I'm building Remake.ai, a company with a simple but ambitious goal: to make home robots run apps.

Y Combinator (my startup accelerator idol) strongly recommends that startups have cofounders, and I believe that having one could significantly improve my chances of getting accepted. At the same time, I should admit: I don't strictly need a cofounder. I'm technical and hands-on enough to build everything myself. Beyond that, I can hire, contract, or outsource the rest—from business operations to sales.

Still, I decided to give the search an honest try. Here's what I've done so far:

Announced the startup publicly. I came out of stealth on LinkedIn.

Signed up for YC's cofounder matching platform. I've connected with a few people there, but progress has been slow. About half of my "matches" are really using the platform to get hired, rather than to cofound.

Reached out to former colleagues. These are people I consider 10x engineers and would gladly work with again. About half replied, but none were available.

Posted online. I shared my search on LinkedIn, relevant subreddits, Hacker News and industry forums. Mostly silence. I did post in r/roastmystartup and got a helpful reply—thank you, internet stranger! Posting on Hacker News under the title of "Roast my startup" got me another reply.

Posted a job opening on LinkedIn. Another experiment, with similar results.

Hired recruiters.

After about a month of this, here's what I've learned:

The potential cofounder pool is small. YC's platform shows about 16K total, worldwide.

The filtered pool is tiny. For people in the Bay Area, interested in robotics, and available to quit their jobs soon, that number drops to just a few hundred.

After manually reviewing profiles, I've identified about a dozen I'd actually like to talk to.

Response rates aren't great:

  • ~50% of invites are declined.
  • ~20% of accepted invites never lead to a meeting.
  • Of those I meet, about half are really just looking for a job.

On the bright side, there's a surprisingly wide range of aspiring cofounders—ages 16 to 70.

All in all, it hasn't felt like much progress.

But—I think I may have found a different solution. One that I genuinely love. It might seem unusual, surprising, or even a little shocking.

I'll share it in my next post.

Subscribe on Substack to get updates when new posts are published.