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Looking for cofounder/hacker for MMO
30 points by JeffL on June 6, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 27 comments
I have a growing space MMORPG with paying users and positive cash flow. Last year I decided to really go all out on it and refocused my efforts more on marketing which has worked wonders. I now have way more paying users than I can handle and need another programmer who is expert in networking/DB/back end C++ programming to take the lead in scaling things up. I have a gorgeous new graphics engine that will be ready to launch in a couple months and I would love to be able to handle the accompanying influx of new players. I would prefer someone looking for mostly equity and a cofounder mentality to help me grow this thing.

Please email me at Jeff at StarSonata dot com if you have any interest.



Check out the book, "How to Get Rich" by Dennis Felix. He's the guy that owns Maxim magazine. One of his tenets is to never give up any of the ownership of your company. Period.

One of his stories is about the time that four key employees sat him down and told him they wanted 25% of the company or they were going to go out and compete with them. He told them to hit the road. He'd rather do all their jobs while we found replacements than give a share of his company.

Later on, he estimated that 25% share at $80 million. Oh, and the company they tried to start folded. And a couple came back to work for him.

You obviously have traction. You have a raving fan base. Don't give up a substantial portion of your company to someone you don't really know because you don't want to cut a paycheck.

If your marketing is working and you are making some money with the project, pay a hacker 100% of the profits and eat beans. You are going to win in the end.

You may "lose" a few bucks now, but those few dollars could get you your own island in 10 years.


Balance this against the richest people in the world who did give away equity when it was appropriate. I guess it depends on the situation.


I'm not even sure it depends on the situation, it could be a uniformly dumb idea that he succeeded in spite of. Every business has at least one of those.


That strategy doesn't always work. The only thing that story proves is that Felix knows what he's doing and the employees weren't worth the equity because clearly they didn't. There are a lot of companies that just would not have made it without outside capital and experience, even if the founders got less rich after the exit than they would have if they still collectively had 100% of the company.


It doesn't even prove either of those. He could have just been a case of right place, right time.


That's a bad rule.

You just have to do the math. Does giving away n% ownership increase your chances of success (or eventual magnitude of it) by enough to justify giving it up? A lot of times, it does. A co-founder offers a lot more than free labor.


see http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html for more detail


Two objections:

* So the difference in his net worth is between 320M and 240M - would it kill him to share some wealth (assuming the other people actually bring substantial value to the company?).

* Money alone doesn't make people happy - it's also about enjoying the process of building your wealth. A great cofounder can make your life overall just damn fun, whereas being the lone general of a more or less motivated army of employees can be a substandard experience.


I can't help you here - wish you luck, but ...

I was wondering if it was cool with this list to post a job listing for a cofounder for a startup? I was thinking about doing the same thing, but wasn't sure about the HN list etiquette?


I think the idea here is that if you think it would be interesting to readers then you post it. If people like it then they vote it up.


Quick newbie question: Does a post require a certain number of points to make it into the RSS feed? I noticed that not all threads from HN make it into my Google Reader subscription...


I think the RSS is the same as the front page based on a casual perusal of the source code:

  (newsop rss () (rsspage nil))

  (newscache rsspage user 90 
    (rss-stories (firstn 25 ranked-stories*)))

  (def gen-topstories ()
    (= ranked-stories* (rank-stories 180 1000 (memo frontpage-rank))))


  (def rank-stories (n consider scorefn)
    (bestn n (compare > scorefn) (recent-stories consider)))


It's probably a fair request to ask for an RSS feed of all stories. I just don't know how many people are interested in that.


i say go for it. there have been many similar posts in the past.


Could you please expound on the marketing you did? I have been in a comparable situation (indie games developer) but found myself a bit lost when it came to successful marketing. I basically ended up spending thousands of dollars on Google Adwords, and the return was questionable. I also dropped $1000 on GamesBannerNet, which had horrible return and was a waste of money. What worked for you?


I did Google advertising for over a year with very questionable returns and then I added a new landing page, tons more graphics and screen shots all over the web site, worked on the first 5 minutes of the game play experience a bunch, and added a lot more key words to the Google campaign and reduced my bids by a lot so I was only basically getting the dregs, but getting them cheap. All these changes took the ROI on advertising from about 1:1 to about 3:1 where it is now. It seems to be almost all about the landing page and the web site, at least in my experience.

Before I focused on marketing, I spent a solid year just improving the game with negligible financial effect. The first month I spent enhancing the website had 10x more effect than all the game play improvements I've ever done.


Thanks, that's really useful, and makes a lot of sense considering my experience too. I am going to take this to heart and work harder on the website!


that looks really, really cool. i have significant experience in all the areas you mentioned, and was pretty close to emailing you, when i saw your client app appears to be windows-only. and since it looks like you're using directx, the possibility of a mac port seems slim. i just can't bring myself to sit in front of a windows box all day.

best of luck to you all the same. looks like you've got a winner on your hands.


Our new graphics engine which will be coming out in a couple months is based on the open source Irrlicht graphics engine which is Windows, Linux, and MacOS. We're just going to support Windows at first, but in theory, versions for the other systems should be pretty easy as we're using cross platform sound and networking libraries as well.

I am torn, though, in deciding whether or not to support these other platforms even if the port is quite easy. I don't know if the extra people that it would bring in would be worth the extra QA to maintain three different versions on the client.


sounds interesting - depending on how much revenue you generate and how you see yourself strategically in relations to folks like EVE/CCP games, it may be a good time to speak to a VC...

max (maxniederhofer.com)


man, i wish i could check this out. good luck.


i mean, i run a mac. jesus.


Nice game, Jeff, if a little buggy. :)


No offense, but this sounds a little shady. Maybe part of this is because it's a game project, which inevitably suffer from terminal optimism. But if you really have a working product and more paying users than you can handle, why are you looking for another "founder". This is the time where you should be hiring employees, not splitting the business risk.


I could raise more money and hire an employee with the expertise I need, but then I would dilute and give shares to the investors. I would prefer to dilute by giving shares to another programmer who wants to work with the start-up mentality and really shoot for the stars. If I don't find someone with the skills the project requires who wants to work largely for equity soon then I will hire someone to do it as an employee or a contractor. Didn't PG write that you should always prefer employees who want as much equity as possible?


Maybe co-founder isn't the right word. That implies an even split of equity. Is that what you mean? Is this about offering someone 40% or 5%?


This statement made no sense at all. How do you know when he should be "hiring employees" versus "splitting the risk"? "Shady"? Did you look at the site?

Startups routinely bring in founders later in the game. If he's solo now, and not bringing in enough money to cover a full salary, he's looking for a cofounder for his business. There is a huge difference between your business and your code.

Snort existed for years before Marty turned it into a startup, and except for Marty, nobody on the team that IPO'd the company was there at the beginning.




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