I’ve read various posts from people in different communities asking around about the best ways to bring a development team together for their new start-ups and I’ve also had a few people contact me to find out how I did it.  So although I’m not a pro at it; I have gone through the process and decided to make that this week's Sunday School topic.

I don’t want to get too much into this, but first, let me note that before you start finding your team you will need to do your research and put some serious thoughts into what platform you want to develop your start-up in. As you go through the process of deciding the development platform keep this in mind—Availability of developers for your chosen platform.  We’re developing in Ruby on Rails (RoR) and it’s been extra tough to find developers because it’s a relatively new platform…and developers who are truly proficient in RoR are in high demand and hard to find.  Would I do it differenly?? That's a big can of worms we won't open.

Lets talk about the Why, Who, How and Where… 

Why Go the Equity Route

You have no money—Nuff said. It's your only option.

You have money but no technical skills.  You need at least one partner that has the technical skills to help you identify all the requirement and help you find the right company to perform the work.  You will also need that person to review the code you receive.  No matter who you outsource your work to…it will need to be thoroughly reviewed. 

Who Are You Looking For

(This is a topic that deserves its own post) 

Make a list of what skills and experience you want the developer(s) you are looking for to have. What you are looking for will depend of the type of person you are but I will say this…what matters are their skill sets and to some extent their personalities.  So no need to  be a stickler on their education level or even years of experience because you might miss out on a great developer. Also, if you only want local developers…you just made your job much harder. 

Reminder:  You are getting a development team together for a business NOT an Open Source Project so it’s great if what you offer is a way for developers to improve their skills but it’s not the reason why or the developer you want to join your project/business. 

How to Get Developers to Code for Equity

Brilliant Concept. That is the one and probably only real reason anyone will work for equity.  They believe in the concept and its potential.  This means that you have to be able to sell your concept and get other people excited about it.  It means YOU have to be very enthusiastic about it and believe in it 110%...which takes me to point 2. 

You…Know your Business. The developers have to believe in you and want to work for you / with you.  If they talk to you and you don’t instill trust and confidence in them for what you can achieve then they won’t believe the business can take off—With or without a site.  Much like investors…developers are investing their time in you and your business so they have to believe they will have a return on investment. 

Have a Plan and Be Organized. Once someone thinks you have a brilliant concept and wants to work with you anyone worth anything will be looking for an organized and clear road ahead.  The more organized you are the faster developers can get to work and a developer who is coding is a happy developer. 

Offer a Challenge.  This is something else that will draw developers to work for equity.  Because even if you have a brilliant idea…if the code is too easy and simple some developers will still turn you down.  However, if you are working on something innovative and challenging it will entice some developers to join you.  Many of the developers working on WhyGoSolo really enjoy it because it’s different and challenging.  

Where to Find Developers

Events.  No matter what platform or really where you are…every types of developers get together for Meetups, conferences or other events like Barcamp.  Attend the events and get to know the people.  Don’t come on too strong or push the concept on anyone.  Let people get to know you…and get to know them.  Be nonchalant but excited about mentioning what you are working on and see who is interested. 

Networking Online. Three of the developers and one designer currently on the team actually came from Pownce.  How did that happen?  Through talking about WhyGoSolo on Pownce and posting links back to the blog.  Some people got curious, started asking questions and got interested.  Our latest addition...and youngest member took a long time to finally get on the team but I’m really happy he has finally joined us.  He talked about working with RoR a lot on Pownce and I started following what he did, who he was and asked him if he was interested in joining us. 

It will take time to build enough rapport to get people through online communities to join you, but it’s doable. 

Third Party Sites. One of the developers who has since left us came from using GoBig Network.  Their are many job posting sites out there you can look into and use.  The only caution to keep in mind is that you have to be very clear and direct if all you are offering is equity.

One Gets you More.  Basically once you find a good developer willing to work with you he or she will likely talk to others in their network and be able to get more developers to join you.  Keith brought Nola and Nola brought Michael.  Tad and Lindsay came as a great package deal.  Tad brought someone else who has temporarily left us due to being too busy with his day job.  Hoping we’ll get him back soon. 

Any developer invested in the business will go the distance to make sure it's successful.  Again, this theory is the same with investors. Once you get one big investor interested they will make sure to help you find what you need because it’s in their best interest to see you/the business be successful. 

Through Open Solicitation.  Believe it or not, we did get one of our developers through open email solicitation.  Desperate times called for desperate measures.  If you are going to go the solicitation route I wouldn't make it your primary route and you better be very upfront and honest in your email about who you are and what you are doing.  Also, for heaven sake, personalize the email.  I emailed a lot of people but I checked each of their sites, if they had one, and profiles on different sites prior to sending out the email.  I used the information I found to personalize the email.  I didn’t get any hate mail back and many said they weren’t available at the moment but would let me know if things changed. 

So in a nutshell…you need to do your homework and find the right platform for your start-up then start networking, building rapport and getting people excited about what you are working on. You have to be patient.  You will hit some dead ends, bad leads and some disappointments but eventually the team will come together.