From first principles, actively looking for such a person is IMO a major mistake. You are essentially looking for someone to invest in your company, but to buy their shares with labor instead of cash. So you need someone who is 1) financially able to make such an investment, 2) a savvy enough investor to be able to assess whether or not your company is worth investing in (or foolish enough to make the investment without due diligence) and 3) able (and willing) to program. Such a mix of skills and financial means is very rare.

This is not to say that if you should happen to be lucky enough to find such a person that you should not hire them, but actively looking is not wise. Division of labor is a very powerful tool and should not be discarded lightly. You're much more likely to succeed if you get investors to invest and hackers to hack and not try to fram these two disparate skills into one brain.

IMHO, YMMV, etc.

The entrepreneur in me say, no, no, no, there has to be the perfect gem that fits this profile.

But the "experienced" entrepreneur in me say this is totally right.

FOUNDERS are founders and are with the idea from the start to the end. Founders may be entrepreneurs, hackers, painters, lawyers, etc... But once the company has started, the idea is theirs. Any further development on it from outsiders is only of value to them once there is a semi immediate upside.

No One I have meet is willing to invest in someone else's Idea, until they know the money is there.

I ALSO recommend that you do not pay other people full time until you are paying your own rent with the business. Paid employees work 9-5 for a paycheck, not to save your business. I was burned on this before.

AND consultants work only the hours you pay them, unless you can get them to agree to a project fee, at which point the project may never get done.

"You are essentially looking for someone to invest in your company, but to buy their shares with labor instead of cash. So you need someone who is 1) financially able to make such an investment, 2) a savvy enough investor to be able to assess whether or not your company is worth investing in (or foolish enough to make the investment without due diligence) and 3) able (and willing) to program. "

Dead on.

I heard this observation from a designer who had been asked to take on a contract for stock. From his point of view it was the same as being paid cash, then turning around and investing all that money in that company. And, base on what (little) he knew, there was no clear reason to think it would be a sound investment; it was pretty much a crap shoot.

Put another way, if you simply had that cash lying around, would you invest it in that start-up?

well thats what founders do .. work for shares. they dont get paid in the beginning when they start in a garage. we are looking for founder who is interested in such propositions and risk.

Why don't you tell us more about what you're working on? I'd think that this would be a pretty good place to find a hacker.

yeah, I do find it a little strange when there are dev/hacker/programmer recruiting posts on YC and an unwillingness to at least give an overview of the idea... I've since stopped upmodding these types of posts. imho they're repetitive and near worthless. It's hard to help someone without knowing more details.

ideas are cheap... and more likely than not they change overtime...

Yes, that is what founders do. But you didn't say you were looking for a co-founder who could hack, you said you were looking for a hacker willing to work for equity. These are not the same thing. The distinction is important. Asking for "a hacker who works for equity" (with only a "chance to be part of the founding team") makes it sound like you're looking for someone to be an employee and an investor, but not a member of the senior management team.

I meet half of my current core team, buy not building a startup, but by building my local tech community.

I started a casual think tank, Fireseedgroup.net to help focus the community on tech related projects. When barcamps started up, well the Fireseedgroup was there to throw one in Milwaukee. I helped get other communities going. Now we have a lot of interesting things going on.

MilwaukeeDevHouse is next weekend, it starts on friday, and its a code party. We have also thought about throwing hackerweekends, and startupweekends. We have a great place to use, bucketworks.org for these events in exchange for helping others with their technology needs.

Through the Fireseedgroup name I am always trying to raise money for incubator projects like yCombinator, we would call ours (startupMilwaukee, or M7combinator); and other systems of change. One platform i like is called prize economics. In this system we would use prize money awarded to a themed challenge, like darpa, and the xprize foundation have done.

An example is when Milwaukee was trying to get muni-wifi setup, i proposed an option to award a prize for the best ubiquitous web application. I felt that if the prize was $250k or more that hackers would flock to MKE to compete. Have been able to talk to a number of people in MKE about my ideas and have meet with the visitors bureau, the mayor and other law makers. In many cases they get excited but it doesn't go much further. I however get on their call list for ideas and technology. I puts me in an expert position, not from success, but from effort, and powerful people always need someone they can turn to, kinda, like you are looking now. Those network connections are well worth the effort to me to support the community.

I have been able to build bridges to our community to companies like MS, Adobe, Google, Yahoo, and nVidia that were not there before. That is powerful stuff.

good work, good ideas - thanks

I had that same question 4-5 years ago when I started reading Hackers and Painters as a noob. I wanted to start a startup, but had no hackers to help me. What was I to do?

I went back to school, picked up some books and started learning how to hack. 5 years later, I'm almost done with my degree, there's still a market for startups and I realize how incredibly large the knowledge chasm is between hackers and non-hackers.

I have 3 ideas a day that would make decent, viable startups. Putting those ideas into practice, coding them up, designing the layout, configuring the servers and databases and finally acquiring users... that's where the value is. The idea has little value on its own. I never would have known this had I not started to learn the hacker-fu.

So, may I respectfully suggest that if you're looking for hackers to help you start a software business, and are not one yourself... Take some time, read some programming books, and get in touch with your inner geek. If you are looking for a Hacker to found your business, first look inside yourself to see if there is a hacker waiting to come out.

If you can't do that, then at least offer them some cash to work for you.

Someone who doesn't take a salary for six months doesn't get "generous stock options". They get a founders stake. You're going to fail.

I can only speak for myself. If I'm going to work for 6 months without pay, you would have to offer me a position as a cofounder.

i agree - u r right !

I was a person you are looking for. Two years ago. The founder took the prototype I built for him in my spare time and had terminated my employment two weeks before my "generous options" granted, explaining to me that it was hard to get funded because there were "too many cofounders" and VCs "didn't feel comfortable". (there were only 3 including me).

It took a lot of effort, time and lawyer fees to get at least something back from the guy. His startup failed (of course).

What value do you add to the relationship? Why would a hacker want to work with you? If your business plan involves extensive sales and marketing from an early stage, non-hackers might be able to add some value (you need someone to place all those Apple II's at the computer shops).

Remember that an idea is worth nothing. A funded idea is worth something, but it doesn't sound like you have funding since you're asking someone to work for free.

Most of the non-hacker founders that I heard of were personal friends of the hackers involved. It's hard to convince a hacker to take a chance on you otherwise.

"Great opportunity to work for free!" is not a good value proposition.

You need to go and raise some money so that you don't have to do such a hard sell. If you can't do that, and want to wait until you have a prototype then look to hire someone on a contract. If it works out then you can make them an offer to join full time.

I think you need to demonstrate what you bring to the table other than an idea. When you do that you will gain the respect of the hacker and you might be able to get a deal going. It might even be something like, when you raise some cash I'll come join you.

What are you going to do for the first 6 months, to raise the value of the business? What have you done since you thought of the idea?

It would be easier if you share what your startup is going to make.

You need to impress the hacker with your understanding of the market, quality of ideas, commitment, background/experience and above all intelligence.

Convince him that the work will be challenging and interesting.

The generous stock options need to be a very significant percentage of the company think more along the lines of cofounder than early employee.

thanks - i'm looking for platform to find these hackers ... dont want to spend on recruiters .... give me ideas the way i can at least contact few hackers - such as posting on bulletin boards at all major IT schools? etc.?

I don't think you'll be very successful recruiting from universities for this sort of thing. A student with debt is not going to want to work without salary, unless your startup has amazing potential or you have an excellent reputation. In either case, you'd probably have funding to pay them anyways.

I have tried unsuccessfully several times.

Have a really good idea and start pitching it to hackers. If it's interesting enough there will be takers.

well thats the real challenge - i want to know the creative ways to pitch to the hackers? where and how to find them?

> where and how to find them?

Linux User Groups ( http://www.linux.org/groups/ , http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Software/Operati... ), Perl User Groups ( http://www.pm.org/ ), 2600 Meetings ( http://www.2600.org/meetings/ ), DorkBot ( http://www.dorkbot.org/ ) and amateur radio meetings.

This site is not a bad one to pitch to hackers, being Hackers News. There are also a few other sites:

http://www.partnerup.com/

http://programmermeetdesigner.com/

In a way it depends on how discrete you wish to be about your idea.

Thinking outside of the box. One kinda interesting place to find up-and-coming young hackers is to check gaming coding sites. New gaming mods and game scripting communities are often a doorway into for-profit hacking. Quality may be hard to control for, but most of the potential candidates there don't yet know they have marketable skills.

For example:

* Eventscripts/Python scripters: http://forums.mattie.info/cs/forums/viewforum.php?f=90)

* C/Pawn developers: http://sourcemod.net

There's also major development conferences like PyCon (next week in Chicago):

http://us.pycon.org/2008/about/

Here's another sneaky trick I just thought of.

Set up a Google Blog Alert (or other blog search alert service) for the technologies you think make a good hacker. For example "python", "lisp" or "arc".

As you get new personal blog alerts on those topics, you probably could get a decent sampling of hackers talking about technology. Approaching them individually on their blogs might be something that could work out for you.

thanks again...

You can't give stock options for founding member.You have to be willing to treat them as partner in this case. So you have to be willing to give out equities instead of options.

After the company is incorporated and has significant fund. Then the options plus salary will make sense. But for founding member, it is just not right to give them options.

Start going to meetups (meetup.com) for web/hacker/entreprenurial topics in cities with hacker communities.

So - how do "hackers" afford to work for nothing even if you convince them the product is good, a fun place to work, and give them equity?

Let them define part of the problem.

I would find a mailing list at a technical university. Try the LUG lists or the compsci lists. If your idea sounds like it will make some money, someone will probably take it. Emphasize that it will look good on a resume too.

You're more likely to find someone to do it if they are still in school and don't need the money yet.

To sum it up - i want to know where and how to find these hackers?

to sum it up, create a place for them to have fun, and they will find you.

Become one.