Episode 1: Looking for a co-founder

... or how things eventually come together.

Welcome to 11 new people who joined us since my last post. This means 16% growth.
I appreciate your time, and thanks for reading.

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At the end, things fit and come together, but never in a straight line.

Same as your life work folds into place. You may not know it yet, or understand it, but everything you try, learn and do will come together. It did in my Episode 1 as well: I thought I have it, realised I do not, found it again and then lost it again. Things come together.

Publish & Pray works because I am smart.

I had it sorted out. 

First, I will find a freelancer to build a product based on my idea and wireframes. Release, success, fame and Fortune 500. Arrogance that I know what I am doing, hell, people listened to me at the meetings, and came for advice, no? Must be I know how to get things done.

Second, Substack will help me build an audience and get me back into writing. I will be able to approach my readers for beta testing of my top shit budgeting app.

Third, Twitter will help me to connect with smart people; but zero followers won’t help, so I better start tweeting instead of only following the Fintwit scene.

Along with words of gratitude and Bach's quote with wet eyes potential, I also included this Substack link to my farewell email in the company, hoping that I convince some of my former colleagues to keep in touch.  

In October I start shooting tweets into the void with zero followers using trend hashtags. My highest number of likes was a GIF with Jon Snow. No shit. I give up soon and come out of my anonymous closet, and I quickly get to maybe twenty followers. I pay for this explosive growth by some high quality bullying from my friends. Ultimately I decide I will only tweet in English, because Slovenian political underground burned my fingers.

Igor Ranc @IgorRanc

Hey there, thanks for stopping by! I'm trying to get followers based on my tweets, likes and retweets. Can I convince you to join my experiment? Followers at the time of this tweet: 2.

Reality crashes the party, leaving my Ego bruised.

The Internet, a beauty, a wonder of human collaboration, a false hope of the anarchists, somehow helps me find clips from Y Combinator startup school which I watch over Christmas; it feels like a train is violently changing direction before it even left the station. My immediate takeaway was that I need a technical co-founder; someone who can help me iterate my product faster and based on the feedback of first users. It would be expensive to make all those iterations with a freelancer.

It is now 3rd of January and I know I will need a co-founder; all I have is my reputation, 62 Twitter followers, 74 subscribers on Substack, 920 connections on LinkedIn and 162 likes on my old blog FB page, which has now been dead for 6 years. To have a demo of my writing, I decide I need at least one story on my Substack before this Episode 1. But what should it be about? 

At the end I write this, trying to invent a business short story genre; it receives mixed feedback and leaves me wanting to improve. In parallel I plot my approach to my co-founder search. I write a short text in Google Docs to present myself and the idea. I leave it to marinate for a few days; please do remember to marinate your chicken too. I go live on LinkedIn and on Twitter on the 12th of January and expose myself to the world. Now anyone can read about my idea and tell me it already exists. Which some do. But majority does not give a shit about me or my idea.

Yes! Almost there, folks! Doable.

I get traction on LinkedIn, mostly people trying to sell me their services, but LinkedIn is the fucking worst, I need to do more. I start emailing everyone I can think of and wonder: will they think I email them after all these years only because I need them? Possible, but how many times have they reached out to me? So I send out over 60 personal emails and a lot of instant messages, it cannot hurt, whatever I get helps! I make sure they know I am writing to them only, copy paste sucks big time.

Some do not reply, most of them are happy I reached out; I am delighted they agreed to reconnect. Some cannot help, but we exchange on other topics, fantastic! I get new people to contact, new emails to send, new potential partners and beta testers, who knows what else future brings. Blaž P., a producer, suggests a couple of FB groups in Slovenia, great success. Slovenia is a small country, and that is an advantage in this case: you cover it fast.

In the meantime I keep on editing my advert, I decide to add testimonials, a personal and a risky topic. Risky because your request can put pressure on people, or it can affect your morale if nobody replies. In this case, please close the shop. Anyway, I risk it, but in this case intentionally send it as a copy paste, so it is less forced and I feel less of a burden. 

I also try with cold emails and Twitter messages; I pick 7 smart Twitter people with a big following and a feeling they could help. One replied, a truly historical event. I also approach a bunch of incubators in Germany and Slovenia and publish on Hacker news, subreddits, Slack channels, ask for ads at two specialised websites. I shoot in all the directions I can think of.

At this stage, January 18th at 22:30, I am thinking: Hey, this is not that bad, I have almost 2000 visits in 6 days and I have received some promising emails.

See, look at this accidental master stroke.

Amazing, I invented a 15 step how-to-find-a-cofounder recipe, could maybe even publish it, I think to myself! It would go like this:

1. set up Twitter and start a Substack, 

2. leave your job and send a farewell email with Twitter and Substack links,

3. publish a short presentation about your idea on Google docs, 

4. publish Google Docs link on Linkedin and Twitter, link all of them in your email, 

5. good job, now your emails will be shorter,

6. but the link is ugly and looooooooooooooooooooooooong, shorten it,

7. start sending e-mails, instant messages and similar, personalise, ask for favours, retweets, help,

8. get inspired by your Google Contacts, your own CRM, yes, also that guy you did not like 10 years ago that much, people change,

9. great thing, this bit.ly, gives you stats as a bonus, 

10. it works, a lot of clicks, people say they like the page, almost everyone you know covered, time to go external and cold, what else can you do?

11. testimonials? yes, great idea, but risky if you only get one or two,

12. add testimonials before start sending cold emails, so people see you are serious shit in case they even open it,

13. continue sharing your link anywhere possible, be polite

14. hope for the best, and treat everyone with respect

15. don't be a dick, people will not like you and reply to your emails

So, was this a grand plan, a recipe to follow? Actually I had an idea only about first two points; the rest fit and came together afterwards, at least so I thought until ...

Gods of Internet intervene again: get your ass back to work!

I wake up on the 19th of January and I see a reply on Hacker news that finally changes everything (thanks _ah and all the rest). On the same day I have a talk with Jakob from LUI, same thing, confirms what Pero Č. also told me. I realise I need to revisit some points of my approach; it has potential for improvement, so I pull out two books and my drawing board, which is actually a computer. Truly agile, no?

I have another look at the recipe, which is now much shorter:

1. set up Twitter and start a Substack ✅

2. leave your job and send a farewell message with Twitter and Substack links ✅

3. improve your pitch and idea and add user research & discovery,

4. build it only after you prove it really needs to be built,

5. get a co-founder on board, because this will be an offer he/she cannot decline

6. don't be a dick

It sounds totally logical now, right: If you cannot persuade anyone to leave their job for the idea, how can you sell it to anyone else? It was not in vain, invested effort is always good for something. I have collected contacts and as a bonus reconnected with lots of people. And weirdly, my motivation increased, because I feel I was pushed into a better direction. Stay tuned for Episode 2!

At the end things fit and come together, but never in a straight line. 

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All related articles

2021-01-29 Episode 1: Looking for a co-founder
2021-03-12 Episode 2: Discovery phase is here, join us!
2021-04-19 Episode 3: We have a name, a logo and our website is live!
2021-06-28 Episode 4: Season finale
2021-07-20 Episode 5: Finitary is ... paused, frozen, almost pushing up the daisies

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