In an ideal world, you kick off your startup with your best friend of 10 years or build your empire with your significant other.
But more often than nought, finding a co-founder isn’t that simple.
Now more than ever, ‘founder matchmaking’ platforms online are rising in popularity, aiming to provide a solution to this.
How? By connecting more founders with their potential co-founders, team members or even investors via online networking.
Here are 6 platforms that you can sign up for right now to find the right people who can take your business to the next stage.
1. Startbee
After being frustrated with outdated websites, Startbee’s founder—a Ben Liger—launched a website that prioritises user-friendliness and building a helpful entrepreneur community above everything.
Startbee also takes inspiration from the rise of remote and flexible working. According to its founder, Startbee doesn’t just want to focus on US or Europe markets but reach out to African, South American, and Asian markets.
With the rising success of remote working, Startbee foresees the traditional geographical boundaries of work and finding co-founders being totally dismantled.
It’s a pretty cool concept to be able to reach out to co-founders across international borders to gauge their markets, but it might not be for everyone.
That being said, Startbee allows you to also set filters to find co-founders that are exclusively within the country.
Currently, Startbee’s features are all free to use.
2. CoFoundersLab
CoFoundersLab was established 9 years ago, making them one of the oldest and largest entrepreneur matchmaking platforms to date.
On their website, CoFoundersLab states 300,294 entrepreneurs signed up so far, hailing from over 140 countries across the globe.
CoFoundersLab works by connecting founders across various levels. This includes just basic networking, finding team members for your startup, looking to invest, etc.
You can even make things easier for your potential co-founders. CoFoundersLab allows you to specify clearly if your business is at its idea phase, working with a business plan, ready with a viable product or if you already have paying customers.
All of these added features are included so that you waste less time reaching out to the wrong people and vice versa, by ensuring that you shortlist the right people within seconds of looking at their page.
CoFoundersLab is free to use if you’re just using basic features. Other added features like seeing who’s viewed your profile, advanced search candidates and recommended individuals require their premium plan.
Premium plans start from US$14.99/month (RM61.48).
3. Founder2Be
Founder2Be describes itself as a platform where ‘LinkedIn meets the online dating site Match.com’.
At the time of writing, Founder2Be lists more than 95,000+ co-founders signed up. According to Tech Crunch, they’re also the first-ever entrepreneur platform to operate across all 5 continents, excluding Antarctica.
Founder2Be pretty much does the exact same thing as CoFoundersLab, striving on simplicity and straightforward individual profiles that would display what you’re looking for, startup experience as well as skill and achievement.
Founder2Be has a rich selection of co-founder profiles—with experience across business development, designers, web engineers, finance and more.
Founder2Be’s basic plan is free, but more advanced features require you to sign up for their US$12/month (RM49.22) subscription.
4. F6S
F6S is quite expansive in terms of their offered features. Besides searching for potential co-founders, F6S allows you to:-
- Apply for accelerators
- Browse investment opportunities and submit applications
- Source local startup networking events
- Post listings for available positions in your startups
All of these added features are meant to position F6S as a full-fledged platform to not only source for co-founders, but to take it one step further once you meet the match of your dreams.
The most distinguishable aspect of F6S for us is perhaps their ‘Startup Benefits’ page right here.
Listed here are here promotional e-vouchers and codes that you can redeem as an F6S member—from 3 months free of icon vector packs, free email automation services, 15-30% off domain names and other services that might greatly help you on your startup journey.
Currently, F6S is free to use.
5. StartUp Jobs Asia
At first glance, StartUp Jobs Asia looks and feels like just another job-seeking platform.
However, you can post up listings and filter your search for specifically co-founders here as well.
Plus, they have a massive following of people throughout Malaysia and the rest of Asia, so you can bet that there’ll be a fair chunk of people looking at your listing.
As the main founder of your startup, you can also post up your interest in finding a co-founder according to his/her qualifications, and screen through resumes easily once people have applied for the position.
StartUp Jobs Asia is free to use.
6. Lead Candy
Lead Candy adopts a unique approach to helping you find a suitable co-founder.
How it works is through the power of connections and outreach messaging. Lead Candy lets you search for industry leaders, budding entrepreneurs, marketers, co-founders and other people across all levels and connect with them via their social media accounts.
Let’s say you’re looking for a potential CTO in your area. Lead Candy immediately narrows them down based on your preference and gives you access to their email, public social pages and other relevant contact information so you can reach out.
Based on your existing contacts as well, Lead Candy can show you common friends between you and said person, so your outreach is more personalized to them.
Lead Candy’s subscription plans start from US$149/year (RM611.12).
- You can read more about other successful founder stories we’ve written on here.
Featured Image Credit: Found8 KL Sentral
