He Needed an Engineer, So He Flew to His Top Pick and Came Home With a Cofounder
Instead of weeks of interviews, one weekend of pizzas produced a team, a product, and early pledges from buyers.
mondaymorning.substack.com · Screening for ManiacsThe pizza boxes kept stacking up through the weekend. Inside, two men stayed together, working day and night to learn if they worked well as partners and what they could make together.
A founder in Antler, a startup accelerator program for very early companies, needed a technical cofounder. That is the building partner, usually an engineer, who can turn an idea into a working product.
He did not want to spend weeks meeting dozens of candidates and comparing notes. He picked the one person he thought was best and boarded a plane to recruit him face to face.
The best founders, by this account, do this. They do not get bogged down in ideas and complications. They focus on what matters and look for the quickest route to it. Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong has said that taking action creates information.
So the founder stayed where his top pick lived. They ordered pizzas all weekend and worked straight through, testing the fit and building something real side by side.
He returned with three results. He had a new partner committed to the company, an early working model, and his first LOIs, the early written pledges in which customers say they plan to buy.
Questions people ask
What is a technical cofounder?
A technical cofounder is a founding partner who can build the product, usually an engineer or programmer. Early startups often need one because an idea alone cannot be tested or sold until someone turns it into working software or hardware.
What is an LOI?
LOI stands for letter of intent. It is a short, written statement in which a potential customer says it plans to buy a product under certain terms. For a very young startup, LOIs are evidence that someone besides the founders wants what is being built.