Joining a startup as a technical cofounder
From time to time I get a request from startup founders to help with their MVP and join the team as a technical cofounder. Most of the time I help with their MVP but decline to join their team. My reasons? The startup founders are oriented to a local market, they don't have clear GTM, etc. There is FOMO of course, hence, what additional criteria would you evaluate if it was you?
Do they have their distribution channels figured out? at least partially.
That's one of my favorite questions. First-time founders care much about the product, the founders with experience pay great attention to validating with customers and distribution channels.
It is great that many people believe in you! I think you need to answer three questions before you join as a founder:
If your answers is yes for all three, then join.
Hey Nurlan, just recently I was pretty much in the same situation as yours. I also took the same way and was not joining the team in the end. But I've had a totally different approach to make my decision: People. Probably the hardest part of building a startup is finding the right person (a.k.a. co-founder) – You must understand each other blindly, form a relationship similar to that of a marriage, and as far as your skillset is concerned, you must complement each other perfectly. If this fits and synergies can arise, the actual idea/app/GTM/PMF/... are all secondary. These can be adjusted for success later on.
I came to the conclusion that in my case, the match was not optimal (with one co-founder it was indeed, just not with the third). 🤷♂️
Good luck on your journey, Nurlan!
Three things to ask yourself:
Do they understand the domain? Got it ✅
Do they like the job? Want it ✅
Do they posses the will to learn it? Have it ✅
Then, and ask yourself the same...
#3 is an excellent point. There is no doubt that the problem has to be in the areas of my interest. On #2, willingness to pay does not necessarily mean that the customers will pay, especially for early-stage startups when they have no MVP to show. With b2b customers it is even harder. Here I ask if they have interviewed their target customers. With such interviews they at least con confirm that the pain exists.
I agree that Customer interviews are really important, and I think it's important with b2c as well.
The main thing is to figure out of they got actual insight or are just biased, "The Mom Test" talks about this a lot.