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Ask HN: How do I go about finding a female co-founder?
6 points by zeynel1 on March 27, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 16 comments
I built this app with Google App Engine which I believe can now be said to have reached the MVP stage. I am looking for a female co-founder because the application is a network for “party girls” who go out a lot: http://hello-1-world.appspot.com/about

It is basically an email based app (I built it to learn sending and receiving email with GAE): After an outing with her girlfriends she sends an email to the app and copies her friends. The application increases the ranking of the ccd girls and displays on application’s home page the top 10 ranked girls: http://hello-1-world.appspot.com/

At this point, as you can see, there is no branding, and no activity, just the avatars of 2 dummy users. I thought that it would be good to partner with a female founder to develop and market the app because some initial girl must seed the network with her friends.

I am posting this note because of the frequent mantra that I read at HN: “release early and release often.” I think this is as early as I think it makes sense to release.



What on earth makes you think there is significant overlap between "party girls" and entrepreneurial-minded women? What you are looking for would be an extremely rare find -- not only are female entrepreneurs unlikely to be party girls, we generally don't like to socialize with them, either. So, don't get your hopes up for the perfect co-founder who groks that demographic to come along.


I also wanted to add this quote by PG that founders do not need to identify with their users: http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html

  One of the things that will surprise you if you build
  something popular is that you won't know your users. 
  Reddit now has almost half a million unique visitors a
  month. Who are all those people? They have no idea. 
  No web  startup does. And since you don't know your 
  users, it's dangerous to guess what they'll like. 
  Better to release something and let them tell you.


What on earth makes you think there is significant overlap between "party girls" and entrepreneurial-minded women?

I don’t believe that the co-founder needs to be a “party girl”. If she goes out once in a while with her friends and uses the application, that should be enough.

I think this is a slow process. At this stage, just testing if registration works, avatars upload, proper emails are sent and so on.


I personally know some of these so called party girls. The last thing on their minds when they're out doing what makes them party girls is emailing, cc'ing, social scores and ranking. These are women who have a hard time keeping the apps updated on their iPhones, or figuring out how to dial someone who txted them. I really doubt they're going to be enthusiastic about your app. Seems a bit too geeky for this demographic. Plus, cc'ing someone from your phone is a painful process for anyone - even the geeks. Think of how many clicks it takes to cc one person. Who's going to bother picking multiple people from an address book when they're drunk or having fun? I admire your talent, but you should probably use your knowledge of GAE for something a bit more relevant. Good luck, and I hope it takes off.


Thanks for this analysis! It makes sense. I believe one of the reasons to launch early is to observe how users actually use the product. Now I am thinking maybe I need more than a co-founder, or in addition to a co-founder, “brand ambassadors” or paid users who would try out the application. I may put an ad in Craigslist and see what happens there. Thanks again to everyone for great comments.


Please define "party girl". That appears to mean something completely different to me than what you are describing and by other reactions I get the impression that I am not the only one.


As the user of this app I was thinking socially active fun-lowing females of all ages; probably living in a big city going out at least a few times a week; and for whom enjoying the company of girlfriends is an important part of their lives.


You might want to work on finding another descriptor. I just checked Urban Dictionary and every definition they have agrees with my general understanding that "party girl" doesn't really refer to a gal who likes to hang out and socialize with her gal friends. It generally suggests sex, drugs, and low personal standards. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=party%20girl

Edit: You might try looking for a word more like "socialite".


Thanks! I updated the about page with your suggestion: http://hello-1-world.appspot.com/about

Any other edits are welcome.


> email based

Is your target demographic really using email to communicate over Facebook, Twitter, SMS, IM?


I am not sure. I tried email because I was new to Google App Engine and I was trying to learn how to send and receive email; and also email appeared to be easiest. I vaguely remember reading here that the younger generation do not use email anymore. An sms version will make this service much more fun to use, but that's something to consider later.


What are the benefits for the users of your app? Why a new "specialized" social network?


What are the benefits for the users of your app?

May I suggest these:

  1. bragging rights
  2. finding hot spots
  3. posting a picture from the outing to keep a record of social activity
I welcome other possibilities as well.

Why a new "specialized" social network?

I am interested in the fact that

1. it is only for females (the market segment that spend the most: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/20/why-women-rule-the-internet... )

2. the network will grow from one initial person and would be possible to reach anyone from anyone (I am not expert in the science of graphs so this sounds interesting to me)


http://hello-1-world.appspot.com/about


As with any co-founders, the best place to look is always within your direct or extended networks. For a female co-founder you trust, a savvy girlfriend or ex that you broke up with on good terms should do the trick.


Seems pretty clear by his initial post that he doesn't have that option available.




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