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Find the right person and be fair. If they’re building the product then they are doing a lot more than coding. They’re architecting, planning, designing, building and deploying. That person will be an integral part of your team and deserves fair equity, which IMO is 50% if it’s just the two of you. Vest over 4 years to protect everyone.

If you’re looking for a coder alone then outsource development to India or similar. If spec’ right this can be a great way to get your first product built.

When I talked about large equity for a tech co-founder, it is in the case of a tech startup. Not all startups are highly technical, and you may not need a strong tech co-founder. That’s ok. But you are talking about a project management application. I don’t know what is your product, but to my knowledge, this is a highly complex domain from a technical point of view.

You also said you implemented a scaled down version in some companies and you want to put it on the web. Take much care: this kind of software is very difficult to scale. If you are organizing complex plannings, with lots of resources and constraints, you will need either a top of the top expert in algorithms, either a farm of CPU behemoths…

Once again, I don’t know what you plan for your product. But if you start to scale with an exponentially CPU intensive product, you may discover you can’t because you didn’t have the right guy to put technical stuff together from day one.

Anyway, if you are sure you will never have customers asking for planning optimization with constrained resource scheduling, it’s ok, you may just need a bunch of random coders, like if you were selling a social network or a web shop solution.

I totally agree with you about “gut feeling” that has always worked for me in the past, and I would rely heavily on that for this hire as well. We are bootstrapping this effort until we can get a first draft of the project, then we will go out and start to build initial customer base.

Not sure I would ever give them anywhere near 25-60%. I am only looking for a tech person to help build the initial product. They will not have control of all tech decisions, they will not control the direction of the product, they will not run day to day operations.

Now if we were to get an AMAZING person then we may be open to a larger percentage, but no where near that amount. For me a Tech co founder would have a large control over all technical direction, grow the tech team, help set direction of product, and that is NOT what I am looking for in this situation.

I think the “What’s in it for them” part of the comment would be the ability to be part of a project that I am sure will have traction. We have implemented this product in a scaled down version at the last 5 companies, and this would now take this to the web.

They could be part of an idea that they can help put the stamp on and build something. I am not really interested in having them run the product, and looking at them as the expert on coding, not the SME for the product.

2] Its just a business plan and an idea. You don’t talk about validation. Hopefully, you were able to convince someone to give you money. That proves you can convince people who can write cheque. That’s a great ability for a CEO since you will have to do that a lot, unless you are bootstrapping. Or maybe you have purchase orders.

3] Once you find a rockstar, make him a co-founder and treat him like that. That’s how you would build a company.

Can we get over this ego-driven (co)founder BS already? If the company has already been established before you join (regardless of what pay pkg you end up negotiating), then you are not a cofounder.

He gets inside scoop into their idea, then he can accept the offer or bail.

It’s all a gamble. We all know this.

This is way too broad. I’ve done a few start-ups (most with VC funding) and never found this to be the case. It takes more than coders to build a successful business.

Future hires (and co-founders for that matter) should be based on their contribution to projected revenue (Paul Graham writes on the subject – Google it).

If you can’t project revenue – stop the hiring process and do your homework.

Vesting also makes this a self-correcting issue. One way to cross-check a good tech hire is to see if it enhances your valuation with VC and institutional investors.

If the answer is yes, you’ve made the right deal. If not, go back to the drawing board.