How to Create an App Without a Technical Co-Founder - Hustle Con 2015

hi guys so great to see so many hustlers okay so I'm super excited to be here and typically when I go to conferences I really appreciate speakers who can share real stories and also I'll give some technical things that I can get started on right away so hopefully I will be able to do both of those for you today so let's start by talking a little bit about myself so you know who you're listening to I moved to the US when I was in high school from Korea so I heard from Sam that today there are representations from five continents in the audience which is pretty cool hopefully there's some representations from Korea my background is in business I went to business school and I've always been in the consumer products industry I love absolutely love working on products that I know will end up in hands of customers especially if it's something that they can engage with on a daily basis like coffee meets bagel so today I'm here to tell you and talk a little bit about my story and how I started a tech company without a technical co-founder and the short advice is if you can get one go get one because it'll make your life a lot easier but you know not everybody has that option I didn't have one and it certainly should not stop anyone from starting or at least getting started so I want to talk first about the story behind coffee meets bagel how and why I got started and how I built my first Minimum Viable Product without any technical knowledge and then finally how I found my CTO so when you talk to anyone about dating in general not just even online dating you probably never find anyone who was like hundred percent satisfied with the dating scene there's always some problem and some complaint and that's because dating is really hard you know getting two people to fall in love is is a big challenge for me online dating in particular had three main problems one it's optimized for men so if you look at what I mean by that is if you look at vast majority of online dating products it's optimized for surfacing as many photos as possible and then really enjoy browsing photos of women like they genuinely enjoy that you know it's not a bad thing right and most products that are out there are designed by men but on the other hand women don't particularly enjoy browsing through endless photos of men yeah in fact you know I think more often than not we enjoy browsing photos of other woman than men so so that's a big problem obviously not only that women get harassed often you know you put a picture up that has any like remote resemblance to woman's face or woman's body I guess it won't take you long before you you start getting like creepy messages from creepy people and then finally online dating is a chore let's face it right like you don't ever run into anyone who's so excited like I can't wait to try this online dating platform like looking so forward to it no it's still something that people kind of just do it because you know okay I kind of should meet somebody it's hard to meet somebody because I'm so busy let's just give this a try so how do you make this more exciting how do you bring exciting back to dating because it should be a very it's an exciting thing right meeting somebody for the first time and how do we deliver on traits that focuses on quality safety and simplicity which are traits that are especially important to women so our solution to this was curating one match a day every day at noon and giving our customers something to look forward to creating that magical moment on a daily basis that's how you bring excitement so we do we curate the matches and we use variety of information mainly a coffee meets bagel it's very important that we actually make matches through your friend network so somebody close to your network which also creates environment and the sense of safety so now that I have this ideal but no one to help me build this like how did I go about it when I first started this sort of journey the first advice and the best advice I got was this is from a friend so I've lured out the name but it says this guy looks pretty good good work experience school a is definitely not as well ranked as school B but it's fine I feel you don't necessarily need a super good guy as there is nothing very hard technically about this concept if you get traction then you can hire great people as they will want to come and work for you but for now you can save your cash I feel it's more important that you validate the concept fast and for that you need someone who can work full-time to get a prototype out fast so for my first engineer I didn't look for Stanford MIT grad I I just wanted somebody who had who was capable of building something very simple my Minimum Viable Product and who was available I mean lots of people are busy doing lots of things and my MVP consisted of four things one it was going to be simple Facebook app to get information from Facebook account because I knew the product for this product was getting access to the social graph was very important second thing it had to have basic functionality where you can see a profile and like or pass and then basic admin tools for me to actually create these matress and finally we needed an ability for people to an animal is unanimously chat an anonymous phone number so that if there's a mutual like they can actually talk to each other and so it's pretty I mean it's not that simple I mean there's still some complicated elements here but it's enough for me to actually prove out variety of hypothesis I had like are people willing to give me Facebook access are people going to be chatting people willing to give me phone number and are they going to be chatting etc so these are some designs initial designs like Sam mentioned my co-founders are my sisters and one of them is a designer so I had that area covered so these are some initial designs I had on this you know a lot of things were imported through Facebook is profile where you can set up preferences and then pictures I'm it's not the most sophisticated designs where you can input phone number and then finally where you can like or pass if you take a look at this you can already tell there's a lot more in in terms of features here then the MVP that I stated so this is very common mistake that lots of people make and that I made also and we ended up whittling down a lot of things you really want to stick to the bare minimum things that you need and I think it's very easy to feel like oh my god I really need that feature when in reality you don't really need it and I see now a lot of companies they use Google Forms or even surveys without even building anything to get started so that's something definitely important to remember so once that I had concept my first developer I hired from oDesk I had a friend who was a Python engineer who told me about oDesk and recommended that I use Python because I guess that's what it was familiar with and he liked I don't think there was any particular reason and he also was the one who you know suggested that I create a github account so whoever I hit whoever I hire can actually sum a ton checking code so I chose Python and a ton of responses from oDesk that's what happens if you put anything on on on that platform and so it was really hard for me to tell who was better like just even looking at ratings and reviews so I needed something additional to be able to evaluate so I started with a small project I actually gave project to them it was very simple and I asked three questions how long do you need to implement this what questions would you ask me to clarify the project and can you answer my question in the dock I had some questions and I was super surprised that the variety of answers I got I made varied from like two hours to 40 hours no questions to like a lot of questions etc and this really gave me good insights even though I don't I can't fully vet out them technically but it really gave me a good insight into how experienced they were and so this is an initial posting that I used it says expert Python Django engineer for website with Facebook integration needed and if you see the posting I mean I explained I introduced the team a little bit it looks like a real job you know job posting right this is how you also attract better candidates even on oDesk and this is a the initial project that I gave it was a one-page basically ask them to hit create something an app where you can log in with Facebook collect specific information and then have a sign-up page and I didn't provide any mock-ups and there are some parts that are left purposely vague because I wanted to see if this is a type of person if there's ambiguity are they going to bring it up to me and discuss okay hey this is not very clear let's clarify this or is this a type of person who's going to just kind of go off and make assumptions and everything and then two weeks later come back with something I you know didn't really expect and so this was a very good exercise and I was able to hire an engineer from Indonesia who I paid $15 an hour and I think for the MVP it took him about working about four weeks and he dedicated about 15 hours a week so not bad right so once I had the MVP I had 50 of my friends actually sign up and their friends two single friends and sign up and actually test this obviously just singles and I was the one who was curating match every day during the matchmaker thing and at noon I was you know the one who was manually sending emails I was using MailChimp and I tested this for a week and the result was very positive you know vast majority of the users were logging in every day and I also after a week followed up with most of the users by phone to get some qualitative feedback and it was very positive and and the overall response was you know they really looked forward to getting the email at noontime click-through was very high so I would call that a success right so I was ready to get this you know MVP into a full-blown product and then something terrible happened to me I lost touch with my engineer and he disappeared out of the earth so I had this code that I didn't understand and I couldn't get in touch with him and so that leads me to my final section how I found my CTO so the problem with oDesk it's not lack of talent there are a lot of great developers it's lack of commitment and consistency a lot of these contractors work for multiple clients at a time so if something happens with one project they may not have you know all that time to dedicate to your project and I was paying this person on an hourly basis so there's no repercussion if he just you know takes off and leaves and so I would suggest in terms of incentive structure some combination of hourly as well as a lump sum payment upon delivery of the project I don't think it's a good idea to just do it on project basis because one you may not attract the best people out there and to I think if you know the engineer ends up under estimating the hours which they often do they may end up cutting corners you know because they don't want to put a lot more hours to it so some combination is what I would recommend but you know regardless I needed to find a local developer my CTO and the key to finding CTO is I mean I guess there is no shortcut here it's basically using your resource to go after every channel possible I mean I went after meetups Craigslist friends coolest people are often surprised when I tell them I found my first University oh through Craigslist but you know there are it's still very effective channel I found my second one through meetup list I sent out a middle of the email to Oh meetup Python meet up in New York and that's how I found my second one but it took a while I mean this kind of conversation takes time obviously the timing has to work out so I think for my second CTO I start a conversation with him in July and then we didn't end up working together until January so keep those conversations going this is the the Craigslist posting that I had you know fell in love with Python great Python and Django developer needed a new online dating company full-time or part-time with potential CTO opportunity notice I didn't advertise specifically for a CTO position because I didn't want to set that expectation it was very important for me to first work with this person together and then together coming to a decision is this CTO position the right job for for you and then this is my email to the New York Python meetup group advice needed where is the best place to find a Python programmer and this is where I got the response but now you have a you know somebody that you'd like to work with but how do you hire them when you have no money because I didn't I hadn't raised any money at that point and typical market rate in New York at the time was you know if you want to hire any good enough engineer you have to pay upwards of $100 hundred to maybe hundred fifty dollars an hour so this is what I suggested I'm going to pay you $30 an hour and you can bill me every two weeks I'll pay that we'll work together for six months and if we mutually decided this is the right job for you then we'll talk about equity compensation and then if we doesn't work out then I'll pay you the difference a few months later we said October at the time and the discussion happened in January and my thought was okay there's still a risk if things don't work out I would have to pay you for that amount but if things work out I would have raised at least some money by then so it bought me some time and I could conserve my cash one thing I want to say about generally CTOs is I I've ran into so many CEOs who are working on really early-stage products that obviously they came on board but six months to a year later they're not happy because they feel like they didn't get compensated fairly in terms of equity because founders share versus the situation is oftentimes very different the difference is really wide and if you think about it if you brought somebody pre-funding and they have to go through justice must uncertainty and risk as you do you think of put yourself in their situation and think like what is the fair amount that that they'll want so that they don't have to worry about this kind of stuff and actually dedicate to work right because the last thing you want to do is get somebody on board because that takes time and then a year later they're resentful and then they are thinking of leaving and so I think oftentimes like investors investors will tell you okay this is the fair amount or you might read something on TechCrunch or whatever this is very month but I think you should personally think about what you think is fair to give out to your CTO but you know at the end of the day it may still not work out so my two CEOs initially it didn't work out with them provide a variety of reasons you know personality or whatever location didn't work out so the last message I want to give you is you need to take your time before committing to each other I was lucky my third one we met actually through a recruiter by that time I had raised some money so I could actually work with a recruiter and then it was a great match so now you know it's been amazing but I made those two mistakes and it was great that I didn't commit anything yet right so with that summary of my talk one you don't always need an a player to get things started don't wait for that genius was going to come in and solve all your tech problems because they don't exist get it out there build it and iterate get a tech advisor and this doesn't have to be anyone official in any sense right I talked about my friend all they need is to spend maybe five to ten minutes a month they don't even have to meet you in person and you can you know just shoot them an email take five minutes like hey what do you think about this resume or do you think this code snippet is clean it's not much time for them but it's very valuable for you again there is no shortcut you have to work at it and it takes time and one way to to help with that is being creative even now I love recruiting outside of the valley because the valid things are just so competitive and people aren't as willing to take risk with someone you know who may not have although you know hot startups in their resume etc it takes more risk and more time to get out there and recruit so it's less competitive so be creative and then finally take your time before committing it's very important thank you very much for your time I hope it was helpful thank thanks Aaron if you have any questions for please come up yes I was wondering how do you deal with computer security throughout the entire ordeal the possibility of someone hacking into the site when you're in development yet to be honest that was not in my mind you just got lucky essentially yes okay I guess hey thanks for your time Yul is very down to earth I love it you know thank you acting on question for you is coming in with no money and you have all these potential CTOs how do you enter into your legal agreements to protect yourself with without having to spend money like with a legal company and all that yeah that's a really good question the way I did it which may or may not be the right thing to do is we actually wrote something down just very casually using our own words no lawyer involved that stated some of these core things that we operate on and I think by that point if you need already if you need a lawyer I don't think that's the right person because yeah I understand you need to protect the downside but when you're that early and you're trying to be scrappy somebody who's asking for a lawyer and a contract etc I don't necessarily think it's the right fit so it honestly didn't occur to me and didn't occur to him and I think anyone who's willing to try out at a start-up like that early shouldn't want to involve a lawyer thank you yeah all right so thanks for sharing your story it's pretty pretty awesome to hear I really love to get a little more detail on that getting that first CTO yeah $30 an hour seem so cheap the race you pay like on codementor io or like easily $100 an hour for a really great engineer yeah so I imagine the equity incentive has to really be strong or at least the I mean I don't know what the contract you actually inked out with this guy yeah gts-r but to get a CTO full-time like of anyone of any talent in the United States for $30 an hour I imagine you must have a really strong equity incentive if it worked out yeah so um to be clear when I actually drafted this contract we didn't have like okay your equity sure is going to be this percentage yeah and I think there's pros and cons to having that conversations early versus later yeah um all early obviously gives you clarity but I think when you have that conversation early and then this is this is sort of how like six months later people feel a little bit resentful or something because I feel like I'm pulling more weight and so we need to reopen this conversation etc note for me um basically I was willing to give founder level equity it wasn't it wasn't going to be equal split but it was very significant yeah and I typically like to share this like anyone who asked about this I think at the beginning if you want to really attract the right talent you need to be generous with your equity but you can't be stingy about it because this is a person who's going to dedicate just as much time and energy with you and try to ride all the roller coaster ride with you so even now my current CTO I mean he's almost a COO your fourth co-founder to me in terms of commitment and every in every sense um and so I never felt like oh my god I'm giving up too much yeah any other learnings here so I a lot of people say you know co-founder should be within your network or you know should be a technical person that you know so I think hiring somebody from Craigslist or know whatnot seems a little daunting yes you just have no relationship with this person yeah so random yeah um so any other learners you can share like if you know you have to go that route um you know anything else you kind of learned along the way yeah so what I would like things that I didn't do that I would do now is definitely reference tracks um I find that really funny here like sometimes if I ask for references or like Oh project or something because I guess the market is so competitive people like my recruiter would tell me oh you know if you do that you may turn off some people and they may not want to apply or whatever but if you don't even want to go through that like I mean forget it then right so I think reference tracks are really writing even now for every employee that I bring I take that very seriously I even do reference tracks before I bring anyone on site and it's not just like formal ok I'm just doing this to check off the box I really drill down to it because that is one of the most important data point you can get about the person I've turned down a lot of actually opportunities where we almost you know people were like excited about this person and then because of reference we didn't end up hiring ok yeah awesome thank you thank you okay we're gonna take these three hey Erin thanks for the talk so mine I'm running a really early-stage startup and looking for a CTO if anyone in the crowd is interested come talk to me it was crappy so my MVP is a little bit more complicated and what I'm looking for in a CTO is not just someone who's a developer but also someone I can bounce ideas off of and really learn and you know design the product along with them so when you initially said you found a CT or developer in Indonesia is that even possible and do you suggest waiting to find someone like that over here where you can have that real time conversation rather than find someone internationally and then you have the time delays and you're not able to have that that depth of thought yeah I mean the Indonesia person I wouldn't call him my CTO he was a contractor that I was working with I would challenge your thought about whether your MVPs really needs to be more complicated because it's really hard exercise I think you have to go through over and over and over and every time you go through that exercise you'll find something that you can simplify and so yes it's important to get a technical co-founder I mean technical partner who can you can bounce of ideas all that stuff and typically like all the engineers that I've met who want to join a start-up are people like that you know they don't want to be just coding right they want to get their ideas heard they're very product savvy also so I think you'll have no problem finding that person you know here who will you will be able to talk about product as well as coding etc yeah I would say it's going to be a little hard harder to do that finding that person abroad like you know thorough desk or something but that shouldn't stop you again from getting started it's always much easier to attract the right partner if you already have something to show them right so consider that some mod investment that you're actually doing in order to hire better people yeah great thank you thank you I'm guys once again look out for me thank you for the talk yeah you had mentioned that other online dating platforms were not as great um what other apps or products did you use as mental models when you start it out I mean I tried I mean I've tried everything and I'm still use everything right OkCupid match.com all the mobile labs I think at the time there was like at the pool there are so many that come in and out all the time that I can't even get like keep track to be honest but I use even now I use tinder everything to get product inspirations just to see what other competitors are doing does that answer your question yeah I guess it's just in addition to online dating site ah okay oh yeah yeah so I actually use now I used a lot of games gaming products for inspiration because our business model is also very similar to that of mobile games and I absolutely love how a lot of mobile game products are able to really class service customers while they provide personalized services and really incentivize the users to engage consistently with the app so I usually get a lot of good ideas from just playing games yeah thanks for the talking Oh what what range do you consider founder level equity is one five percent 15 I'm curious like 20 percent well so if you were to start a company today with three people I would think you would split it thirty three thirty like one-third one-third one-third right and so if this person is joining maybe it's not one-third I'm depending also again where the stage is it but maybe it's 15 maybe it's 20 I'm if it's really early whatever right so it's definitely I think five percent to go I hear five percent a lot I think that's too low if your post funding that's a different story so when I say founder level just really think about okay if I were had started this company with this person from the very beginning what would the equity split head look like I think that should give you a good guidance and you were able to raise funding without the co-founder and without the CTO so when I raise money my initial fund seed we raise $600,000 I had the second CTO but we were still on this hourly structure we hadn't had like clear okay you're going to come in as a CTO after I raise money we had conversations you were still working maybe a few months and then we decided okay this is not a good fit for both of us yeah so then my current CTO came on board after the seed round fun okay I got it thanks great thank you thank you guys

Channel: My First Million

Views: 80,812

Rating: 4.889986 out of 5

Keywords: hustle con, hustlecon, founder, startup, arum kang, arum, kang, kang sisters, coffee meets bagel, dating app, app, dating, shark tank, Shark Tank (TV Program)

Id: 7pT51EZNcso

Length: 30min 12sec (1812 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2015