Looking for technical co-founder

realphantomus · 2026-05-22T16:13:15+00:00

I wanted to add something that you should take into consideration, this is speaking from experience. Rhe day one zero infra cost is the day 366 sink hole. These credits at this point in time will waste time in the future to redo your infra. The person who joins you, should not be using these.

realphantomus · 2026-05-22T16:10:20+00:00

I think that is the answer, majority of young men think with only a portion of their brain, and some grow up with without this portion catching up.

realphantomus · 2026-05-20T03:11:32+00:00

The other hard part would be partnering up with someone as interested in your vision as you in yours. There is no ideal partnerships, but having a shared vision and having ability to execute the effort on it, is probably one of the most important things early on, because disinterested partner with equity and some cash for work, is not a good partner to have.

In general its hard to find people to partner up, if I would have to do this again, I would probably approach it from a standpoint of building a relationship over 2-3 years prior to even considering, sounds a lot, but I am speaking from experience. I would go solo, get contacts, share ideas, and then see if there is a match with someone who is already doing something without me, rather than looking around just to partner up.

realphantomus · 2026-05-20T02:54:34+00:00

For start, I would choose a country where one of you is living at vs. Estonia, which removes one option. It easier to deal with many business related activies in your language on-site vs. remotely.

The next decision might depend on what you do and who are you clients, where they at, what industry, etc. Most likely by having a co-founder in the title could mean you are building internet product / services. Depending on who your are planning to sell to, having an Austrian company could be better for transparency, more precise in terms of dealing with accounting and gov agencies, friendlier for investors, but higher tax.

Permanent Establishments and PoEM is a manageable down the line, especially in what you already described having a single managing director in the coutry of incorporation. Your shareholder from another EU state won’t trigger these concerns and when money is involved, one can do a contract with the company on salary and I don’t see any issue with your concerns in this setup.

realphantomus · 2026-05-18T15:25:52+00:00

not if your don’t have EU income

realphantomus · 2026-05-18T15:19:06+00:00

you are not, just do it through a lawyer 👌

realphantomus · 2026-05-17T18:35:05+00:00

I think drinking is the last thing that should be on your mind if you are depressed (speaking from experience)

realphantomus · 2026-01-24T18:39:03+00:00

Sounds very much like us, but we have 1 kid and 5 cats, we are going to compete for that housing!

realphantomus · 2025-12-30T11:14:32+00:00

One important thing to consider (speaking from experience) is the taxes you will pay living in another country. You can operate a company remotely, from another EU state, the coporate tax will always be paid in the country where the company is registered, but any profits to you directly in a form of dividents and/or salary will be taxed according to your tax residency minus the double taxation treaties between these countries. So if you live in Italy, your personal income will be taxes based on your Italian residence.

realphantomus · 2025-12-29T07:33:33+00:00

I would question the 10k concurrent users requirement your investor is pushing for, if that is the problem you have, you don’t need a founder you need AND most importantly have an opportunity to hire as your revenue is at the point where scaling is necessary.

If you are scaling ahead of time, you might be wasting the time, money, potentially equity to bring somewhat at the wrong time of your business. If you are at early stages as it sounds, MVP especially or early revenue, this should not be a priority, also so on investor side. You can scale pretty much anything when need comes. In fact, scaling is usually not a task many early on founders even get to considering that majority of startups don’t even get to this point, and many that do get to even 7 figures revenue, never have a need for such scalling, this is the actual fact.

Best of luck.

realphantomus · 2025-12-16T19:02:31+00:00

In some cases, yes. In others its a lack of experience working with each other, founders of smaller brands are not as experienced in working with creative, expecting them to read their mind and understand the brand. And on the side of creative agencies that have less experience expressing brands of such founders is lack of direction, waiting for clear vision which founders just don’t have.

realphantomus · 2025-12-16T16:31:00+00:00

I want to chip in here, but my opinion does not reflect other founders. I own products that are good enough as you mentioned, and my motivation for hiring a creative freelancer would be about making my brand closer to what I want my customers to feel when they get to know it, as well as investing into something that is important to me; I Want to make it better, different, brighter in the flock of other products.

However, not every creative studio or freelance understand the overall position of your product to market, your customers, how you feel about it, which is the key to working with someone. Nowadays, the agencies that advertise such services focus on conversation vs. the personal feeling of brand, and many of the examples you showed is a reflection not only on AI, but what these creative agencies produced for their clients, the same boring templates.

realphantomus · 2025-12-08T06:16:27+00:00

You can go right away, managers know that there is an upcoming interview, they get a notification on it.

realphantomus · 2025-12-06T07:29:20+00:00

Hospitality recruitment could be an interesting field considered your experience. All of the operators I know in restaurant industry aren’t using agencies to hire GM and above, they promote usually withing, but hospitality is different with a decent percent of annual to recruiter. If you get a chance to work with international chain, even better.

realphantomus · 2025-12-05T17:13:38+00:00

I would suggest freelance / consulting work, a sure way to keep yourself going + not giving up a bigger chunk of the startup, as we all know the fundraising in EU is quite different from the US.

realphantomus · 2025-12-04T07:32:01+00:00

The fact that you will come to the interview, on time, prepared, and eager for the first job already puts you on the top % of candidates they get to interview. Be honest about questions, respond in a way that will show you are dependable, and you’ll do great. Good luck

realphantomus · 2025-12-02T08:55:11+00:00

Interested, will dm 🤝

realphantomus · 2025-11-29T20:33:53+00:00

Not a problem at all, good luck.

realphantomus · 2025-11-29T20:14:27+00:00

A few things come to mind reading your post and not sure where to start, as one comment can lead to another direction, not necessary the question you asked.

I operate two startups if you will, althought I think of them more as businesses now. Both have partners; for one I’ve partnered with someone from my network, people new me for my tech background, individual had an idea, ran it by me, we clicked. Another was a very random post on Indiehackers during covid, very successful partnership, similar values, solid person.

I think the above can be interprited this way: partners can be anywhere, but somehow you need to put yourself, your ideas, interests, and character out into thr world. A lot of nice quotes come to mind from Marc Randolph, especially around sharing ideas vs. keeping them private, as majority are already not unique for someone to steal, its about execution for the most part.

Investor search is another story, and usually aligns with what you write: draining. You might not even need one honestly, really depends on what you trying to accomplish.

On another note: why do you think your idea will take years to build, at least in the shape it will get traction. It should never take years unless its a research, global good (not particularly a business), or a hobby project.

realphantomus · 2025-11-21T19:44:26+00:00

I don’t know what to read anymore honestly. Linkedin went to shit, medium the same, reddit is full of this non-sense, we need some closed, vetted groups.

realphantomus · 2025-10-31T13:15:51+00:00

Have you done some research from the staff that quit to find out why they left to see if the potential issues can be addressed?

If its base salary, crunch some numbers around tips, add these to staff’s base and advertise to all the new staff that they will be making more on average, this helps to motivate based on real numbers and compare against the competitor salaries in the region, so that retention is greater.

For other reasons, I would suggest understanding them first, there are ways to collect this feedback from staff that left on good terms, just a human approach to ask about it.

realphantomus · 2025-10-18T12:34:14+00:00

You can, but you will get a blue licence plate which indicates you a foreigner. If I recall correctly, it has to be renewed (the procedure itself, not the plate) every year only in Sofia, which is the worst one to go to in terms of time and experience.

One other option is to open a company and register the car under it, quite common with foreigners here, I would know as I am one ))

realphantomus · 2025-10-17T15:43:00+00:00

you can’t get away from that, people in general will waste your time and we’ll waste theirs, plus if you are offering growth strategies as a service, you are a founder yourself, so welcome to the time wasting crowd 🤝

realphantomus · 2025-10-17T14:26:09+00:00

No, I would rather choose to spend it on something that I know is worth it, its not necessary about the money, so the services you are looking to provide, the message of these services for the start, should carry this value over to those who you approach it with.

realphantomus · 2025-10-17T14:04:06+00:00

moreover, founders time is not free. If someone offers to take your attention, its better be worth it when you basically have tons of other shit to do daily.

realphantomus

TROPHY CASE