Founder2be

Founder2be is an entrepreneurship related social networking website for co-founders. A match making service for prospective entrepreneurs, it enables individuals with different skill sets to connect and work on IDeaS to launch startups together. Launched to the public in February 2011, over 1500 co-founders have joined as of June 2011. The majority of co-founders so far are from the United States, Finland, India, Spain, Germany and the UK. Globally, Founder2be connects co-founders in more than 50 countries. Users may create personal profiles, send private messages, post ideas for startups and comment, rate and share them via other social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Founder2be is an open service and co-founders need to register only to create a profile and post or comment on ideas. The site is currently available in English only.

The online match making service is complemented by the Global Alliance Program, which consists of incubators and accelerators around the world that help founding teams by providing services such as mentoring, pitch training, work space, access to funding and more.

History

Founder2be was founded by Oliver Bremer and Frank Haubenschild in January 2011 in Helsinki, Finland. The idea to create a co-founder matching service was born when Oliver had difficulties finding a co-founder for a startup idea. He abandoned his original idea, and instead focused on the co-founder finding problem, ultimately leading to Founder2be. Founder2be is often compared to dating websites such as Match.com in its set up due to its primary purpose and focus on helping people find and connect with others, often times previously unknown to each other.

Features

User profiles and posts are publicly visible by default; however, one must be registered to be able to send messages and post or comment on ideas. Registered users are also able to use the search functionality to better find co-founders based on location and skill set.

Personal Profiles

Users can create profiles stating their occupation, location, skills, availability, previous projects, startup and fund raising experience, ability to contribute seed funding and co-founder preferences in regards to skills and availability. Based on this information users are offered a list of matching profiles. Registered users can then send direct messages to suitable candidates.

Ideas

Registered users can post description of their ideas for startups, as well as comment and rank ideas posted by others. Ideas can be thought of as extensions to the user profiles, further detailing the individual co-founders interests, thus facilitating the introduction of other co-founders with potentially similar interests.

Global Alliance Program

The Global Alliance Program consists of 15 partners from four continents as of June 2011. The partners are organizations supporting innovation and entrepreneurship. These include student associations , startup incubators , entrepreneurship organizations , and other societies that support startups and entrepreneurs such as Startup Weekend .

Outcomes

Already, two companies have been launched by co-founders who met through Founder2be . One of them is Ziliot while the second one is still in stealth mode.

External links

• http://blog.founder2be.com/ Official Founder2be blog
• http://facebook.com/Founder2be Official Facebook page
• http://twitter.com/Founder2be Official Twitter page
• http://www.linkedin.com/company/founder2be Founder2be on LinkedIn
• http://www.crunchbase.com/company/founder2be Founder2be on CrunchBase

See also

• Business incubator
• Co-founder
• Entrepreneurship
• List of social networking websites
• Startup company
• Startup Weekend