Ask HN: Co-Founder(s). Do I need any? How would I even find them?

As of now, I still believe finding a cofounder and it makes things easier especially when you have a job and a family which takes most of your time. You just need to be practical and see red flags which will tell you it won't work out.

I think best is to try without compromising important details of your project, when you feel you can trust, then go 100%.

On a Co-Founder:

1) Like raising kids as a single parent, it's possible but it's far better with a partner. Same thing goes for being a Solo Founder vs having a Co-Founder. The magic number, in my opinion, is 2 total Co-Founders for a startup.

2) The right cofounder will complement your expertise. It's basically "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".

3) Make a list of everyone in your friend group, those you've worked with in the past 3 years and maybe even a few you went to college with. Mark those who are formidable, reach out to all the ones you marked and just have a conversation with each of them to see where it takes you. But have those conversations with the intent that any one of them could potentially be a Co-Founder.

On getting started:

1) There's literally no hard and fast rule. But I think it's a good idea to keep your day job, and spend evening and weekends working on pulse checking your product with potential customers/users. Prioritize heavily on getting in front of customers. Patents don't matter much.

2) See how far you can take this as a business on your own while looking for a Co-Founder. Do both in parallel.

3) Limit yourself to a fixed time period, maybe a month, to lift this off the ground. And tell yourself, if you haven't seen any progress in a month after trying hard then maybe it's not worth it. Traction matters most, try and get some in any form within that month. For example, I know of people who are building electric motorbikes who got initial interest just by taking a detailed 3D printed model to potential distribution partners.

Good luck! :)

PS: Counterintuitively, I think having a supportive family gives you more purpose to build something enduring and meaningful.

Whether you need cofounders/advisers/contractors depends a lot on whether your idea is, "widget I can get made in bulk in China sell on Amazon", "mechanism that needs a lot of R&D to make it work" or "perfect solution to niche problem" and what the gaps in your own skillset and network are.

Having someone else also means you’re accountable to them, which puts a bit more urgency on getting things done, in addition to being a sounding-board for your ideas.

Given your constraints (fulltime job, side gigs, family) it could help balance the workload, and if you find the right one, maybe offload things you don't like or aren't good at. Not to mention the comradery component and having someone to go through the difficult times with you.

I'd find the ying to your yang, so if you the technologist, find someone good at business, sales, marketing, product, etc. That's my two cents.

If it's a choice between being too slow, losing the market timing and the provisional patent protections or finding a co-founder, then find a cofounder. Is it more work to find the cofounder vs develop it yourself? You can try posting a linkedIn job ad for a cofounder, someone found me that way, and yes it was upfront about the salary situation but there are people out there who might be in the right circumstances to take you up on what you can bring to the table.

"If you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, go together."

You have 4 kids, there is no way you have that kind of time.

Regarding the patent: I know this is going to sound harsh, but what is likely is that it's going to be harder to find someone who finds your invention cool than to defend against anyone who might want to steal it.

Patents defend technical inventions useful in the industry, a social media gizmo not so much. Filing a patent will take a lot of time, and you won't have the money to litigate anyone who steals it anyways.

In your position, I would just throw the idea out there, make a kickstarter campaign or something. Try and get anyone interested. If there is interest, then it's easier to find a cofounder who might want to be in with you on this.

There is a good chance that the kickstarter result is a giant "meh" from the world. And you can go back raising your children and chase that GS15 (Idk what that is).

Also if you do this just to scratch your own itch, build the stuff just for yourself (LLMs and 3D printers make everything quite simple these days), and post a youtube video about it.

Anyways my take is:

- you need a cofounder to launch something

- but you need to validate the idea before finding a cofounder.

also don't be greedy with your cofounder, split 50 50 or close to that, it may be your idea, but you can't do it without the other person.