Cofounder Job Description Generator

These three get used interchangeably and they are completely different offers. Getting it wrong is how an offer collapses in week six, after both sides have spent a month assuming different things.

A cofounder takes founder risk and founder equity. They are in it whether or not you raise, probably unpaid or barely paid for a while, and their shares vest over years. You are choosing someone you will still be working with in five years, on the worst day of the company.

A founding engineer is an employee. Salaried, meaningful options rather than founder equity, joining something that already exists and taking a real but smaller risk. The best ones are often better engineers than the cofounder you were looking for, because they are not also being asked to take a mortgage-sized bet.

Be specific in the description about which one this is, including the numbers. "Cofounder-level" with employee equity is a phrase that gets found out in the offer conversation and costs you the candidate.

The people you want are not looking at job boards. They are employed, doing well, and being approached regularly. The description has to be worth their attention in the first paragraph, and the first paragraph is not your mission statement.

What gets read: what the product does, who uses it, what evidence exists that anybody wants it, and what this person would own in their first six months. What does not: "fast-paced environment", "rockstar", a list of twelve technologies, and anything about passion.

Cut the must-haves to four or five. Every extra requirement filters out good people who could have done the job, and the ones who apply anyway are the ones who read requirements loosely, which is not a selection criterion you wanted.

Most founders assess a technical cofounder by talking to them, liking them, and checking they can name the right technologies. That tests likeability and vocabulary. Neither predicts whether this person can build your first version or lead the team that replaces it.

The thing to probe is what they have actually done, in detail, with numbers. Not "tell me about a project you are proud of" but "walk me through the hardest decision on that system, what you rejected, and what it cost you six months later". Strong people have specific, slightly boring answers with trade-offs in them. Weak ones have polished narratives with no losses in them.

For a technical cofounder, two separate questions matter and they are rarely found in the same person. Can they build the first version themselves, quickly, alone. And can they later hire and lead engineers better than themselves. Somebody who can only do the first becomes the bottleneck at fifteen people. Somebody who can only do the second cannot help you for the first year.

Then there is the part no interview reaches: what happens when the two of you disagree. Work together first. A paid week on something real tells you more than six conversations, and it is the cheapest due diligence available on a decision this permanent.

If you are not technical and you are hiring a technical cofounder, you are being asked to judge a skill you do not have, on the least reversible decision in the company. That is not a confidence problem; it is a structural one.

The usual fix is to borrow judgement. Someone senior and technical who owes you nothing, sitting in on a technical conversation and telling you afterwards what they heard. Many founders can find that in their network for the price of lunch, and should.

We do it commercially too, either as recruitment where we run the search, or as an ad-hoc technical assessment of somebody you found yourself. The second is the cheaper one and is usually what founders actually need: the pipeline is fine, the shortlist is the problem. Either way, get a second technical opinion from somewhere before you sign a grant you cannot take back.

It writes from your description. It has never met your team, seen your product or spoken to a candidate, so the output is a strong starting draft rather than a finished document. Edit it, particularly the must-haves, where your context beats any generic judgement.

It cannot assess anybody. The scorecard gives you the questions and what good and thin answers sound like; the judgement in the room is still yours, and for a technical role that you cannot judge yourself, that is a real limitation to plan around.

It will not settle your equity number. The output gives a range with reasoning, because the number is a negotiation between two people and anything more specific from a tool would be invented.

Run it and nothing you paste is stored. Submit the form to unlock more runs or to download the description and what you typed comes to us with your address, which is what the tick box on that form says. Either way, describe the company rather than naming individuals; you get the same output from "one commercial founder, one part-time contractor".