How to find a co-founder during Corona
By: Janus Hansen
Tags: Coronavirus, Cofounders, Startup Life, Remote Working, Networking Tips

How to find a co-founder during Corona

We know the situation all too well.

You have a killer idea for a new business. You know the product, the value proposition, and your target audience. Yet something is missing. Or rather, someone is missing. You need a Robin to your Batman, a Pippen to your Jordan, a Thiel to your Musk.

A team of two fully invested entrepreneurs can be incredibly powerful and valuable. But how on earth do you go about finding your co-founder?

This is a challenge which countless founders before you have had to deal with. What they didn’t have to deal with, however, was a freaking global pandemic that puts you in a social straitjacket that severely limits the places you can go and the people you can meet.

Nowadays networking opportunities don’t grow on trees, after all, and serendipitous encounters are few and far between. And even if you should meet your perfect co-founder, you’ll properly both be wearing masks that cover half of your face and alter your voices to sound like you are ordering McDonald’s from the passenger seat, making the person miss the delicious details of your lucrative and trailblazing idea and you some good questions.

Yeah, Corona has made finding a co-founder even harder.

But despair not! You live in the time of the Internet which provides rich online opportunities for engaging with other entrepreneurs.

Whether you’re looking for a person with a specific expertise, one with invaluable industry contacts, or simply one with deep pockets, there are a variety of ways to find the co-pilot with whom you’ll lift your business idea off the ground.

But before we get into some useful tips, you first need to put any restricting fear of talking about your idea with other people in check! Talking about your startup is the most important prerequisite to finding a co-founder.

Any fear that you may have about disclosing details about your project is a thousand-times greater preventer for your business succeeding than the extremely low likelihood that someone will steal your idea. Building a startup is very hard, time-consuming work that requires a lot of passion and perseverance, and people simply don’t have the time, energy, or will to run with one of dozens upon dozens of ideas that they hear about.

When was the last time you heard a person’s business idea only for you to run straight home and get to work realizing it? Exactly.

With that out of the way, let’s get into some tips!

1. Pitch your idea in an online business forum

There are many online forums for entrepreneurs that you can join online, such as on Facebook and LinkedIn. Become a part of a handful of groups with a lot of engagement and write up a nice post where you quickly summarize your business idea.

In the post following the description, you can invite any who’s interested to hear more or to team up with you to shoot you a personal message. A more indirect approach would be to simply ask for feedback. From there you can gauge the interests of the people who comment on your post and reach out to those you have a good back-and-forth with and who seem like a potentially good fit.

Once you’re on speaking terms with different people in these groups who’ve shown interest in your idea, schedule a meeting at a café where you can further discuss it. Like online dating, you’ve got to meet the person in real life before you can decide if you want to enter into a relationship with them. So take the online correspondence offline and engage with your business partner prospects in-person.

2. Founder speed dating

Speaking of dating, just as you can speed date to find a romantic partner, so you can speed date to find your next business partner.

Yes, you heard that right. Speed dating for founders is a thing. In fact, in a startup hub like SanFran, FounderDating, Startup Weekend, and other event organizers are hosting functions for aspiring entrepreneurs to meet potential co-founders with complimentary skills to their own.

Online alternatives can be found on sites like Evenbrite and JumpStart Inc where you can find events for solo founders in the pre- or early-stage of their startup who are looking for co-founders.

So book a seat for an online event and put on your most business outfit for some fun and hopefully fruitful founder speed dating!

3. Use the UniFounder platform

Another option is to use online places made to facilitate connections between potential business partners. One such place is UniFounder, our very own matchmaking platform for entrepreneurs.

While there are options to also find other members for your team with particular skills, from app developers to marketers, UniFounder was made with the singular purpose of finding the perfect co-founder. On the platform, there’s thousands of users you can connect with to find the right match for your business and startup needs.

To make the process as easy as possible, you can simply fill out a short post where you describe the startup and enter the industry you will go into, which startup phase you’re currently in, your funding situation, and more, as well as details about the role and key responsibilities of the person you’re looking for.

Sign up for free and get started finding your co-founder right away.

4. Ask your network

And the final, most obvious, yet counterintuitive tip: use your existing network.

I know, I know. Most of your friends aren’t the entrepreneurial bunch and even if they were there’s this unwritten entrepreneurship rule about not starting a business with a friend, which there honestly are some solid arguments for. What you need is an ambitious, serious-minded partner that can compliment you with skills, knowledge, or resources that you need.

Yet this tip is not about you linking up with friends, schoolmates, and drinking buddies (necessarily), but linking up with who they know. Research studying connectedness on social networks has estimated that everyone is only 3,9 introductions away from being acquainted with any other person on Earth.

That’s right, you’re less than four acquaintances away from sipping tea with the Dalai Lama in a temple in India!

So shake the trees and see what comes out. You’d be surprised by the qualified and relevant people you’ll get recommended and be linked up with.

So, which tip are you going to try out? Let us know in the comment section below. Happy co-founder searching!