I had a similar problem. I used Google to sign in on digitalocean, then I changed the main domain in google apps and readded the original domain seperately on Google Apps. But probably because some kind of ID mismatch, I was now unable to sign-in on Digitalocean with the original e-mail address recreated in Google Apps. Password recovery didn't work either, for some reason digitalocean doesn't do password reset for accounts that were created using Google sign-in. I was forced to create a support ticket with digitalocean and wait.
They probably put a human to communicate with you, verify some identity and then give you access to your servers again, I'm sure?
Compare that with Google (and Facebook, those are the two I have experience with) who will simply lock you out of your account and if you ask for help, they say they cannot. "But what about the three years of photos I've stored?" I asked. "They have now been deleted since your account was terminated" they told me. "Why?" "We cannot tell you".
I'm thinking that there is a similar dynamic going on in romantic relationships. There are people who choose a partner for other reasons beyond strict love or money. For example, you might want a partner who is at home and supports you and your work (traditional household model). In order for this relationship to actually support you, like ioseph said, a matching level of emotional investment is important. Otherwise you're too dependent on your partner and that won't work out in your favor. I hope I could clarify my train of thought a little.
This is a complicated issue, and no one can give you a concrete solution. A lot of business, especially startups, is flying by the seat of your pants. There simply isn't an answer out there, which is what makes it fun, in my opinion.
(Full disclosure: I skimmed your post, but the advice I'll give you is universal.)
- Look for someone mature and experienced. You said you gravitated to the college student. I strongly recommend against that. You want someone who has built a ton of products like yours before and can iterate fast. You also want someone with real success stories on their resume who can act as a strong source of wisdom. Always try to partner with someone from whom you can learn a lot.
- Having lots of time is incredibly important. If your product isn't her top priority, your CTO is going to become your bottleneck. You want someone who can go without a salary until you (ideally) make money or (less ideally) raise money.
- This is minor, but stop calling the person a CTO. Until you have lots of employees, you're not chiefs of anything. You're looking for a technical partner or technical co-founder.
- What is your product? Come up with a vision and plan for MVP, and then recruit a technical co-founder. A lot of the best technical people are drawn to the vision, as well as access to an interesting market. They don't care much about money. If they wanted it that much, they'd work for one of the large tech companies.
Hi smt88,
having lots of time is important. But the good people are usually very busy already. I know some C level guys, who would just leave their job and work with me. But the cool guys are different. Usually the cool guys are already in good positions and wouldn't just run away from current responsibilities.
I have to take certain steps, or just start working part-time with them, not forcing anything, so that one will eventually get rid of his other responsibilities to work with me.
If you want to get something done, make progress every day. If working part-time with these A people is fast enough to do what you want, then you don't need a technical co-founder. If it's not, then don't wait for them to quit their jobs. If the timing is right sometime in the future, great! If not, don't let them be a bottleneck for you.
The recipe for finding a great co-founder is this: perfect timing + passion + skill set.
Skills are the least important. You only need your technical co-founder to be good enough to help you make your first sale. After that, hopefully you'll be making enough revenue to take you to profitability. If not, you can try to raise money.
So how do you find the timing/passion parts?
This is where luck comes in. You can make your own luck by meeting lots and lots of people. You should network like crazy. The best networking is offering to help people without any expectation of something in return. The more people in the world who owe you a favor, the better.
You should tell everyone about your ideas. They'll tell friends whom they think might be interested. Word will get around. Don't be scared to share your ideas with anyone/everyone.
There's a lot to this, to be honest. I think if you spend time in the Bay Area, you'll drastically improve your chances of finding a co-founder. It also helps to be tackling a big, sexy issue that makes potential partners drool (e.g. transportation, education, etc.)
There are also some accelerators where you come in without an idea. You meet the other people, get some money, and then form teams to create products. Since money is not much of an issue for you AND you've been successful in the past, one of those programs would be perfect for you.
You might want to hop onto Clarity or something and have a conversation with a Silicon Valley expert/VC about this. I'm not the best person to suggest concrete steps because your path is so different from mine.
I have had a similar experience searching for a business co-founder. I might be able to help out, if you contact me through my profile email. I want to code a really good app store marketplace someday, similar to trading digital goods.
