Hiring a cofounder

[tommcginnis]

Fan27, you can see from my latest post that I need someone working full time on research. And he'd need to be pretty familiar with the topics in:
.

Really? It wasn't immediately apparent to me that most posters here are retired / self-employed. (Apart from the "Options" forum, I also post on "Programmers" and I'm willing to bet the majority of them are still working for the man ).

Again, though, I'll bet you that the persons who've posted to this thread, and that many other ET regulars, are doing pretty much *this* -- you'd be *paying* them to do what they're doing anyway. I don't know of too many people who'd argue with that.

 

[Aquarians]

There is no way you are going to find someone to work full time on this project with the qualifications you describe for $1000 per month. It's not going to happen. What you are asking is for someone to incur a major opportunity cost and live on a starvation wage for a project that is not really even off the ground. Now, if you had a viable product with a rapidly expanding user base, then you might be able to convince someone. Even that would be doubtful.

Perhaps build a proof of concept yourself and then look at attracting talent. That is the approach I am taking.

There are a few things that I have to say on "talent" and the way everyone claims to have it aplenty.

Objectively, the only proof of talent I consider valid is someone who makes money trough their strategies. someone here noticed that for every single job in the industry there are thousands of candidates competing to get it. By definition, if they're looking for a job, they don't make money on their own, don't have a strategy that makes money. If they don't have that, they AREN'T TALENTED! And yup, it applies to myself too, I'm not that "talented" (yet).

So please everyone, keep your voice down when you claim "talent" unless you really can back it up with a consistent track record and a viable life off your own trades. On a side note, there's a post on the careers forum on Wilmott where a guy who used to be a HEAD TRADER for 20 years at some German bank and was laid off recently, can't find another job. Formally, on paper, that guy's credentials are the quintesence of talent. In practice, he doesn't make money.

Another strong indicator of bullshit when somone claims talent is what I call "the bid-ask spread". As a trader you know you are getting ripped when the option spread is huge. In the job market, everyone finds it so easily to place their asks, they are all talented and require lots and lots of money to hire them. Yet, ask the same talents to place a bid and PAY someone to do what they do (like those $1000 / month I'm willing to pay). You'll get crickets, 99.9% of the time. So the ask is in the $250k / year and the bid is nada. Infinite spread, clear ripoff.

 

[Aquarians]

you'd be *paying* them to do what they're doing anyway. I don't know of too many people who'd argue with that.

Well, I did realize that No way I'm paying them since the incentive is totally skewed in this case.

 

[NoodleStrudle]

I am not sure but I sense some contradictions. Initially you stated you have a trading system already in place but now you state that you are looking for someone who can do full time research and implementation on your behalf for a mere 1000 a month. If that someone had true qualifications he/she would surely not share his or her expertise for such meager amount.

I don't want to deflate your excitement but simply share from my experience. Either you have something very powerful to bring to the table that attracts equal caliber or you don't. At the moment it sounds more like you look for someone to do all the work while you work your safe day job without equal skin in the game. On the other hand if you truly discovered an edge then as others pointed out you should simply hire someone to get it into production. Your proposition just makes very little sense as it stands. And I say that as someone who has traded options at banks and hedge funds for many years and runs his own algorithmic trading business now for over 7 years. When I need helping hands I hire programmers or whatever skill set I need. If I need funding I would either start a fund and open to outside investment or rejoin a hedge fund. Why would I give away my edge to someone who is not willing to take a risk and go independent? If you had an equal edge you would not be afraid to quit your job and be confident in going full throttle to advance your new venture. Sounds perhaps harsh but this is how it appears to me. At your stage you should probably look to hire someone to do the work that you don't get around doing. Dependent on that type of work 1000 won't cut it and if you can't spend more and instead look to offer an equity stake then you better be willing and able to contribute an equal amount of time and effort. And that I do not see on your side.

Having said that you come across as a thinking person and are defending your thoughts and I find that refreshing given how rare that is on this site.

So I need someone of roughly equal capabilities to bounce ideas off.



It's what I'm doing currently, but realized it's very inefficient working on it as a side project with a full time job. What would take me 1-2 days of intensive, full time work, can take over a week due to having to spread it in small, scattered patches, when I find time after the day job.

So to increase efficiency I could:

a) Quit my job and concentrate full time on developing a successful trading system.
b) Take a part time job, and use half of a working day working on my trading system.
c) Keep my full time job but hire someone to do #a instead of me.

#a is the most risky, I'm not going to pursue it soon.
#b might be an alternative, but still not something I'm gonna jump on very soon.
So it remains #c.

The key ingredient is that for #c I need someone able to concentrate full time on trading strategy research. They also need to have similar level of qualifications, so we can discuss quantsy stuff and split the work. And I'm aware that $1k is not a particularly compelling amount to live on, but it'd be enough if the reasons driving this hypothetical unicorn to work full time on trading strategy research were the same as mine. It would be a lot like option #a from the guy's perspective.

 

[Sig]

I did use words like "hypothetical" and "unicorn" for this mythical creature I am looking for

I wonder if you may be better off dropping the $1,000/month thing and adjusting the equity split instead. Really, $1,000 doesn't make a difference. It's not enough to live off most places and if you've got enough money to live off a $1K/month salary you've probably got enough to live off a $0/month salary for nearly the same amount of time. If I was between startups and had a good feel that you'd add value I may be convinced to do something like this with a 75/25 split based on the time and effort we were putting in, but I'd value the $1,000/month part at almost nothing.

I know it doesn't translate exactly from the startup world, but it's very common for people with "ideas" to overrate their value. The valley is littered with ideas that were worth billions but are worth exactly zero because the "founder" wouldn't give up enough equity to make it worth anyone's while to turn an idea into reality, which is a lot harder than you'd think before actually doing it. Something to think about, not sure it 100% applies here.

 

[fan27]

There are a few things that I have to say on "talent" and the way everyone claims to have it aplenty.

Objectively, the only proof of talent I consider valid is someone who makes money trough their strategies. someone here noticed that for every single job in the industry there are thousands of candidates competing to get it. By definition, if they're looking for a job, they don't make money on their own, don't have a strategy that makes money. If they don't have that, they AREN'T TALENTED! And yup, it applies to myself too, I'm not that "talented" (yet).

So please everyone, keep your voice down when you claim "talent" unless you really can back it up with a consistent track record and a viable life off your own trades. On a side note, there's a post on the careers forum on Wilmott where a guy who used to be a HEAD TRADER for 20 years at some German bank and was laid off recently, can't find another job. Formally, on paper, that guy's credentials are the quintesence of talent. In practice, he doesn't make money.

Another strong indicator of bullshit when somone claims talent is what I call "the bid-ask spread". As a trader you know you are getting ripped when the option spread is huge. In the job market, everyone finds it so easily to place their asks, they are all talented and require lots and lots of money to hire them. Yet, ask the same talents to place a bid and PAY someone to do what they do (like those $1000 / month I'm willing to pay). You'll get crickets, 99.9% of the time. So the ask is in the $250k / year and the bid is nada. Infinite spread, clear ripoff.

In my original post to this thread I offered to show my tech, not babble on and on about my skills. I have built a custom machine learning solution which is CURRENTLY used to find profitable trading strategies and has the licensing infrastructure in place so that it could be sold as a commercial product. So yeah...anyone can talk, but when someone offers to demonstrate code that they wrote and is currently offering value, I would tend to listen.

 

[tommcginnis]

And I say that as someone who has traded options at banks and hedge funds for many years and runs his own algorithmic trading business now for over 7 years.

It must've been another NoodleStrudle who claimed that nobody could make money from algorithmic trading.

Yeahhhhhhhhh.

 

[Sig]

I am not sure but I sense some contradictions. Initially you stated you have a trading system already in place but now you state that you are looking for someone who can do full time research and implementation on your behalf for a mere 1000 a month. If that someone had true qualifications he/she would surely not share his or her expertise for such meager amount.

I don't want to deflate your excitement but simply share from my experience. Either you have something very powerful to bring to the table that attracts equal caliber or you don't. At the moment it sounds more like you look for someone to do all the work while you work your safe day job without equal skin in the game. On the other hand if you truly discovered an edge then as others pointed out you should simply hire someone to get it into production. Your proposition just makes very little sense as it stands. And I say that as someone who has traded options at banks and hedge funds for many years and runs his own algorithmic trading business now for over 7 years. When I need helping hands I hire programmers or whatever skill set I need. If I need funding I would either start a fund and open to outside investment or rejoin a hedge fund. Why would I give away my edge to someone who is not willing to take a risk and go independent? If you had an equal edge you would not be afraid to quit your job and go full throttle to advance your new venture. Sounds perhaps hard but this is how it appears to me. At your stage you should probably look to hire someone to do the work that you don't get around doing. Dependent on that type of work 1000 won't cut it and if you can't spend more and instead look for to offer an equity stake then you better be willing and able to contribute and equal amount of time and effort. And that I do not see on your side.

Or as the VC's say, we prefer to invest in pigs, not chickens. Hate that way of thinking, by the way, especially coming from a VC in their comfy office diversifying their risk away, but it's certainly prevalent.

 

[NoodleStrudle]

From technical analysis. Reading comprehension and honesty trumps a lot of other skills in this industry

It must've been another NoodleStrudle who claimed that nobody could make money from algorithmic trading.

Yeahhhhhhhhh.

 

[NoodleStrudle]

Which probably translates in finance parlance to "bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered"

Or as the VC's say, we prefer to invest in pigs, not chickens. Hate that way of thinking, by the way, especially coming from a VC in their comfy office diversifying their risk away, but it's certainly prevalent.