Finding a Cofounder

I think I'm 60% complete, but who's to say?

I have coded everything just the way I want, what if the next person has better ideas?

What about equity? I've put too much into this to keep less than 50%.

I would love some help, but I don't want to compromise anything.

Actually, you're ahead of me. You have someone in mind. Every potential co-founder I consider doesn't even come close.

Just thought you'd like to know you're not alone. I'm interested in others' opinions as well.

One way to look at it is this:

If he came on TOMORROW and both of you busted ass for 12 months, how much of the value at the end of that 12 months would have been built before he came on? How about in 4 years (your standard vesting plan)?

The thing to key on is VESTING. Make damn sure that he gets ownership in a trickle (starting after a few months maybe as a trial period)... But make sure they he can eventually get really close to being an equal partner (maybe a touch less than 50% due to the fact that you got started a touch early).

We've been about 70% complete for version 1 roughly half a dozen times now. We were 70% complete in April of last year, which we actually did release (it's getting users now, but not many). We were 70% complete in October, when we sent along a demo with our YC app. But we realized that it wouldn't work for the general case, so we went back to the drawing board. We were 70% complete in November, when I realized we were rewriting things too much with each additional feature and stepped back for a week to actually design the thing. We were 70% (well, more like 50% by my reckoning) complete in December, when we switched web frameworks. We're about 70% complete now, though if this is anything like past 70%s, it's probably more like 40%. Now I don't trust any estimate that's not backed up by Trac tickets.

Always remember the 90-90 rule: "The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10% takes the other 90%."

Many startups have to go through multiple rewrites before they have something useful - Reddit's on their 3rd (though they launched with their first), I heard Xobni had to redo their first try to be more ambitious, YouTube completely revamped the site to make it stickier, my last day job went through about 4 rewrites before we launched the product (which is the 7th product it's launched...none of them really got product-market fit), the job before that changed directions 4 times in the year I was there and completely rewrote things about a half-dozen times, never actually releasing anything.

I'd look at the stuff you do now as exploratory programming; your job is to find out more about the area, so that it eventually gets to the point where it "clicks" and you can just crank out code that works. You're still very early in the product process; a cofounder could add a lot of value down the road.

Right now, at this moment, if I pretend I am dead for a day, I still know the gears will keep rolling and the engine will keep accelerating. This is an enormously helpful feeling: stop being greedy and give your company a chance to survive.

That's my 2c.

You're still very early stage, so the first person you brought on would probably need a significant chunk of equity, unless you're paying a nice salary.