I’m a lawyer based in the U.K. working on a B2B legaltech AI solution. Thus far I have a simple MVP that’s been made using a Python script that can generate a contract in a second (rather than weeks). I’ve conducted customer validation with many SMEs (40 pages worth of transcripts from conversations) but my entire network is non-technical people.
How did you guys find a technical person to be a co-founder? I’ve tried adverts online and YC co-founder match but with little luck.
My guess is that, because we’re pre-revenue, few people want to join (despite offering equal equity). Legal is also not sexy in the AI space and given the economic conditions, people aren’t as incentivised to join startups.
Any ideas would be fab :)
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Pitch it. Most technical people can be wooed like customers. I’ll hear you out if you like and provide some feedback.
Like other have said, you can use bubble and MAKE.
What is your USP with the contracts?
If you’re non-technical and what to work recruit and engineer, start by working with a designer and get some mockups. This will give you 1000% more credibility when you to start engaging engineers. Setting up a landing page and putting together a good set of mockups can probably be done in 2-4 weeks.
Once you have both assets in hand, run the CTO search process similarly to how you’d run customer discovery. Create a target persona based on your technical co-founder’s industry background, domain expertise, years of experience, etc. Make a list of target Linkedin or Twitter profiles and ask them for feedback on the feasibility of the product you’re looking to build. Remember that this is not recruiting. This is pre-recruiting.
Approximately 1 out of 5-10 engineers you reach out to are likely to agree to a meeting. By the end of the first meeting, your goal is learn everything you need to know about what it will take to build a project like yours,
- How much time?
- How many people?
- What APIs needed?
- What other tools or subscriptions?
- What foreseeable technical challenges?
You want to feel pretty clear about what the engineering lift entails, because it will only make your pitch stronger with the every consecutive engineer you chat with. If the engineer is intrigued with your idea, they’ll either ask or follow up with more business questions… How will you find funding, when do you plan to raise, etc?
Always ask at the end if there’s anyone they know they think might find this project interesting. Also mention that you’ll be recruiting 3-4 college CS majors as interns to help with the hardcoding. If an engineer is interested in the project, this will alleviate a lot of stress on their part knowing that they wont have to hard code the project themselves. If you post a JD somewhere like wellfound, you’ll get 30-40 application in the first couple of days. When you find an interested CTO candidate, ask them if they’d be open to running a techincal interview with the intern candidates, so that they are essentially selecting their own team.
When it comes down to comp and ownership. Be honest with them. There’s no money yet. Still, a game engineer will be open to the idea of working with each other nights and weekends for 3 months just to feel each other out. You just have to be clear about what success looks like on the engineering side, fundraising side and customer acquisition side. The division of labor should be him or her running everything technical, you running everything customer and fundraising-related, and the two of you meeting half way on product ideas and questions. Oh yea, its worth it to get a contract designer or design intern to work with you throughout the process as well. Fiverr or Upwork might be a good place to start.