I am afraid I was “mislabeled” as a techie. In reality I do have an idea of my own, and has been working on it on a part-time basis for a couple of years. Because it started as a hobby, I never really had a budget for either development or marketing and ended-up writing most of the code on my own, out of necessity. My real strength, I believe, is in spotting the trends, building brands and addressing the needs.
I've been able to build a few thousand users strong community and as it grew the demand for new features and utilities grew as well, bringing me to realization of my own limitations. Word-of-mouth advertising certainly worked well for me until now, but I believe the site is ready for the next step up.

Most likely I'll try to attend the next event too but this time I'll try the other side. I certainly enjoyed the conversations and many ideas but I am definitely not a person to pitch those to.

P.S. Looking at the lively follow-up discussion here, I think a “start-up” themed forum could be a useful addition to this site. Most of the people reading this and posting here are used to doing business online and sometimes are even better at it then in doing it in person (speaking of myself). I thinking flipping the process by having online discussions first and then following up with in-person meeting will add focus to the meeting and add value to the time-constrained face-to-face interaction.

This is the line of thought I look for in technical co-founders because of the level of reason, rationale, and quite simply the lack of arrogance that so commonly plagues other technically-minded individuals with their “smarter than thou” belief…

Treyh took an outlier and generalized it as the defacto recipe for success because Mint had a $170M exit. Unfortunately he forgot to cite Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Orcale — some of the biggest players in the tech space who built massive markets in the $Bs due to the combination of technical AND business minded individuals. There are more examples of success in this regard than trey's.

I do agree that you need a strong technical team that can move quickly, but also one that understands the requirements when it comes to business fundamentals. Aaron's comment about “business people” was moreorless in regard to the product and not the overall company structure. You don't want to hire sales or marketing people (read: specialists) when you don't have a product ready because you're wasting money and likely energy entertaining their “ideas”. You still need a product person on your team, they might not be technical but they are the voice of the customer and guide product development… Engineers love to build, but sometimes building isn't the answer.

Before reading these comments, I was mainly wondering who would remain seated, and who would move table-to-table in this interesting experiment.

Now I realize this event is not 2 sided, it has 4 dimensions. It's not just techies and biz folk, it's that multiplied by “I have an idea” and “I want to meet a great idea (person)”

I'm a techie, and I understand Treyh's point of view. However, I am looking to participate because I have not only an idea, but a product, and a market, and customers and revenue and a plan for success. What I don't have is enough time to do dev, marketing, and fund raising all by myself, nights and weekends, at a scale that this opportunity deserves. Not to mention, good marketing is a skill that I am always in awe of when I see it done well, and to see that applied to my products would be mind-blowing.

So I seek marketing and biz help to accelerate my company's success. But I also do not want to be pitched to. In fact, any pitches directed at me will be a waste of time on both ends.

The challenge, then, for a successful event, is to manage all 4 groups in a constructive way. It would help if there's enough representation in each group. If there isn't, maybe the event should be postponed. I would rather wait to participate in a grand success, than to see a great idea fall short of it's potential. Better yet, let's all get the word out, and encourage others to come out to J. Blacks on 6th Street on Wed night !

I was merely encouraging others to join. Let's talk at the meet up. Do you have a startup idea or are you looking to join?

gsm

This is clearly false, I never implied that in any way. I wouldn't have started this thread if I wasn't interested in going to this and looking for a co-founder. And all statements are generalizations of some kind so have fun throwing truisms around. And just for fun how much of a % ownership would you be willing to give up to a technical co-founder?

I’m responding to treyh’s post, not to pacify him, but to encourage all the other techies out there to come out and attend the speed dating event.

The premise of treyh’s argument is a generalization that may be true, but that is tangential. The fundamental idea of the speed dating event is to help people wade through the masses of ideas, individuals, skills, and everything else that makes finding a technical co-founder so difficult. The fact that treyh made this generalization implies that he has already given up on any attempt to work with business co-founder. But we are not all sycophants or even MBAs. I have a PhD in neuroscience. This event is to help us find that needle in the haystack.

This event is called a “speed dating” event because it is exactly that. Finding a technical co-founder is exactly like dating. I met my fiance by going places, doing things and keeping my eyes open. That is how I am approaching the search for my company’s co-founder (with more exasperation, though). There was a good post in Techcrunch about this in October: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/11/finding-yo…. To me, the recommendations from the post mirror the methods that people employ to find friends and dates.

So if you’re interested in joining a promising startup (mine or anyone else’s) please come to the speed dating event. In the least you get to hang out and engage interesting people.

Cheers.

if you can get 1+2 in one person – you have the makings of a good business founder. if you can get 3+4 in the same person, you have the makings of a good technical founder. of course, you can expand your team and pick these attributes up from different people. And of course people might have different degrees of excellence. But if you don't think the technical parts are as valuable as the first two, you're not really looking for a co-founder…

As for Aaron Patzers comments about 'business guys' I refer you to:
http://www.vimeo.com/6960507

Its well worth watching the whole video.