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I am not trying to flame or troll the board. :)

And putting aside for a moment the issue of whether someone who is looking for a job is cut out to be an entrepreneur.....

It seems to me that many of the skills required to find a job ....such as networking, volunteering, research, elevator pitches, interview preparations, identifying your key strengths, positive attitude, fitting the job to the skills rather than other way round.... are the ones that you will require when you begin to search for a co-founder.

Hence my questions are for: 1. What are the similarities between the two processes? What lessons did you learn during the job search process that you could utilize when trying to find a founder. This may not apply to people who teamed up with a friend, but is more for people who actively went out to recruit skills that they did not have. 2. What are the differences? (I understand there may be a bias to say that it is much more difficult to find a co-founder than a job, but in today's economy....:)

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By "finding a job in a new industry," do you mean switching careers from being in high-tech to pharmaceuticals, or something like that? Or did you mean finding a new job within your current industry (e.g. switching companies, but doing the same kind of work)? – Mike Lee Jun 11 '10 at 22:38

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An employer is a customer. You're selling yourself. And that is not as easy as people think because to do it well, you'll have to keep pitching every day after the interview.

When you're looking for a co-founder, you're still selling yourself. Everyone talks about "ideas aren't important" it's the execution. The idea isn't going to execute itself and you need to sell the fact that you can do your part.

I was a teacher and coach for several years, and after going back to grad school-again, I found myself working in technology, doing consulting, and constantly getting new gigs with startups, corporations and publicly traded corporations as my wife and I have moved about the country. They've all been new industries (Because when you're getting trained as a teacher, you learn nothing about business.).

Always looking for the co-founder who's looking for a co-founder.

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up vote 0 down vote

The first thing I think when I read the common between getting a founder and looking for a job is that most the resources out there enable job seeking. It's also easy to find out if you can trust the company that you would go to.

I am unaware of resources that really do that for getting a co-founder. Good question hope someone has an answer that blows mine away.

Regards

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