Ask HN: How to find and convince a skilled dev to join a bootstrapped startup?
I created a startup project, and we have a good traction, but now we really need to strengthen our (small) technical team to improve our solution. Where should I look? Github? How can I make him/her want to join the adventure?
Published in 2021, this chronicle by @YKreator details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE 7 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 25 comments
Pay fair salary/equity/benefits.
Have a clear understanding of your identity, mission, direction, goals.
Have a clear understanding of what you're looking for in a hire.
You're looking for someone to be a fit to what you're doing as much as they are looking to be apart of something that is a fit for them. Pay, product, culture, and various mix of expectations and what each side wants is what makes this works.
You'll want to be as clear as you can about what's exciting about what you're doing, where you're going with this, and who you're looking for to join you on this journey.
If you're willing to keep an open mind, try poaching someone from a non-tech company that wants to jump ship. There are an increasing number of such people.
They likely are getting underpaid compared to their peers at a tech company.
The downside is, a "senior software engineer" at a non-tech company might not be quite the same level as a "senior software engineer" at a tech company. I say this as one of the former myself.
I’m all ears if you’ve got something interesting and lots of equity? I work at Amazon, lots of experience with the cloud, scale, computer science etc. 6 years experience as a dev.
I'd say search on your friends network first. If it is hard to find on your network then I suggest Angel.co, stackoverflow.
AS a dev i contacted someone i think it was on founders nation. In the end we did my idea haha.