So you want to build a high growth web startup? Part 2
by Startacus Admin
Last week Entrepreneurial Spark Start-Up Craig McDonald Co-Founder of StorkUp started a 3 part series on building a high growth web start-up. In the first post he highlighted building an awesome deck, prototyping and grabbing yourself some beta users as three key pointers. Here's part 1.
This week Craig starts with a typical issue for many starters - getting a technical person on board. Over to Craig to explain all:
Find a Technical Co-Founder Atoa announces pre-seed funding for its solution to empower and improve cash flow for independent, small and mid-sized UK retail merchants. Pact launches its first £30M fund to back early-stage European tech startups using technology for economic inclusion, well-being and climate solutions. Co-Founders seeking people with innovative ideas and desire to create startups that could change the world for its 2023 programme. Marketers - want to turn shoppers into customers this Black Friday? Marietta Chatzidiakou, Senior Content Consultant at Digital Ethos shares some tips on how to do just that. Data from more than 500 companies reveals the core health of SaaS startups and assesses how European companies have performed relative to American counterparts. SeedLegals, the leading legal automation platform for startup funding steps into backing blockchain marketplace in carbon-neutral deal. The lowdown on Boxlist, the AI-powered social network aiming to be your new go-to place for discovering TV and film recommendations across all streaming services. Goodera secures major investment to support its mission of helping employees find meaningful volunteering experiences. North West Regional College launches the IDEATOR Awards, a new competition to reward entrepreneurial thinking among students and staff. Gravita’s tech-enabled client-centric proposition aims to transform how small and medium businesses in the UK receive accounting services.
If you are not a developer, then there is no easy way of putting this: you are at a considerable disadvantage. In an early stage web startup, the single most important skill is being able to turn stuff 
from your brain into something real. If you aren’t able to do this, then you’ll need someone who can (although see the next section for an alternative). Finding a technical cofounder is a massive challenge, often made harder by unreasonable expectations of non-technical founders. If you think you’ll find someone to code up your idea for 10% equity and a year’s supply of takeaway pizza, then you are probably in for a major disappointment.
You might think that because it is your idea you deserve by far the biggest slice of the pie. You are wrong. Your idea, even if it is the best idea in history (and it is probably not), is effectively worthless until you can turn it into reality. Moreover, great potential technical cofounders have plenty of ideas of their own, and so you’ll have to sweeten the deal considerably. Think somewhere north of 30% equity and you are probably in the right ballpark. Alternatively, be prepared to offer a salary of around market rates – although without the real feelings of ownership that come with a significant stake, you might find that they aren’t willing to dedicate every waking hour to the project (and that is something that comes in really handy in the early days!)
Even once you have accepted the need to appropriately incentivise your technical cofounder, you still have to find him or her.
Before you start, be aware that this process is as much about proving yourself as it is assessing potential cofounders – what do you bring to the party beyond the idea? Do you have years of relevant industry experience and heaps of contacts? Experience of raising money or running successful businesses? If not, are you a kick-ass hustler who can make things happen? Well make sure you have plenty of examples ready to roll out.
Treat finding a cofounder as you would finding a husband or wife (and given the amount of time you’ll be spending together, looking at it in terms of marriage is quite an apt metaphor). There needs to be a great personal fit and the ability to communicate candidly and honestly. If you have any doubts, walk away – any personality mismatches or character flaws on either side are going to be amplified a hundred times over, so unless the fit is great to begin with, you are storing up problems for the future that will come back to bite you.
Get yourself in front of potential technical cofounders by going to tech meet-ups – subscribe to StartupDigest to get a list of these. Advertise on Workinstartups (but don’t expect much of a response if you aren’t offering major equity and a compelling story of why your startup is going to make it big). If you can, use your personal network to get introductions to developers, and pitch them on your idea. They may not be interested, but ask them for further introductions to colleagues or friends who might be.
Finally, keep an ear to the grapevine for any startups flaming out. When a team is breaking up after a failure, there might be one or more of them looking for another opportunity. This might all seem like a lot of hard work, and it is. In short, you don’t find a technical cofounder, you earn one.
Learn to Code
If you aren’t able to find a technical cofounder and don’t have the funds to hire developers, then you should think seriously about learning to code. Again, this is not something that is easy, nor should it be undertaken lightly. It will take you at least six months and will require you to invest massive amounts of time (and not just short periods snatched here and there, learning to code takes long unbroken periods of intense concentration).
This is the route I went down. Even with a decade of experience in tech as ‘the business guy’ along with familiarity with the basics of html and css, it was probably the single hardest thing I have ever done in my life. For almost a year I did very little except complete tutorials and coding exercises on my Mac, before moving on to writing basic applications of my own, and finally the prototype of StorkUp – which was literally the first production app I ever wrote myself.
Thankfully, learning to code today has been made a bit easier by the emergence of intensive bootcamp-style coding schools. One of these has just opened in London and it might very well be the best £5k you have ever spent in your life if it means the difference between getting your startup off the ground and just being another ‘ideas’ person flogging a dream. If you do go down this route, then this blog post by Zack Shapiro gives you some honest advice.
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- UK fintech Atoa secures $2.2M pre-seed round as it kills Visa and Mastercard fees for businesses 24th Nov 2022 Atoa announces pre-seed funding for its solution to empower and improve cash flow for independent, small and mid-sized UK retail merchants.
- Female-led Pact Launches £30m Seed Fund 24th Nov 2022 Pact launches its first £30M fund to back early-stage European tech startups using technology for economic inclusion, well-being and climate solutions.
- Catalyst's Co-Founders programme opens for applications 23rd Nov 2022 Co-Founders seeking people with innovative ideas and desire to create startups that could change the world for its 2023 programme.
- Capchase “Pulse of SaaS” Report Shows SaaS Startups Remain Resilient During Economic Uncertainty 21st Nov 2022 Data from more than 500 companies reveals the core health of SaaS startups and assesses how European companies have performed relative to American counterparts.
