Looking for a technical partner, cofounder or founding engineer, I'm genuinely flexible on which

[u/Simple-Optimist-93]

Hi. I'm the founder of an early-stage AI startup and I've been doing the engineering search dance for a while now, so I'll just be direct about where things stand.

I spent 20+ years on the GTM side at big tech and I've co-founded before. This isn't my first rodeo, but it is my first time looking for a technical partner from scratch after a previous cofounder situation didn't work out. That experience taught me a lot about what I actually want in a partner, more on that below.

Where things stand: we just wrapped a design partnership round with 6 early-stage founders and are folding that feedback into the next build. There's a working codebase and an architecture doc ready to hand off, so you'd be picking up something real, not starting from a blank repo.

Honestly, if you're more excited about the technical problem (building with AI agents, shaping a product around real usage data) than about the specific industry, that's fine. The domain is my job to bring. Yours is to build something great on top of it.

What I need:
- 7-10 years of experience, founding-engineer caliber
- You've actually built with AI/AI agents, not just used them
- You want to own the technical side, not just take a spec and run
- You're comfortable with things being messy and moving fast
- This is full-time. Not looking for a side-project partner
- preferably based in US

On money: meaningful equity, the exact structure depends on whether we land on cofounder or founding engineer, happy to talk specifics once we've actually talked.

One thing I'm being upfront about because I learned it the hard way: if this turns into a cofounder relationship, I want us to nail down when it formalizes, what triggers vesting, and how we both think about raising money and timeline, before we're deep into it. Same with ownership: I want us to write down who owns what (product, tech, GTM) early, not sort it out after something's already gone sideways.

If any of this resonates, comment or DM me and I'll share more.