How to Find a Technical Cofounder If You Can't Code

How do you find a technical cofounder?

Bring evidence that the business is worth building, such as customer interviews, pre-orders or an audience. Then look where engineers already are: former colleagues, matching platforms like YC Co-Founder Matching, and open-source or hackathon communities. Judge candidates on shipped work and references, and run a short trial project before agreeing equity.

Why technical cofounders are hard to find

Demand outstrips supply. In Y Combinator's 2021 co-founder matching data, 42% of profiles identified as technical and 62% of founders wanted a cofounder who does engineering. Among founders who do not do engineering, 80% did. The majority of matches (68%) paired a technical founder with a non-technical one.

Engineers are also pitched often, and many are wary of founders who bring only an idea. One Hacker News commenter put the question bluntly: "Are you some idea guy? The technical people probably dont want to team up with a student that has nothing to show."

It is also worth asking whether you need one yet. First Round Capital's 10-year review, as reported by Women 2.0, found technical cofounders mattered most in enterprise, where they were "performing a full 230 percent better" than non-technical peers, while consumer companies with at least one technical cofounder underperformed fully non-technical teams by 31% in its portfolio.

What to bring as a non-technical founder

Bring proof that you can handle the non-technical half of the company: finding customers, selling and raising money.

• Customer evidence: interview notes, letters of intent, a waitlist or pre-sales.
• Distribution: an audience, a sales channel or relationships in the industry.
• Domain expertise the engineer lacks, such as regulation, operations or how buyers make decisions.
• A no-code prototype or clickable mock-up that shows you make progress without waiting.
• Your own runway: how long you can work without a salary.
• A real cofounder offer: a meaningful stake with vesting, on the same terms as any other cofounder. See our cofounder equity split guide.

Share the idea, too. A technical founder with six prior startups wrote on Hacker News that if a profile's idea section is empty, says "will discuss on a phone call" or asks for NDAs, "that's a no-go from the start."

Where to look

• Former colleagues and classmates. You already know how they work.
• Introductions. Ask your network for a specific person, for example "a backend engineer who has shipped a payments product".
• YC Co-Founder Matching: free, takes no equity, and reports "over 100K matches made". Profiles are visible only to other approved users.
• Open-source projects in your problem space. Contributors already care about the problem, and their work is public.
• Hackathons and technical meetups, where you can watch someone build under time pressure.
• Founder programs such as Entrepreneur First, which offers a pool of cofounders "screened for their skills and behaviour", and Antler, an in-person residency.
• Other matching platforms, compared in our guide on how to find a cofounder. BiggMate is one, currently in early access.

How to judge technical skill when you can't code

• Look at shipped work: live products, apps, public code. Ask them to walk you through one: what they chose, what broke, what they would do differently.
• Ask for plain-language explanations. Strong engineers can explain trade-offs to a non-engineer.
• Get a second opinion. Pay an experienced engineer you trust for an hour to review their code or talk through their past work.
• Call references, ideally someone who shipped with them and someone they disagreed with.
• Ask how they would build the first version of your product. Good answers cut scope and name what they would skip. Be wary of plans that start with complex architecture before any customer has used the product.
• Match the skills to the product. A mobile app, a machine-learning product and a B2B web app need different people.

Run a trial project before agreeing equity

A trial shows how you work together before any equity is on the table. One Hacker News commenter who had used YC's matching several times suggested a "temporary 3 day trial" of building something together before committing. Longer trials work too.

1. Pick a real, small piece of the product: a prototype, a landing page with sign-ups, or one integration.
2. Time-box it, from a weekend to four weeks.
3. Agree in writing who owns the work and whether it is paid.
4. Split the work: they build; you run customer conversations and bring back feedback.
5. Review honestly: did you both deliver what you said, and how did you handle disagreement?
6. Decide: move to a founders agreement with vesting, or part ways cleanly.

Red flags on both sides

• Wants cofounder equity with contractor-level commitment, such as "weekends only" with no date to go full-time.
• Cannot show past work, or cannot explain it.
• Wants to rebuild the stack or perfect the architecture before any customer sees the product.
• Treats customer conversations as someone else's job.
• Refuses vesting or IP assignment.
• Pushes for equity before any trial work.

Check your own offer as well. YC's Michael Seibel warns that "if you only give a co-founder 10% or 1%, others will either think they aren't very good or aren't going to be very impactful." If you would rather pay a developer than share ownership, hire a contractor and make sure the company owns the code.

What to do while you search

Finding the right person can take a while, and progress in the meantime makes you easier to join. Options that keep you moving:

• Build a no-code or low-code prototype yourself to test demand before any code is written.
• Hire a contractor for a tightly scoped first version, with a written IP assignment so the company owns the code.
• Recruit a technical adviser for a few hours a month to review decisions and help you interview candidates.
• Learn enough to hold a technical conversation. Basic scripting or a no-code tool helps you scope work and spot weak answers.

Frequently asked questions