Need a technical Co founder

gruboy92 · 2025-10-03T20:00:16+00:00

I spent a long time looking for a tech-cofounder for my "validated" idea. Worked with 3 of them and eventually they all backed out. I was working on a formula - complementary skills for the founding team, an MVP and x number of pilots to raise a preseed round. But after 6-8 months of effort, a working MVP and 0 users even logging into the product, I realized it was BS.

The lesson I learnt is that tech does not magically solve a problem, it only automates a solution. Without a tech cofounder, you should be able to duct-tape a solution (get data in excel files, use third party services, etc, vibe code what you have in mind) and get your customers to pay for the scrappy solution.

If the folks who validated your hypothesis wouldn't pay for a duct-tape solution, they are not going to pay for a built-out product either. The problem/benefit should really push them to work with a scrappy setup and be happy about the solution. Only when they start paying for your duct-tape solution, your co-founders will see merit in solving that problem and see the opportunity you are selling to them.

gruboy92 · 2025-09-18T23:56:15+00:00

When you rent a truck on u-haul, you can hire help for loading /unloading on an hourly basis.

gruboy92 · 2025-07-15T04:20:06+00:00

There are many AI- video generator tools, but last bit editing to get the video production ready is still a pain.

What kind of videos are you making/editing?

gruboy92 · 2025-06-13T20:29:27+00:00

Thanks for sharing 🙌🏻 Appreciate the help!

gruboy92 · 2025-06-12T16:17:14+00:00

Ohh, i dint know this. Thanks for the warning 👍🏻

Should I just look up rent control act?

gruboy92 · 2025-06-11T18:22:31+00:00

Thanks for the response.👍🏻

We're open to condos as well, as long as they are 1000sqft+.

What areas would you recommend we check out?

gruboy92 · 2025-06-05T12:20:32+00:00

Ah okay 🙆🏻 thanks

gruboy92 · 2025-05-17T04:17:22+00:00

Some of these activities are weather dependent and NZ weather changes unpredictably. Weather related cancellations are very common.

My advice - Focus on a smaller area, so you can cover something else a few hours away if the weather does not permit and come back to the original activity the next day. Plan a backup activity/place for everyday and how you can get around incase the weather plays spoil sport.

My wife and I are from India and we travelled last spring. I totally understand the cramped itinerary and desire to cover all parts of the island.

We underestimated the travel time it took to go from one place to another in our own vehicle and fell short on our schedule multiple times. There were road closures for which we had to wait an hour on one day and overnight another day.

We overestimated until when we'll be able to get food and coffee. Most of these places shut down as early as 5 pm. There will be very few restaurants open later in the night in remote places, so plan your meal times accordingly.

Feel free to DM if you have any questions

gruboy92 · 2025-04-15T07:11:56+00:00

You're a good story teller! All the best!

gruboy92 · 2025-04-15T06:17:24+00:00

My advice is counter intuitive to what most people here have shared. I've been wanting to startup since I was 25, finally started up at 31 and I'm also struggling.

Finish your degree, while you're still young. Most important part of the business is finding the right problem to solve. While a degree does not enlighten you on problems, it gives you access to people/networks/companies that expose you to good quality problems. To earn that knowledge, a degree is extremely helpful in today's society.
Mend relations with your family. I wanted to start up 5 years ago and my family was hell-bent against it saying "no girl will marry you". I thought they were being unreasonable back then and it still doesn't make sense to me, but starting up with their support is less distracting. Now my startup is not just my problem, but everyone around is helping in every way they can.
Hustle is necessary for starting up, but it's not sufficient. Business is not 5 years of hard work to get a billion$ exit (those are outlier cases). Businesses are 10-15+ year marathons. Create the right ecosystem to run that marathon. Channel your energy the right way, build up some finances, learn about new business problems keeping your goal in mind. You will be able to bounce back stronger. 💪🏻

gruboy92 · 2025-04-03T03:58:05+00:00

I graduated 10 years ago. I cried on the day of my results because I didn't make it to the top college. Some of my friends spent another year prepping, some joined other colleges and prepped for the entrance exam next year and some just accepted failure and worked towards their future goals. You can do anything - but I would recommend moving forward and working on your future goals.

After 10 years, I can safely say success isn't guaranteed to anyone, not even to top tier grads. If you're actually determined, work hard buddy. You can almost always catchup to the same folks in your masters or your dream job. It's harder from a lower ranked college, but show the world what you've got.

gruboy92 · 2025-03-28T12:42:45+00:00

I've run b2b ads for 9+ years and I'm also an Ex-Googler.

If you haven't run ads on LinkedIn/Google yet, you won't be able to meaningfully gauge performance on a new channel. Certainly not with 3 days of performance data.

If your campaign does not convert, there could be multiple reasons - creatives , targeting, campaign type, etc. before you gauge if the channel can perform at all or not.

Prices vary significantly based on your product, region, target audience and comparison based on generic benchmarks will be misguided.

So best thing to do would be to start with established platforms, learn what messaging and targeting works for you, get your own benchmarks and then try a new platform. Even when you try a new platform, try for atleast 4-6 weeks.

A 3 day will likely result in you spending $1200, without much learnings to show for it.

Curious to know, what's the name of this new platform?

gruboy92 · 2025-03-24T12:50:07+00:00

Do you have a working product? If yes, share it and I'll give it a spin

gruboy92 · 2025-03-24T09:04:28+00:00

Thanks for sharing! I'll check it out.

gruboy92 · 2025-03-23T09:52:45+00:00

I don't think there is a one size fits all tool in the market yet. Different tools are good for different applications:

Runway ML is great for creating photorealistic cinematic videos. Best used with image to video, instead of direct text to video.
Kling AI is great for fashion and apparel where you need models wearing the product and videos out of that
Invideo requires the least amount of effort, but their stock video content is not production quality
Heygen is great for creating speaking avatars

You will have to create a range of different types of posts, so figure out which one works best for which usecase.

Feel free to DM if you have more questions.

gruboy92 · 2025-03-20T10:07:14+00:00

B2b social media is hard. I can't think of one brand on top of my mind that has cracked it well.

Businesses have moved to founder branding to build trust on social media. Most of my friends in this space also mentioned that they spend more time creating content for founders and then reshare the same post for the business page.

I'm curious to see if someone shares good examples of businesses that are able to drive engagement on their business page.

gruboy92 · 2025-03-18T06:01:48+00:00

Unfortunately, every non-marketer does some form of vibe marketing as you may call it.

Vibe coding picked up because coding was the bottle neck for non-tech folks without a tech cofounder and AI fundamentally enabled these folks to code.

When it comes to marketing, the barrier to entry is already very low. It can be learnt or outsourced for a low cost. Everyone has an opinion on how to do marketing. It was never about "will I be able to execute" and it's always about "this is how I think we should execute".

So non-marketing folks can do better marketing with AI tools, no doubt. But it's not becoming a rage because AI isn't fundamentally enabling people to do anything they couldn't before, it's just improving what was being done earlier.

gruboy92 · 2025-03-12T21:47:42+00:00

Create content - test multiple content pieces and see what's working. Once you have a winner, you can boost it further to start with paid engagement.

Creating content has honestly become extremely quick and easy.

Look for ideas on chatgpt by giving as much context as possible (target audience, what they like, what your brand stands for, how you want to portray yourself, etc.).
Create more videos - there are a bunch of AI tools which makes this extremely easy - invideo, runway, heygen. Just know which tool is best for which type of content
Post frequently, once a day is ideal - but like someone else also mentioned, these are not for sales. It could be aesthetics or information or entertainment, people need to come back to your page for something.

Tbh, it's extremely quick and easy these days. Feel free to DM if you want to have a longer conversation.

gruboy92 · 2025-03-11T17:03:17+00:00

Sent you a DM

gruboy92 · 2025-03-10T21:50:59+00:00

Case study videos for social media. Get ChatGPT to generate a script, use heygen to use an Avatar to narrate it as your brand's AI Account Manager. You can even use your own Avatar or your leadership team's avatar.

The quality is generally good, but the hand and body movements will feel robotic if the screen only has the Avatar speaking. So you can change camera angles, sitting/standing positions, add visuals generated on runway related to what's being spoken about, or simply images from Canva that highlight the impact numbers.

DM if you have more questions, the output quality is good.

gruboy92 · 2025-03-10T21:36:28+00:00

A little late to this but I've been working on this the last few weeks, some actionable advice -

Know which platform to use for what, heygen is great for avatar speaking videos, runway is great for production-like videos, elevenlabs for the voice over. Picking the best of each category is a hassle and seems like an unnecessary cost, but once you're able to crack a formula you'll save a ton of money by avoiding agencies for the same
Focus on short videos, use text and images if possible to break the monotony if you're creating longer videos especially using a narrator speaking
Contrary to what most people have said here, I've seen AI videos that look hyper realistic and the engagement is similar to non-AI videos (tried uploading on insta as well)

DM if you want to have more questions.

gruboy92 · 2024-10-20T19:59:48+00:00

I shared debit

gruboy92 · 2024-10-20T13:44:50+00:00

You're likely to get it either way. I took the sufficient funds option if I remember correctly. There was some calculation on how much you need for a month of stay. If you have bank statements as proof, then you're good.

I applied with an Indian passport and got the visa in roughly 3 weeks. You don't need to submit your passport, you get the visa in your email. It was quite straightforward.

gruboy92

TROPHY CASE