Suggested by 
Alan Gordon
about 3 years ago
The Platform community is full of entrepreneurial talent, however, with the current layout it can be difficult to connect with potential co-founders if neither person has an idea yet. Bringing technical and non-technical people together would be a great way to spur innovation. Matches could be made based on industry interest, skills, location . . . . . Y-Combinator uses this strategy in their programs to create great founding teams even before there's a start-up!
Platform's user numbers have grown really quick: there are definitely enough like-minded people with complementary skills to make viable co-founder connections
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Josh Burkwist
🎓
Jake Sweatman
🎓
Claire Zhang
🎓
?
+ Recommend someone to provide expertise
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Josh Burkwist
🎓
Jake Sweatman
🎓
Claire Zhang
🎓
?
+ Recommend someone to provide expertise
Chief Sustainability Officer @ Renaissance Park Corp
Love this notion, as one bad egg can take down even the best startup team.
Some of the suggestions point to scraping profiles for matchable keywords, but the problem there is that much of a profile is more hopeful than helpful.
Maybe harnessing Briggs Myers type personality tests could yield better pairings? Also, especially critical in a remote work world is accountability and progress.
Plenty of challenges here, but the sooner these matches can be made based on more objectively identified affinities and skills, and the sooner a match can be tested with perhaps smaller, less consequential tasks would be a way to go about it. Having built a couple non-profits, corralling volunteer experts is akin to herding cats, only often far less fun.
This service, added to the already brilliant Platform, would set it a world apart from any other incubator/accelerator I've ever seen...and likely would generate the kind of loyalty any brand would dream of...much less one with their hands in the pie.
cheers,
Data Scientist and Entrepreneur @ Quantified Publishing LLC
What value would Platform Studio bring to the cofounder search? Beyond LinkedIn, the "profile" of the cofounder includes all their public posts / past interactions on the platform (signals of quality of thinking, reputation and interests).
As someone open to searching for a cofounder, I think Alan's ideas are pretty cool. Would the cofounder search app be tied to Platform Studio, or would it be open to others outside of it?
@Alan Gordon does it make sense to only match those pre-idea, or at different stages?
Co-Managing Director @ Notre Dame Venture Capital
@Brian Bien I think both could make sense: pre-idea matching would be more focused on skills and interests while later stage matching could be done by people who are working on very similar startups that could benefit from the partnership
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
That's for resurfacing this, @Alan Gordon. This has been on the backlog for a while but has not been prioritized.
Would love to hear more about what you and others think would make for a great Co-Founder Matching program!
Co-Managing Director @ Notre Dame Venture Capital
@Jeremy Burton I could see something like Tinder being fun and useful. I think the key is to have matches based on skills, industries people are passionate about, time commitments, location etc. Maybe each person could use their Platform/LinkedIn profile as an intro and fill out a short form of the info above
From a previous idea I looked at I know Bubble has a solid Tinder clone which might be useful to save time
Agree with much of what you've outlined here re: passion industries, and also skill sets (I think it's important for them to be complementary and different) However, I think similar to dating apps for personal relationships, things can always look great on paper / in text and theoretically *should* work well, but somehow in real life, don't "click" for some unexplainable reason (because humans are weird and messy!) So, I wonder if there could be a way we could structure 'dates' for potential co-founders to test the waters.
Co-Managing Director @ Notre Dame Venture Capital
100% agree! Maybe if a match was made the option for a 30 minute Zoom intro would become available? Important to talk face-to-face even if over Zoom to really understand if it's a good match
Yeah! I also think it could even be helpful to guide these dates further, eg maybe there are design-based-thinking type prompts where founders try to brainstorm together in a low stakes way or something like that.
Co-Managing Director @ Notre Dame Venture Capital
Love this idea! Maybe even use some of the existing unmet needs just to start up some ideation in different areas
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
Love it. Some accelerators do "speed dating" style matchmaking, although I'm not sure how it's now done in a remote/COVID-safe world. Worth checking out what Antler and others do.