rather hired on with partial ownership when his side project went to business?

charlesgreen 12y ago

I've had 3 cofounders over the years. 1. school 2. hired them a few times and added them to the team a couple years later 3. lean startup and tech event All in all, I recommend picking someone you have known for a few years. Can be friends but usually best when it is first a business relationship.

shubhamjain 12y ago

One little question to the posters here: Did you every doubt that your best smart buddy, might not have the same level of dedication?, might not pull through?

scrabble 12y ago
I'd like to apologize to my friend for whom I was the buddy who didn't pull through. But to be honest, I was at a different point in my life and had super low confidence. I'd like to think it would be different now.

pmelendez 12y ago

He was my first boss when I was a junior out of college. 14+ years later we are starting a venture together. Also my wife who I met when I was in college.

gdonelli 12y ago

Matt and I were intern at Apple in 2006. We shared the same apartment in corporate housing in Cupertino. After that summer, we never talked again for 7 years. I ended up joining Apple for 4 years in California. He decided to stay in the midwest, eventually got married and settled down in Minneapolis. About 7 years later we reconnected over Twitter and we started working together. Today we do http://astropad.com http://astropad.com

sarreph 12y ago

University — became best friends in junior year and realised our complementary skillsets (strategy/design, coding) could be put to good use fleshing out whatever startup ideas we had!

mokkol 12y ago

The founder met me when he was doing some freelance job in a startup where I was working. We are a perfect fit, he is the guy doing Design + Marketing and I am doing everything related to coding. We founded: nusii.com (Web proposal software)

misiti3780 12y ago

High school - he was my friend, now he is my brother-in-law - go figure

benstein 12y ago

in a bar

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

I looked through some of the technically minded sub-reddits for people who had posted interesting technology or demonstrations that they had built. Just so happened that my now co-founder home brewed an in home AR game with a laptop backpack and AR glasses and had put up the demo video.

karim79 12y ago

At a team day at eBay (Germany). While working there as a frontend dev, I had attended a "team day" which involved stunt driving, and was placed on a team with this new frontend guy who had just started. He told me about his (at the time, free) image optimization API, which is known today as https://kraken.io https://kraken.io We became friends, having frequent discussions about how such a service could be monetized. Three weeks later, he offered me a 50% split. Shortly afterwards, we founded a company and started serious work on Kraken Image Optimizer, without ever looking back.

Riley 12y ago

My SO brought me to a planning meeting for a non-profit, and I met their founder there. We hit it off, and founded a startup together several months later when the time was right. I think it was good to start off being friends first. And having a shared network of friends and business associates helped speed things up.

andersthue 12y ago

First ones I met in school, next through business partners, none worked out good. Now I am alone doing much better, starting to see what I did wrong and I am getting ready to consider partnering with others again.

ci5er 12y ago

First-first: Friend-of-a-Friend (FoaF). (I didn't have enough of the right kind of friends...) First-rebooted: Snagged from first/large customer Second: Snagged from the Series A VC team mid-transaction (that was weird) Everything else: sometimes my accumulated acquaintance list, sometimes FoaF, and often from a planning-stage target-market customer.

AbraKdabra 12y ago

A friend of a friend is the CEO, he is a really creative guy and I wanted to work on a new project, the other cofounder was her girlfriend.

jtfairbank 12y ago

College.

um304 12y ago

At university. Although we rarely interacted in the university, but happened to work on a project about 5 years later and realized we shared passion for startups.

skram 12y ago

via Twitter for a challenge.gov challenge. We ended up winning and turning the software into a company and got a government contract.

TomSawada 12y ago

College. We did a finance case competition and we won, so we thought it'd be a good idea to work together. We wrote/edited a book "Words of the Music Masters" (failed), then we coached a few seminars for college students/recent graduates (failed!) and finally some consulting (sucked). That was 6 years ago. We both took jobs, now we're back. It's really interesting, we've failed miserably together and starved, we're kinda bulletproof now. Besides, being hungry but not alone made us closer, we're like brothers now. seriously.