How to Create an App Without a Technical Co-Founder - Hustle Con 2015

Hi guys, so great to see so many hustlers. Okay, so I'm super excited to be here, and typically when I go to conferences, I really appreciate speakers who can share real stories.

And also give some tactical things that I can get started on right away.

So hopefully I will be able to do both of those for you today.

So let's start by talking a little bit about myself so you know who you're listening to.

Um, I moved to the US when I was in high school from Korea.

So I heard from Sam that today there are representations from 5 continents in the audience. Which is pretty cool. Hopefully there's some representations from Korea. My background is in business, so I went to business school and I've always been in the consumer products industry. I love, absolutely love working on products that I know will end up in hands of customers, especially if it's something that they can engage with on a daily basis, like Coffee Meets Bagel. So today I'm here to tell you and talk a little bit about my story and how I started a tech company without a technical co-founder.

And the short advice is, if you can get one, go get one. Because it'll make your life a lot easier. But you know, not everybody has that option.

I didn't have one.

And it certainly should not stop anyone from starting, or at least getting started.

So I want to talk first about the story behind Coffee Meets Bagel, how and why I got started.

And how I built my first minimum viable product without any technical knowledge, and then finally how I found my CTO. So when you talk to anyone about dating in general, not just even online dating, you probably never find anyone who's like 100% satisfied with the dating scene. There's always some problem and some complaint. And that's because dating is really hard. You know, getting two people to fall in love is a big challenge. For me, online dating in particular had three main problems. One, it's optimized for men. So if you look at— what I mean by that is if you look at vast majority of online dating products, it's optimized for surfacing as many photos as possible.

And men really enjoy browsing photos of women. Like, they genuinely enjoy that.

You know, it's not a bad thing, right? And most products that are out there are designed by men.

But on the other hand, women don't particularly enjoy browsing through endless photos of men. In fact, you know, I think more often than not, we enjoy browsing photos of other women. Than men, so that's a big problem, obviously.

Not only that, women get harassed often.

You know, you put a picture up that has any remote resemblance to a woman's face or a woman's body, I guess, it won't take you long before you start getting creepy messages from creepy people.

And then finally, online dating is a chore. Let's face it, right? Like, you don't ever run into anyone who's so excited, like, "I can't wait to try this online dating platform, like, looking so forward to it." No, it's still something that people kind of just do it because, you know, "Okay, I kind of should meet somebody.

It's hard to meet somebody because I'm so busy.

Let's just give this a try." So how do you make this more exciting? How do you bring exciting back to dating? Because it should be a very— it's an exciting thing, right, meeting somebody for the first time. And how do we deliver on traits that focuses on quality, safety, and simplicity, which are traits that are especially important to women? So our solution to this was curating one match a day, every day at noon, and giving our customers something to look forward to, creating that magical moment on a daily basis.

That's how you bring excitement. So we curate the matches and we use variety of information, mainly at Coffee Meets Bagel, it's very important that we actually make matches through your friend network, so somebody close to your network, which also creates environment and the sense of safety.

So now that I have this idea, but no one to help me build this, like, how did I go about it? When I first started this sort of journey, the first advice and the best advice I got was this. It's from a friend. So I blurred out the name, but it says, "This guy looks pretty good, Good work experience. School A is definitely not as well ranked as School B, but it's fine. I feel you don't necessarily need a super good guy as there's nothing very hard technically about this concept. If you get traction, then you can hire great people as they will want to come and work for you, but for now you can save your cash.

I feel it's more important that you validate the concept fast, and for that you need someone who can work full-time to get a prototype out fast.

So for my first engineer, I didn't look for Stanford, MIT grad. I just wanted somebody who was capable of building something very simple, my minimum viable product, and who was available. I mean, lots of people are busy doing lots of things. And my MVP consisted of 4 things. One, it was gonna be simple Facebook app.

To get information from Facebook account because I knew the product, for this product, was getting access to the social graph was very important.

Second thing, it had to have basic functionality where you can see a profile and like or pass. And then basic admin tools for me to actually create these matches.

And finally, we needed an ability for people to anonymously chat, an anonymous phone number, so that if there's a mutual like, they can actually talk to each other.

And so it's pretty, I mean, it's not that simple.

I mean, there's still some complicated elements here, but it's enough for me to actually prove out variety of hypotheses I had, like are people willing to give me Facebook access?

Are people going to be chatting?

Are people willing to give me phone number, and are they gonna be chatting, et cetera?

So these are some designs, initial designs.

Like Sam mentioned, my co-founders are my sisters, and one of them is a designer, so I had that area covered.

So these are some initial designs I had. This, you know, a lot of things were imported through Facebook. This profile where you can set up preferences, and then pictures. I mean, it's not the most sophisticated designs.

Where you can input phone number, and then finally where you can like or pass.

If you take a look at this, you can already tell there's a lot more in terms of features here than the MVP that I stated. So this is very common mistake that lots of people make and that I made also, and we ended up whittling down a lot of things. You really wanna stick to the bare minimum things that you need, and I think it's very easy to feel like, oh my God, I really need that feature, when in reality you don't really need it. And I see now a lot of companies, they use Google Forms or even surveys without even building anything to get started. So that's something definitely important to remember. So once that I had concept, my first developer I hired from oDesk.

I had a friend who was a Python engineer who told me about oDesk and recommended that I use Python because I guess that's what he was familiar with and he liked. I don't think there was any particular reason. And he also was the one who, you know, suggested that I create a GitHub account so whoever I hire can actually submit and check in code.

So I chose Python and got a ton of responses from ODesk.

That's what happens if you put anything on that platform. And so it was really hard for me to tell who was better, like just even looking at ratings and reviews. So I needed something additional to be able to evaluate.

So I started with a small project.

I actually gave a project to them.

It was very simple, and I asked 3 questions. How long do you need to implement this? What questions would you ask me to clarify the project? And can you answer my question in the doc? I had some questions, and I was super surprised at the variety of answers I got. I mean, it varied from like 2 hours to 40 hours, from no questions to like a lot of questions, et cetera, and this really gave me good insights even though I don't, I can't fully vet out them technically, but it really gave me a good insight into how experienced they were. And so this is an initial posting that I used. It says expert Python Django engineer for website with Facebook integration needed. And if you see the posting, I mean, I explain, I mean, introduce the team a little bit.

It looks like a real job. You know, job posting, right? This is how you also attract better candidates, even on ODesk.

And this is the initial project that I gave. It was a one-page, basically asked them to, hey, create something, an app where you can log in with Facebook, collect specific information, and then have a signup page. And I didn't provide any mockups, and there are some parts that are, left purposely vague because I wanted to see if this is a type of person, if there's ambiguity, are they going to bring it up to me and discuss, okay, hey, this is not very clear, let's clarify this, or is this the type of person who's gonna just kind of go off and make assumptions and everything and then 2 weeks later come back with something I didn't really expect? And so, This was a very good exercise, and I was able to hire an engineer from Indonesia who I paid $15 an hour, and I think for the MVP, it took him about, working about 4 weeks, and he dedicated about 15 hours a week. So not bad, right? So once I had the MVP, I had 50 of my friends actually sign up, and their friends too, single friends, and sign up and actually test this.

Obviously just singles. And I was the one who was curating match every day, doing the matchmaker thing. And at noon, I was the one who was manually sending emails. I was using Mailchimp.

And I tested this for a week. And the result was very positive.

You know, vast majority of the users were logging in every day, and I also after a week followed up with most of the users by phone to get some qualitative feedback, and it was very positive, and the overall response was, you know, they really looked forward to getting the email at noon time, click-through was very high, so I would call that a success. Right?

So I was ready to get this MVP into a full-blown product, and then something terrible happened to me.

I lost touch with my engineer and he disappeared out of the earth. So I had this code that I didn't understand and I couldn't get in touch with him.

And so that leads me to my final section, how I found my CTO.

So the problem with oDesk, it's not lack of talent.

There are a lot of great developers. It's lack of commitment and consistency.

A lot of these contractors work for multiple clients at a time, so if something happens with one project, they may not have all that time to dedicate to your project.

And I was paying this person on an hourly basis, so there is no repercussion if he just takes off and leaves. And so I would suggest in terms of incentive structure, some combination of hourly as well as a lump sum payment upon delivery of the project.

I don't think it's a good idea to just do it on project basis because one, you may not attract the best people out there, and two, I think if the engineer ends up underestimating the hours, which they often do, they may end up cutting corners. Because they don't want to put a lot more hours to it. So some combination is what I would recommend.

But regardless, I needed to find a local developer, my CTO. And the key to finding CTO is, I mean, I guess there's no shortcut here. It's basically using your resource to go after every channel possible. I mean, I went after meetups, Craigslist, friends, school lists, People are often surprised when I tell them I found my first CTO through Craigslist, but it's still a very effective channel. I found my second one through Meetup list.

I sent out an email to a Meetup, Python Meetup in New York, and that's how I found my second one, but it took a while. I mean, this kind of conversation takes time. Obviously, the timing has to work out, so I think for my second CTO, I started a conversation with him in July, and then we didn't end up working together until January. So keep those conversations going.

This is the Craigslist posting that I had. You know, fell in love with Python, great Python, Django developer needed at a new online dating company, full-time or part-time with potential CTO opportunity. Notice I didn't advertise specifically for a CTO position, because I didn't want to set that expectation.

It was very important for me to first work with this person together, and then together coming to a decision, is this CTO position the right job for you?

And then this is my email to the New York Python meetup group. Advice needed, where is the best place to find a Python programmer?

And this is where I got the response.

But now you have a, you know, somebody that you like to work with, "but how do you hire them when you have no money?" 'Cause I hadn't raised any money at that point.

And typical market rate in New York at the time was, if you wanna hire any good enough engineer, you have to pay upwards of $100, $100 to maybe $150 an hour.

So this is what I suggested.

I'm gonna pay you $30 an hour, and you can bill me every 2 weeks, I'll pay that.

We'll work together for 6 months, and if we mutually decide that this is the right job for you, Then we'll talk about equity compensation. And then if it doesn't work out, then I'll pay you the difference a few months later.

We said October at the time, and the discussion happened in January.

And my thought was, okay, there's still a risk if things don't work out that I would have to pay you for that amount, but if things work out, I would have raised at least some money by then, so it bought me some time, and I could conserve my cash. One thing I wanna say about generally CTOs is I ran into so many CTOs who are working on really really early-stage products that obviously they came on board, but 6 months to a year later, they're not happy because they feel like they didn't get compensated fairly in terms of equity, because founder share versus the CTO share is oftentimes very different.

The difference is really wide.

And if you think about it, if you brought somebody pre-funding and they have to go through just as much uncertainty and risk as you do, You know, think of, put yourself in their situation and think like, what is the fair amount that they'll want so that they don't have to worry about this kind of stuff and actually dedicate to work, right? Because the last thing you want to do is get somebody on board, 'cause that takes time, and then a year later they're resentful and then they are thinking of leaving.

And so I think oftentimes like investors will tell you, okay, this is the fair amount, or you might read something on TechCrunch or whatever, this is fair amount, but I think you should, Personally think about what you think is fair to give out to your CTO.

But at the end of the day, it may still not work out.

So my two CTOs initially, it didn't work out with them for a variety of reasons, personality or whatever, location didn't work out. So the last message I wanna give you is you need to take your time before committing to each other.

I was lucky, my third one, we met actually through a recruiter.

By that time, I had raised some money, so I could actually work with a recruiter, and then it was a great match, so now, you know, it's been amazing, but I made those two mistakes, and it was great that I didn't commit anything yet, right? So with that, summary of my talk, one, You don't always need an A-player to get things started. Don't wait for that genius who's gonna come in and solve all your tech problems because they don't exist.

Get it out there, build it, and iterate. Get a tech advisor. And this doesn't have to be anyone official in any sense, right?

I talked about my friend. All they need is to spend maybe 5 to 10 minutes a month They don't even have to meet you in person.

You can just shoot them an email, take 5 minutes, like, "Hey, what do you think about this resume?" or "Do you think this code snippet is clean?" It's not much time for them, but it's very valuable for you.

Again, there is no shortcut. You have to work at it, and it takes time.

And one way to help with that is being creative.

Even now, I love recruiting outside of the Valley, because in the Valley, things are just so competitive.

People aren't as willing to take risk with someone who may not have all the hot startups in their resume, et cetera.

It takes more risk and more time to get out there and recruit, so it's less competitive. So be creative.

Then finally, take your time before committing.

It's very important.

Thank you very much for your time.

I hope it was helpful.

Thanks, Aram. If you have any questions for her, please come up.

Hey, so I was wondering, how did you deal with computer security throughout the entire ordeal, the possibility of someone hacking into the site when you were in development?

Yeah, to be honest, that was not in my mind when I was developing at all.

So you just got lucky, essentially.

Yes. I guess.

Hey, thanks for your time. It was very down to earth. I love it.

Thank you.

Question for you is, coming in with no money and you have all these potential CTOs, how do you enter into your legal agreements to protect yourself without having to spend money like with a legal company and all that?

Yeah, that's a really good question.

The way I did it, which may or may not be the right thing to do, is we actually wrote something down, just very casually using our own words, no lawyer involved, that stated some of these core things that we agreed on.

And I think by that point, if you need— already if you need a lawyer, I don't think that's the right person.

Because yeah, I understand you need to protect the downside, but when you're that early and you're trying to be scrappy, Somebody who's asking for a lawyer and a contract, etc., I don't necessarily think it's the right fit. So it honestly didn't occur to me, it didn't occur to him, and I think anyone who's willing to try out at a startup like that early shouldn't want to involve a lawyer.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Hi.

So thanks for sharing your story. It's pretty, pretty awesome to hear. Really love to get a little more detail on that, getting that first CTO. Yeah. $30 an hour seems so cheap. The rates you pay on codementor.io are easily $100 an hour for a really great engineer.

Yeah.

So I imagine the equity incentive has to really be strong, or at least the— I mean, I don't know what the contract you actually inked out with this guy, or your first CTOs are. But to get a CTO full-time, like of anyone of any talent in the United States for $30 an hour, I imagine you must have given him a really strong equity incentive if it worked out.

Yeah, so to be clear, when I actually drafted this contract, we didn't have like, okay, your equity share is gonna be this percentage.

And I think there's pros and cons to having that conversations early versus later.

Early obviously gives you clarity, But I think when you have that conversation early, and then this is sort of how like 6 months later people feel a little bit resentful or something because I feel like I'm pulling more weight, and so we need to reopen this conversation, et cetera.

For me, basically I was willing to give founder-level equity. It wasn't going to be equal split, but it was very significant.

Yeah. Typically like to share this, like anyone who asks about this, I think at the beginning, if you wanna really attract the right talent, you need to be generous with your equity. You can't be stingy about it because this is a person who's gonna dedicate just as much time and energy with you and try to ride all the roller coaster ride with you. So even now, my current CTO, I mean, he's almost a fourth co-founder to me. In terms of commitment in every sense. And so I never felt like, oh my god, I'm giving up too much. OK. Yeah.

Any other learnings here? So a lot of people say co-founders should be within your network or should be a technical person that you know. So I think hiring somebody from Craigslist or whatnot seems a little daunting because you just have no relationship with this person and it seems so random.

Yeah.

So any other learnings you can share if you have to go that route? Anything else you kind of learned along the way?

Yeah, so what I would, like things that I didn't do that I would do now is definitely reference checks.

I find it really funny here, like sometimes if I ask for references or a project or something, because I guess the market is so competitive, people, like my recruiter would tell me, "Oh, you know, if you do that, you may turn off some people and they may not want to apply or whatever." But if you don't even want to go through that, like, I mean, forget it then, right?

So I think reference checks are really important.

I take, even now, for every employee that I bring, I take that very seriously. I even do reference checks before I bring anyone on site. And it's not just like formal, okay, I'm just doing this to check off the box. I really drill down to it because that is one of the most important data points you can get about the person. I've turned down a lot of, actually, opportunities where we almost— people were excited about this person, and then because of reference, we didn't end up hiring. Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you.

OK, we're going to take these 3.

Hey, Aram. Thanks for the talk. So mine, I'm running a really early-stage startup and looking for a CTO. If anyone in the crowd is interested, come talk to me.

So scrappy.

So my MVP is a little bit more complicated. And what I'm looking for in a CTO is not just someone who's a developer, but also someone I can bounce ideas off of and really learn and design the product along with them. So when you initially said you found a CTO or a developer in Indonesia, is that even possible? And do you suggest waiting to find someone like that over here where you can have that real-time conversation rather than find someone internationally, and then you have the time delays, and you're not able to have that depth of thought.

Yeah, I mean, the Indonesia person, I wouldn't call him my CTO.

He was a contractor that I was working with. I would challenge your thought about whether your MVP really needs to be more complicated, because it's a really hard exercise I think you have to go through over and over and over. And every time you go through that exercise, you'll find something that you can simplify. And so, yes, it's important to get a technical co-founder, I mean technical partner who you can bounce off ideas and all that stuff. And typically, all the engineers that I've met who wanna join a startup are people like that. They don't wanna be just coding, right? They wanna get their ideas heard, they're very product savvy also. So I think you'll have no problem finding that person here who will, you will be able to talk about product as well as coding, et cetera. Yeah, I would say it's gonna be a little harder to do that, finding that person abroad, like through ODesk or something. But that shouldn't stop you, again, from getting started. It's always much easier to attract the right partner if you already have something to show them.

Right?

So consider that somewhat investment that you're actually doing in order to hire better people. Yeah.

Great, thank you. Thank you, Aram. And guys, once again, look out for me.

What product you, uh—

oops.

Oh no, no worries. Thank you for the talk.

Yeah, thank you for coming.

You had mentioned that other online dating platforms were not as great. Um, what other apps or products did you use as mental models when you started out?

I mean, I've tried— I mean, I've tried everything and I've still used everything, right?

OKCupid, Match.com, all the mobile apps.

I think at the time there was like At The Pool.

There are so many that come in and out all the time that I can't even get like keep track, to be honest. But I use— even now I use Tinder, everything to get Product inspirations just to see what other competitors are doing. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I guess just in addition to online dating sites.

Ah, okay.

What other products?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I actually use now, I use a lot of games, gaming products for inspiration because our business model is also very similar to that of mobile games.

And I absolutely love how a lot of mobile game products are able to really service customers while they provide personalized services and really incentivize the users to engage consistently with the app. So I usually get a lot of good ideas from just playing games.

Yeah.

Thanks. Thanks for the talk. What range do you consider founder-level equity? Is it like 5%, 15? I'm just curious, like 20%?

Well, so if you were to start a company today with 3 people, I would think you would split it 33, 30, like 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, right? And so if this person is joining, maybe it's not 1/3. I'm depending also again where the stage is at, but maybe it's 15, maybe it's 20. I mean, if it's really early, whatever, right?

So it's definitely, I think 5%, to be honest, I hear 5% a lot. I think that's too low.

If you're post-funding, that's a different story. So when I say founder level, just really think about, okay, if I were, had started this company with this person from the very beginning, what would the equity split had looked like? I think that should give you a good guidance.

Got it.

And you were able to raise funding without the co-founder and without the CTO?

So when I raised money, my initial fund seed, we raised $600,000.

I had the second CTO, but we were still on this hourly structure. We hadn't had like clear, okay, you're gonna come in as a CTO. After I raised money, we had conversations, we were still working maybe a few months, and then we decided, okay, this is not a good fit for both of us.

So then my current CTO came on board after the seed round funding.

Okay, I got it.

Thanks. Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.