FounderDating helps connect entrepreneurs with potential business partners from around the world.
Finding a compatible co-founder and building a strong team is one of the trickier parts of starting a business. But Jessica Alter and the team at FounderDating are out to make the process a little less painful.
FounderDating, an invite-only service similar to LinkedIn, helps connect like-minded founders and business owners from cities around the world. In order for a city to “unlock” the site, 75 interested entrepreneurs must request an invitation to the service. So far more than 30 cities have been unlocked—including Midwest representation from Chicago and Detroit. Kansas City currently leads cities in the Silicon Prairie with 29 applicants.
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Silicon Prairie News asked Alter (right), founder and CEO, a few questions about FounderDating and why Silicon Prairie entrepreneurs should take an interest in unlocking their city.
Silicon Prairie News: Tell us a little more about FounderDating and how it works.
Jessica Alter: FounderDating is an invite-only LinkedIn for entrepreneurs. It’s a curated online network for entrepreneurs to connect, get advice and find co-founders to start side-projects and companies with. Our team hand screens everyone to keep the network high quality, high intent (no recruiters) and 50 percent engineers.
SPN: Where did the idea for FounderDating come from?
JA: FounderDating came from the observation that people typically surround themselves with other people who are like them—designers with designers, musicians with musicians and so on. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but those aren’t always the best people to start companies or projects with, and it’s difficult to find people who are complimentary. Then tack on that team dynamic has been universally agreed upon as one the key defining success factors of a company.
SPN: The concept really does make sense though—starting a business is a lot like dating. What qualities should a founder keep an eye out for when looking for a business partner?
JA: The short answer is someone who is complimentary in skill set and aligned on vision. And not vision on your idea, but vision on why you want to start something, what kind of company you’d want to build, what motivates you. Look for a true partner.
The slightly longer answer is that you should take the time to go through the most important questions and work together first—even if that’s on a side project. There is a myth out there that you should “finalize” an idea and then look for a co-founder. Finding the right person to work with is the foundation of your soon-to-be endeavor. Your idea is almost guaranteed to change somewhat or completely. Your co-founder, on the other hand, will not. Focus on finding the right person first. It’s never to soon to start side-projects with people and start to figure out if you can work with people.
SPN: How does FounderDating match individuals? What does the process look like for users after they sign up?
JA: Once you’re invited to join, you get access to everyone in the network and you can search profiles based on a host of things—from interest areas to skill sets to location. You can then start communicating with other members and ideally take the relationship offline—start with a coffee or Skype meeting and move into working together on side-projects. Our recommendation engine sends you interesting matches, but you’re encouraged to search the network as there are amazing people to connect with and we can’t recommend them all at once.
We also have FounderDating:Discuss, which is essentially Quora for entrepreneurs. Members have group conversations on everything entrepreneurial from “What do you think of flat design?” to “How do you best incentivize a SaaS salesforce?”
SPN: What are some of FounderDating’s “success stories”? Any notable match-ups?
JA: There are a ton of FounderDating success stories, you can read about some of them on our site. One that sticks with me is Refresh.io. Paul Tyma and Bhavin Shah (the co-founders) are both awesome in their own right. Paul was an engineer at Google and Bhavin was COO at another successful startup so they had amazing networks, but they still had a problem finding the right co-founders. They met through FounderDating and started Refresh.io, which is now in beta and just secured a round of funding. It’s a myth to think this is only a problem first time-entrepreneurs or people that don’t have strong networks face.
SPN: Why do you think a service like this is important to the Silicon Prairie startup community?
JA: Honestly, having the ability to effectively and efficiently connect people who have high intent to start something is vital to any entrepreneurial community. Accessing the right people and advice drastically changes the ability and pace at which entrepreneurs can get started and succeed.
SPN: How did you come to the decision to have users unlock the site based on city?
JA: We decided to have cities unlock for two reasons: We wanted to ensure we were covering the areas that had a critical mass of entrepreneurs, but we didn’t want to pretend to know where entrepreneurship was taking shape. We give people bottom-up control to show us where there is demand. Unlocking also shows there is real community somewhere. While you can technically be anywhere and use our site to connect with people, we’ve first focused on places that have an entrepreneurial core and community.
It’s been extraordinary to see all of the demand, close to 30 cities have unlocked and some of the first were places we never would have guessed—Las Vegas, for example, was the second to unlock. When a city unlocks the applicants from past and future are reviewed and start to be included in the network. We’d love to see Silicon Prairie cities unlocked.
Credits: Product photo courtesy of FounderDating. Jessica Alter photo from Twitter.
