For builders deciding whether to post: the recurring theme in developer retrospectives about joining early-stage projects is that the good outcomes started with evaluating the founder like an investor would — asking for users, retention, and personal commitment before discussing equity. We put a checklist version of that in the thread "My co-founder prospect wants to see traction first" (last reply). Bring that checklist to your first call; a founder who reacts well to being diligenced is the strongest available signal.
Find a Co-founder offeringtemplatepinned
Developers open to joining a project — how to post your availability
The mirror image of the co-founder intro thread: this is the standing format for builders — engineers, designers, ML people — who are open to joining an existing project as co-founder or founding engineer. Same logic as the other side: structure gets responses.
The template
- Who I am: name or consistent handle, location, timezone.
- What I build: stack and specialties, with links — shipped products, repos, or writeups. Evidence over adjectives.
- Proof I ship: the one thing you're proudest of that a stranger can actually try or read.
- What I'm looking for: stage (idea / prototype / revenue), domain interests, and what role — co-founder, founding engineer for equity+pay, or contract-to-cofounder.
- Availability: hours per week now, and what would change that.
- Terms I'd consider: equity-only (at what stage), pay+equity, or paid trial first. Saying it up front saves everyone the dance.
- Dealbreakers: the honest filters — no crypto, needs revenue, must be remote, whatever they are.
A note on the market
Founders looking usually outnumber builders offering — that's the standing asymmetry in every community like this one. Practical consequence for builders: a specific post stands out. Practical consequence for founders: assume a builder has other approaches, so respond with specifics about your project, not a form letter — you're the one applying.
Disclosure rule
If you're primarily selling development services and open to equity as an upsell, that's welcome — with a plain disclosure line at the top of your thread. Presenting a services pitch as a co-founder search is undisclosed promotion, which the Community Guidelines treat as spam.
Builders: what would a founder's post need to contain for you to reply? That answer is worth a thread of its own on GitHub Discussions (the link is at the foot of this page), even if you're not posting availability yet.
Replies (4)
A failure mode I'll flag for founders: sending every builder the same pitch. Builders can tell, and it reads as spam — you're demonstrating your future sales quality to a potential partner, and mass outreach is the demo nobody wants. One tailored paragraph naming why their evidence fits your gap outperforms ten templates.
Follow-up question, from the builder's side: "I'm a senior engineer who's never done the business side. How do I evaluate whether a founder is actually good?"
Four checks, mirroring how founders should vet you: (1) can they get customers — any evidence of landing users, pilots, or distribution, at any scale; (2) do they ship their side — the deck, the interviews, the pipeline should have the same cadence you'd bring to code; (3) how do they talk about previous collaborators — the pattern in their stories is your future; (4) do they make crisp decisions with incomplete information, or does everything wait for more research? Two weeks of a trial project reveals all four faster than any number of calls.
Follow-up question, from the builder's side: "What's a fair founding-engineer package when a project already has revenue — say $3-5k MRR?"
Ranges from founder-community discussions, not gospel: a true co-founder joining post-revenue typically lands 10-25% (vested, cliffed), reflecting risk already retired. A founding engineer with market-adjacent pay plus equity: more like 1-5%. The dominant variable is cash — every dollar of salary trades against equity points. What to avoid: 'co-founder title, employee equity' — 3% with no salary and a co-founder workload is the package that generates the bitter retrospectives. Name the mismatch in the first conversation if you see it.
Nobody can post or reply on these pages. New threads start on GitHub Discussions, which needs a GitHub account. A thread posted there appears at once and is moderated afterwards. The six categories are not set up on GitHub yet, so a "Start a thread" link opens GitHub's own list of categories. Pick the closest one and name the category in your title.
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