Tech co-founder sought for ambitious consumer web startup
The founder is a SF-based, hardcore business/product guy, recent grad of penn/wharton with experience leading data analysis initiatives at major consumer web startups.
The idea is called Yo You Want To. Yo You Want To will be a way for (initially) college students to find other people on campus to do stuff with. For those times that you want to get a late dinner, carve a pumpkin, see a spoken word poetry show, go weightlifting, or really whatever, and your friends aren't free, you just post: "Yo, you want to _______" where you fill in the blank with whatever you want to do. When people on campus say they're down, you guys meet up and go do it. It's a simple concept to understand, and the early success of this will rely on brilliant execution and a killer UX more than any never-before-done feats of engineering. Clever use of mobile is also key but has been largely unexplored to date.
The founder has the prototype of Yo You Want To built - it's at www.yoyouwantto.com (get in touch for a demo login). During a test launch at Penn, hundreds of people signed up within a couple weeks, and many meetups actually happened through the site. It's clear that we've scratched the surface of a huge opportunity here and what we need more than anything is a brilliant engineer who can execute, lead and inspire. Someone who lives for elegance, speed, and innovation in social products. Someone extraordinarily entrepreneurial to be in the founding team of a company, with equity and responsibilities to match. If you're looking for an hourly rate or a salary before funding, you've missed the point.
The prototype was built with Ruby on Rails, and while we're unlikely to switch from that, your brilliance as an engineer and tech entrepreneur trumps everything.
Interested? Please contact [email protected] with some info about yourself - what technologies do you love? built anything cool? what are you doing at 2am on a random wednesday? what do you have going on these days? what about this opportunity interests you?
Thanks for reading.
http://www.howaboutwe.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/fashion/04date.html
I hope you are offering 50% equity. If not, it's not worth my time. This looks like every other business guy looking for a tech founder: you want to offer almost nothing for doing all of the hard work.
Edit: ...do you?
Maybe the idea will interest someone, maybe someone here was thinking about the same thing but never got it started. It is what it is. What do you find "wrong" with his posting, maybe it will help clarify your criticism?
"This looks like every other business guy looking for a tech founder" is the important part. The fact that "significant equity stake is on the table for anyone who fits the bill" is missing from an otherwise pretty well thought out post makes me think that in fact, comparatively to 50%, they are going to "offer almost nothing".
But look, If I'd prototyped and market tested something, I'm not so sure I'd be prepared to give away 50% either. Just sayin.
If I'm going to toil away on a project for NO PAY (which is a huge risk), it better damn well be for a huge chunk of the profits.
I have been around many business types and have seen developers put their hard work into something with little or no payoff.
My hunch is that he offers 5% or less, which is a joke.
Because he already stated that the co-founder gets no salary. He never mentioned the actual percentage, so it's a fair assumption.
Not mentioning exact equity, how do you assume 5%!?!?
It is very common for cofounders at an early-stage startup to take no salary.
It all fits though - up until now, I couldn't figure out why random shmoes that don't know anything about technology were getting excited about social networking.
I suspect Facebook/Twitter/Linked In aren't the end of the road for what we call "social networking", but I'll bet it's created by someone with at least some experience in the technology space...
Wouldn't it be fantastic/ironic/funny if the eventual downfall of FB came because the movie lit so many entrepreneurial fires....
Pretty sure you have that backwards.
I am fully prepared to give a way a very large chunk of my company. Will it be 50%? I don't know. I've invested a lot into this, and other people have some equity now too. But I 100% understand the value of a tech co-founder, and am not looking to be stingy with equity. I know I can't make it succeed on my own.