I resonate with the OP because I am in this exact situation that I am building something but I cannot leave my current job now.

When some friends started to build companies in mid-2000/mid-2010 you could code/build something, try to get some traction and you could be received by VCs/angels and occasionally they could write a 25K check for you to work for 3-6 months to build it and perhaps you could get some traction and then scale or go burst.

Now the bar for new products it's absurdly high if you're out of the YC or San Francisco VC circles or if you do not have anyone in the industry; plus most of the VCs prefer to invest in "pedigree founders" than in unknown people, especially if those people are outside of the bay area.

In my first endeavor, I went with a finished product that undercut some big enterprise SaaS vendors, and we lost space for a bunch of non-technical guys with PPTs and one idea.

It was a job interview (50 question homework, 3 day hackathon trial) plus firm requirements and who has the final say is presented. We didn't hear about the different tests and requirements these 100 dates demanded so it appears one sided.

The best way to meet a cofounder is to be interested in something; so interested you explore it and you find something you like someone else is doing and you talk to them about it. You come up with some idea and you reach out to this person and explore it.

That should have taken unbounded time to find someone, not a mere 9 months.

From what I can see, the author is a CTO who is ex-meta and Stanford computer science. They look like a technical co-founder to me.

I know there's this annoying and widely prevalent persona of co-founder dater with only ideas, and no skills to build them, but this author doesn't seem to be that.

What’s the highest value company that was started with a method like this? Genuinely curious, can’t think of one.

Honestly the author sounds like they like the idea of doing a startup more than a specific problem they want to solve.

Unfortunately this means you’re an undifferentiated untechnical person trying to attract highly in demand talent to work on your vague idea.

It won’t work because both cofounders will have no vision and no strategy that distinguishes them from the massses.

This strategy might work if the person has a proven track record of leading start ups to success. But if this were true, you would raise money and hire technical people instead.

Let's look at the trade:

"I’m looking for a technical cofounder who is ready to commit in the next 2-3 months and work in-person in San Francisco. I’m looking for them to do Product, Design, and Engineering."

This requires a lead level engineer, say $200k to $500k/year salary in SF. Given that this is a 2~3 month engagement, we'd double that for contractor rate and pro rata. I'd estimate this is $100k to $250k of time.

"I’m committed to healthtech and have a few ideas, but willing to work on other ideas in healthtech."

Great, this is worth about $0.

This doesn't seem like a fair trade.

What's worse is that "Rob Balian" is a CTO with product manager background. Instead of looking for a co-founder to complement his skillset, he's duplicating the skill set.

This is not a task anyone should be experienced enough to be good at.

Some responses that I'll probably also update in the post:

a/ Why not start with people you know or friends?-- This is 100% the best way and I tried it first. Timing is hard and there's only like 7 people I'd want to start companies with. They all had good reasons not to embark on starting a company at this moment.

b/ Vibes is super vague-- I found it really important to get along with a cofounder as friends-- I met my CF's wife early on, we did thanksgiving together, we spent a lot of time together outside of work. We've had actual fun building so far. For some that's important, for others not. It's a great point, I'll clarify.

c/ OP is a non-technical ideas guy looking for his coding ninja-- Nope, sorry. I've never had an eng job but learned to code early in college building random iphone apps. Been building nights and weekends for the past 10 years (including while cofounder searching).

d/ Start building instead of just CF searching- great point. Building out ideas, talking to customers, etc makes your cofounder conversations waaaay more interesting because people can see you get excited about something real. Early on I had too many high-level conversations about "the space" or "starting something" that led nowhere.

e/ These "modes" are total bs-- Totally agree but gotta keep the title interesting : )

...so this guy wants someone in SF to quit their job and work full time while unpaid? This method selects from the bottom of the pool, not from the top.

What does that mean?

.....probably would be quite useful also?

I have a tip on finding a cofounder. I've been looking for the last 12 months and I tried a lot of things, but the thing that worked best is this: Post a job ad.

That's it. My ad sounded like a normal job in every way, with a title like "Director of X". A couple of specific notes: 1) the first line said "cofounder" in it somewhere, and 2) it specified "part-time to full-time, heavy on equity compensation" somewhere else.

The result: Lots of inappropriate candidates applied. But also, my 2 job posts resulted in three extremely excellent team members: a equity-only cofounder, a mostly-equity cofounder/early hire, and an amazing advisor. I have been working with these folks for months and they are very solid.

I also recommend my vetting process: just like a job. That is, I did a phone screen, a multi-hour interview, a little take-home, and I winnowed down the candidates at each stage. With the chosen few, I kicked off a "let's do this" conversation. My pitch was, "I know it's ridiculous, but let's get business married, we'll set up an offsite and start working together full-time... and, if we really need to, we'll get an annulment". That's what vesting is for!

Hope that helps :)