You gotta hire. Then at the end of the project, if the guy works out, you can offer him cofounder role. As a "business guy" get ready to pretty much cover all the bills while the other guy codes, no matter if he is a hire or a cofounder. Better to hire and see how the guy works out before you start giving away equity.

What you're talking about is a first employee that is also paid with equity.

And, by the way, there is a way to offer an equity right from the beginning — stock options that vest over time.

As a business co-founder you're probably not doing much in the early stages. You come with an idea, which is essentially worthless without the tech guy. So it's only fair that you pay him for the prototype. At that point, both of you will be more comfortable teaming up.

Also, I would make sure you have the tech guy assign any and all IP ahead of time. You'll need this assignment if you want to raise money in the future.

If you set that aside and just want great hackers, as an outsider, the best you're going to be able to do is to talk to the people you know, who know great coders who might be tied to their positions at Amazon or Microsoft, but those guys invariably know others who aren't yet handcuffed to the stock packages, are underwater on their options and don't yet have families and huge mortgages, etc.

At the end of the day, it's about networking. You won't be able to personally judge precisely the technical abilities of a potential new hire; get tech experts to help you do that.

(Side note: I've also done most of what you described, with the exception of starting a non-tech company. It's not all that uncommon or special, so at the same time you're downplaying your search for a humble tech partner, you might want to work on your own a bit so as to not come across as arrogant MBA prick to your potential tech partner. Coming across that way won't turn off the truly hungry, but it will turn off the truly great.)

Take care of your people. It is easy for a hacker to put in 18 hour days if he knows you're out there taking care of his bills. The simple act of paying a guy on time can make a world of difference. Even if he is working for equity, don't hesitate to find a grand or two from somewhere, anywhere, and cut him a check on the 26th of the month. Many hackers would be more than happy to work on the startup AND take on side-gigs, it's up to you to go out there and find the gigs, if you can't raise the money yourself.

Try to think very small. Most of us are not out there to grab your money and go. It's much easier for me to bring along two laptops and "settle" in a corner, somewhere in your basement. I will run a few cables around, replace your DSL router with something beefier, and I can stay there until very late at night and come back as soon as I open my eyes. YOU, on the other hand, need to be aware of my expenses; I spend gas driving to you. I go away to eat out twice while I'm at your home or office. If I'm meeting you and your investor buddies in pubs and cafes, I'm probably spending more money than I usually do. Feel free to reimburse me at the first opportunity.

Think of yourself as the manager of a band. The musicians make the music, sure, but they're completely dysfunctional without you. They can keep your commission and do the business side of things themselves, but multitasking is VERY expensive and taxing mentally. You can safely keep a band of musicians in your basement for weeks, even months, and they will do great work, as long as you're catering to their peripheral needs and staying out of their way. What you can't do is treat them as employees who you must micromanage and watch them do "tangible", measurable work.

[Edit: Sometimes people asked me to work with them on a startup, but they already had a draconian work process. Some guy had a quota of the number of e-mails I must send him a day. Where I should store source code, graphic assets and other stuff, and in the end told me I must install a VNC client so he can connect to my desktop. Had to dump him. If he told me I could use his home server to store things, I would have setup the version control and an ftp server myself.

Try to be nurturing and kind and you will juice the most productivity and loyalty out of anyone. Be honest and open. You don't need to give me the minutia of our financial status, if you think you can meet a budget gap by getting another client, go ahead and get that client and let me focus on the work. Don't introduce unnecessary uncertainty in our stability. OTOH, if you think we're tanking, it would be nice of you to give me a heads up.]

It's for an online targeted ad delivery platform. The personal email is in my profile.

I will try to be for you the boss I never had.

:) :)

By the time we mature, we probably wont fall for an enthusiastic "business guy"; we know both computing and business better than anyone. I wasn't out to embarrass you, all I wanted was to help your younger self, or others its age.

The comment you responded to made the valid point that unstressed secure people can offer you more. If you are not interested in more and just want enough, that is another issue.

Searchyc:http://searchyc.com/find+hackers

(I assume PG is not interested in this, otherwise it would exist already.)

What are you paying? Some people will work for options, others won't. Some people will work a 9 to 6 job but will refuse to do the high pressure always on call thing.

How much control do you (or anyone else in your company) wish to have about the technology choices -- what programming language, servers, SCM, etc. Some developers are quite opinionated on this stuff and so you have to be ready to sacrifice some control and to trust the developer's judgement.

I'd be wary of someone who obviously spends a ton of time primping his/her reputation in the community. Such people tend to be huge egos who are more excited about fame than they are about engineering. Better to get someone who truly loves technology. Lots of developers have a side project that they would love to work on full time -- check out github and if you find such a project that looks like your company could leverage it, send a message to the people working on it to discuss the project and your business....

Also, I suggest job ads in places like seattle20.com and Joel's job board.

Do you already have an idea what you are going to do? It would help to get the general technical area on the table - hackers have their pet areas of interest.

I just realized that being a hacker hasn't necessarily made me an expert on hacker psychology since I haven't had to, uh, hire any.

So ... well there's a point somewhere

Second, if you have a M$FT based idea then you're in the right place. If not you need to look at California. That's where the rest of the talent is.

Lastly, avoid the offshore crowd. They will pick your pocket as sure as if you where there in person. There is no such thing as a $10/hour software engineer

Your tech partner should be a partner, that requires mutual respect.

A good co-founding engineer will have done all this and more. You need to give him 35% or more and have a stellar track record to boot.

If that's not the equity ballpark you're playing in, and you can't bring more to the table than "well I've started a couple of businesses and I can do sales", you're looking for the wrong type of person. What you want is a freelance developer that takes $10k and makes a prototype for you. That way you can keep 100% of your equity.

You might think you got lucky if you find some young kid in his early 20s to do most of the work for very little equity and almost no cash, but think about what happens to your business when he decides you're an asshole 6 months later and quits. Just use your imagination to think about how ugly that can get. Especially since he's the one running your entire tech infrastructure.