Startup Speed Dating [This Wednesday]

The meeting was an interesting concept, however, I am not sure what the actual conversion rate for "speed dating" is, whether business of otherwise - something tells me it's not very high. As an initial exposure/introduction it'll do but it feels like there's a need for a follow-up.

I am afraid I was "mislabeled" as a techie. In reality I do have an idea of my own, and has been working on it on a part-time basis for a couple of years. Because it started as a hobby, I never really had a budget for either development or marketing and ended-up writing most of the code on my own, out of necessity. My real strength, I believe, is in spotting the trends, building brands and addressing the needs.
I've been able to build a few thousand users strong community and as it grew the demand for new features and utilities grew as well, bringing me to realization of my own limitations. Word-of-mouth advertising certainly worked well for me until now, but I believe the site is ready for the next step up.

Most likely I'll try to attend the next event too but this time I'll try the other side. I certainly enjoyed the conversations and many ideas but I am definitely not a person to pitch those to.

P.S. Looking at the lively follow-up discussion here, I think a "start-up" themed forum could be a useful addition to this site. Most of the people reading this and posting here are used to doing business online and sometimes are even better at it then in doing it in person (speaking of myself). I thinking flipping the process by having online discussions first and then following up with in-person meeting will add focus to the meeting and add value to the time-constrained face-to-face interaction.

Speed dating is an organized form of matchmaking that focuses on meeting a lot of people in a short period of time. Most speed dating events include short (three to nine minute) 'dates' where one speed dating participant will meet with another for a face-to-face conversation about whatever they choose.This event is for busy singles whose social life is restricted by a hectic lifestyle. Come along with an open mind, don’t take it too seriously and you will have a brilliant time. Meet new people, expand your network of friends and you could meet someone really special!Speed dating London

Danger Will Robinson!!

Before reading these comments, I was mainly wondering who would remain seated, and who would move table-to-table in this interesting experiment.

Now I realize this event is not 2 sided, it has 4 dimensions. It's not just techies and biz folk, it's that multiplied by "I have an idea" and "I want to meet a great idea (person)"

I'm a techie, and I understand Treyh's point of view. However, I am looking to participate because I have not only an idea, but a product, and a market, and customers and revenue and a plan for success. What I don't have is enough time to do dev, marketing, and fund raising all by myself, nights and weekends, at a scale that this opportunity deserves. Not to mention, good marketing is a skill that I am always in awe of when I see it done well, and to see that applied to my products would be mind-blowing.

So I seek marketing and biz help to accelerate my company's success. But I also do not want to be pitched to. In fact, any pitches directed at me will be a waste of time on both ends.

The challenge, then, for a successful event, is to manage all 4 groups in a constructive way. It would help if there's enough representation in each group. If there isn't, maybe the event should be postponed. I would rather wait to participate in a grand success, than to see a great idea fall short of it's potential. Better yet, let's all get the word out, and encourage others to come out to J. Blacks on 6th Street on Wed night !

Good comment.

This is the line of thought I look for in technical co-founders because of the level of reason, rationale, and quite simply the lack of arrogance that so commonly plagues other technically-minded individuals with their "smarter than thou" belief...

Treyh took an outlier and generalized it as the defacto recipe for success because Mint had a $170M exit. Unfortunately he forgot to cite Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Orcale -- some of the biggest players in the tech space who built massive markets in the $Bs due to the combination of technical AND business minded individuals. There are more examples of success in this regard than trey's.

I do agree that you need a strong technical team that can move quickly, but also one that understands the requirements when it comes to business fundamentals. Aaron's comment about "business people" was moreorless in regard to the product and not the overall company structure. You don't want to hire sales or marketing people (read: specialists) when you don't have a product ready because you're wasting money and likely energy entertaining their "ideas". You still need a product person on your team, they might not be technical but they are the voice of the customer and guide product development... Engineers love to build, but sometimes building isn't the answer.

"Are tech people too risk averse? Over employed? Too introverted?"

I don't think its any of these. As a possible technical co-founder, I don't see the appeal. Anyone can have an idea. Its the execution that matters, and according to the mint.com founder business people subtract value from a startup. Why would I want to meet up with a bunch of sycophants?

It's a bit of a leap to paint entrepreneurs with a deep understanding of a market, existing business relationships that will become first paying customers, and an understanding of the value of a business solution as sycophants.

As an example, I'm thinking of the co-founders of Socialware. One is a business person, and the other a technical person. Sitting at home and writing code doesn't bring your first customers in the door. There is no way that either of those co-founders could have gotten off the ground without the other.

You're right, ideas are worthless. It takes a team to execute. Solo tech guys rarely get funded, and I refuse to believe that Ron Conway subtracted value from Mint.com.

I think the idea for startup speed dating is intriguing, that is why I'm even posting here. To clarify, I'm not disputing that having smart co-founders that know a market is a good thing. What I mean to say is that as a technical person I am pitched ideas all the time, mostly they are worthless ideas and the people behind them don't appreciate the volume of technical work to be done and don't value the contribution accordingly. I hear all the time 'all you have to do is build it!'. What is it about this group of idea people that would compel me to come out for this? I'm offering you a reason why I think you might have trouble getting good technical people to come. There just isn't a lot of appeal for me to be pitched for doing the majority of work on someone else's idea without
knowing them or anything about them and being offered a minority stake just because it is someone else's 'idea'. I'm having visions of talking to one MBA after another about creating a new 'social network', and I can't think of a worse way to spend a few hours :)

As for Aaron Patzers comments about 'business guys' I refer you to:
http://www.vimeo.com/6960507

Its well worth watching the whole video.

All,

I’m responding to treyh’s post, not to pacify him, but to encourage all the other techies out there to come out and attend the speed dating event.

The premise of treyh’s argument is a generalization that may be true, but that is tangential. The fundamental idea of the speed dating event is to help people wade through the masses of ideas, individuals, skills, and everything else that makes finding a technical co-founder so difficult. The fact that treyh made this generalization implies that he has already given up on any attempt to work with business co-founder. But we are not all sycophants or even MBAs. I have a PhD in neuroscience. This event is to help us find that needle in the haystack.

This event is called a “speed dating” event because it is exactly that. Finding a technical co-founder is exactly like dating. I met my fiance by going places, doing things and keeping my eyes open. That is how I am approaching the search for my company’s co-founder (with more exasperation, though). There was a good post in Techcrunch about this in October: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/11/finding-your-co-founders/. To me, the recommendations from the post mirror the methods that people employ to find friends and dates.

So if you’re interested in joining a promising startup (mine or anyone else’s) please come to the speed dating event. In the least you get to hang out and engage interesting people.

Cheers.

"The fact that treyh made this generalization implies that he has already given up on any attempt to work with business co-founder"

This is clearly false, I never implied that in any way. I wouldn't have started this thread if I wasn't interested in going to this and looking for a co-founder. And all statements are generalizations of some kind so have fun throwing truisms around. And just for fun how much of a % ownership would you be willing to give up to a technical co-founder?

Trey,

I was merely encouraging others to join. Let's talk at the meet up. Do you have a startup idea or are you looking to join?

gsm

I think that while Treyh's post sounded harsh, his point is one that I've observed as well: often someone with the business idea just wants to "hire technical talent" and not truly a co-founder. They'll use the term technical co-founder or CTO, but what they mean is "someone who will work for below-market pay and take less-equity-than-i-do". I think that there are ways to bridge this, and it starts with:
1. having the idea(s) and context to create business relationships is worth something
2. having capital is worth something
3. having technical know-how is worth something
4. being able to build the technical team is worth something

if you can get 1+2 in one person - you have the makings of a good business founder. if you can get 3+4 in the same person, you have the makings of a good technical founder. of course, you can expand your team and pick these attributes up from different people. And of course people might have different degrees of excellence. But if you don't think the technical parts are as valuable as the first two, you're not really looking for a co-founder...

Ideas are worthless? Not even close. Sure, it takes a lot more than an idea to make a successful venture, but diluting the value of the visionary would be a huge mistake. Rather than re-hashing, I wrote a quasi-blog post about this back in 2006: http://kinetic.org/blog-posts/ideas-are-worthless.txt

Your post seems to support my statement. In essence it says that success is multidisciplinary. The elements of success are all pretty worthless without context, and without each other. At the heart of it, I think we're in agreement.

There are marketplaces where you can buy time from geeks. There are marketplaces to hire and recruit sales people. Is there an eBay for ideas?