These are all great action items and I completely agree.

One topic I've heard a lot is the fact that impostor syndrome is often stronger for women. This is impacts their willingness to apply for jobs that list certain qualifications, for example.

I wonder if there are ways to be more outspoken about how little we know as founders and how much we learn long the journey.

Many of the prevailing narratives flex "This is how to do it" more than "I used to have no idea how to do this"

But I agree what you outline is likely most meaningful: 1) Increase women representation in VC 2) Proactively look for women VC cap table participants

Thanks for these links. Really helpful.

Curious if you're seeing technology businesses leverage Zapier? For some reason I've always assumed that's for places without a real dev team.

I have seen cryptography on some webhooks, but after doing about 30+ integrations at my old company, most were very basic / no auth.

Maybe it's a standards thing. Perhaps if there were a standard for webhook format / security and then a lib to easily create / ingest.

Great comic! There are definitely ppl out there like this.

I have a rubric of sorts I use to rank people and ideas. This makes it very easy to avoid the dilbert scenario.

Some of these people are very advanced (have contracts / LOIs, MVP, funding)

The catalyst for me was joining a couple of communities. The best for me was Cambrian (https://www.cambrianhq.com/) because I am generally interested in fintech.

Another option could be to sign up for YC Startup school (https://www.startupschool.org/) or apply for OnDeck (https://www.beondeck.com/)

I remember being turned off by OnDeck because they wanted a hefty "registration fee" and basically took anyone. This seems to be gone now (another bubble indicator? ;)?

Thanks!

Yes, as the previous responder mentioned, finding the right community is the first step.

But tbh, it's much harder than it feels like it should be.

I think places like Human Capital or OnDeck are taking a cool hands-on approach to this.

The thesis being, let's find the best people, help them find eachother, then invest.

Yes, this is an unfortunate truth.

This is why I limited the meetings to 30min and made sure to ask explicitly about what they are looking for.

If they phrase it as "early employee" or "head of eng" or anything other than cofounder, you're looking at a relationship where you are paid for your time, not respected as a cofounder

Yes, agreed with this sentiment. "Clearly a problem!" was vague and not the best wording.

My hope is to see that number increase. Not the right post to explore it, but I'd love to help!

Yes, I think this is very common.

I'm very opposed to the idea that founders need to eat ramen for 4+ years when raising venture money, and I think VCs are slowly warming up to that fact.

But, yes, you will take much less salary than at a normal engineering gig.

I think 100-150k is relatively palatable. 150-200 is possible. Above 200 almost unheard of at pre-seed / seed stage.

The irony is to hire your first engineer, you'll almost certainly need to shell out 200k+.

I also have a wife and 2 kids, so I am looking for a cofounder that can respect this and give the salary needed to live a decent life.

VCs tend to believe that market validation can be done with engineers at any level of competence so why not go cheap? Then once you have that market validation you can always decide to hire competent people to clean up the mess. That way they get to take more shots, and solve the hiring problem as well because it is far easier to hire kids than it is to hire seasoned pros who might have a bunch of demands.

Thanks!

I definitely agree with this. I feel fortunate to have met a few people that seem like they could be a great fit, but we are still early.

It takes time and working together to really ensure a great cofounder pair.

The experiment will continue!