Should I bring on a Co-Founder?
Hello hackers! I am current building a generative AI application that has 1700 users, of which 200 are paying $9/month. My background is essentially 10 years in digital marketing, system and process development for franchises, and inbound/outbound sales, whereas I only have 4 months of programming experiencing.

I have built my entire application in react, using OpenAI's API of course, and I think that my project is novel and has potential to become quite large if executed properly. I've only been developing my app for 2 months now and everything is happening quite fast.

I "feel" like I have everything handled and of course my to-do list and list of requested features is getting longer and longer, but I keep thinking if I could just hold out a little bit longer I can hire SOME of my problems away. Whether this be through freelancers or hiring full time help in-person or remote. This is more attractive to me because giving away equity is expensive.

It seems that every single Y Combinator video says to get a co-founder though. Everyone always talks about how 10% of YC founders are solo founders, it's incredibly hard, etc, etc. Which I do understand things have been really hard, but at the same time they haven't been impossible. I can see a future that is approaching very fast though where things will be extremely hard to manage for just myself.

I have one person who I am considering for a co-founder, however I wanted to turn to Hacker News for some opinions on advice on whether I should even partner with someone at all.

The person I am considering lives in Spain, where as I live in the United States. He is a seasoned React developer & quality assurance manager and his background is in the industry my app is for. He's a friend of mine and has been a TREMENDOUS help throughout the entire buildout of my application. He's stayed up long nights helping me, answers questions, and is generally just has been very generous with his time when it comes to helping me navigate my first steps in this whole software journey.

Recently, he offered to be my co-founder and he wants to really help me make this thing become a reality. The only thing, is that I work 70-80+ on this project and while I do believe he will work hard, I don't want to become sour or get any bad feelings if I put myself in a situation with him where he isn't working as hard as I am because of a job he has or w/e he has going on in life. Is this the right way to be thinking about this?

Also - he's in another country. As Paul Graham says, "if everything does go well" and this ends up finding product market fit which I think it just might - do I want to give away 30-40% of my company to someone just because Y Combinator videos tell me to?

I know that I can move faster if I had him, he's way more talented and has the skills I need. I feel like I am just being selfish with equity, perhaps thinking about the money too much and not wanting to get myself into any drama with someone. However if I take the money out of the equation, the answer is yes. But money is a real factor here.

I'm having great trouble finding clarity on this subject, any and all advice is greatly appreciated. I know I am thinking incorrectly in many ways, so please do not be afraid to critique.