Dear founder,
You bring the idea.
I build the company.
I'm looking for people I can build with, not work for. If you have an idea that won't let you sleep, and you're hungry enough to stake your life on it, this page is for you. I'll handle the tech, the design, the infrastructure, and the product instinct. You handle the people, the distribution, and the grit. We share the equity. We share the profit. We share the risk.
Note · I take 1–2 co-founder pitches per quarter. Every one gets read by hand. Nobody else sees what you send me.
No fine print. No fog. Everything up front. You cover starter runway. You register the company. I join as co-founder on paper. We both carry real skin.
Equity
0 – 50%
Range, not fixed. Depends on the idea, the stage, and what you bring.
Profit share
Up to 50%
Aligned with equity. When the company earns, we both earn.
Runway
From €100 / month
Starter tools. We grow the budget with the company.
Company
You register
Your legal entity. I join as co-founder on the paperwork.
The equity range is deliberately wide because I won't price you without knowing you. A pre-revenue idea from someone who's already in the scene is worth one deal; an idea I have to shape from scratch is worth another. We figure it out together on the call, and I'll always show my math.
Two halves. One company. No overlap.
Ten years of shipping
A decade across B2B SaaS, fintech, commerce and enterprise ERP: a 15-person team taken off a legacy stack onto Spring Boot and a two-week cadence, invoice automation running for 50+ tenants, and a platform I now build and operate end to end. Most of it was never public, and the public part is the smaller half.
Whichever stack the problem deserves
Kotlin, Java, TypeScript, Swift, Python, Rust. Chosen per problem rather than per habit, which mostly means I can argue for the boring option and mean it. Ten years is long enough to have paid for the interesting ones.
Every layer, every time
System design, domain modeling, backend, frontend, database schema, infrastructure, CI/CD, auth, billing, observability. I don't hand anything off. I've led a monolith decomposition into 12 services, built and shipped my own multi-app platform into production, and designed a multi-tenant architecture that runs for 50+ tenants.
Design that doesn't apologize
Same person writing the code is the one deciding how it feels. No agency handoff, no Bootstrap, no template. Product intuition grown by building things people actually use.
Infrastructure that stays cheap
I self-host. I don't need $400/month of cloud to run your MVP. Your runway stays small because my servers are small, and they still run real production traffic.
An ideas engine, not a ticket-taker
I don't wait to be told what to build. I show up with opinions, we argue them out, and the winning call goes in.
Hunger
The one thing I can't build for you. If you're not starving for this, we're both wasting time.
Distribution
The scene. The outbound. The cold emails, the calls, the DMs. You know people I will never meet.
Marketing & sales
Turning interest into revenue. Running the funnel. Landing the first 100 customers by name.
The human side
Trust, warmth, presence. What I can't put into a database.
Runway
€100/month minimum to start. Stripe, Google Workspace, one small server. We scale with the company.
Company registration
Your legal entity, your name first, I join as co-founder on the paperwork.
The only thing I can't build for you is who you are. I gatekeep on personality, not capital. If the fit is wrong, no amount of money fixes it. If the fit is right, we figure the money out together.
I want to build with you if
- You're hungry for one specific thing in your life you haven't gotten yet, and you know what it is.
- You've already built or organized something nobody asked you to. Even if it failed. Especially if it failed.
- You can walk into a room full of strangers and leave with one person's trust.
- You tell me "no" to my face without flinching. I'll do the same.
- Your instinct is to ship, then polish, not polish, then maybe ship.
- You want this because it changes your life, not because it looks good on LinkedIn.
Not for you if
- You want a co-founder for the title, not the work.
- You need someone to tell you what to do every morning.
- You've never sold anything to anyone, not a ticket, not a course, not an idea.
- You're doing this to prove something to a parent, ex, or employer.
- You want to test the waters before committing. This is not a vibe check.
If you're not sure which side you're on, submit the pitch and let me decide. I'd rather say no to a hundred hungry people than accidentally say yes to the wrong one.
Five steps. No mystery.
You pitch
Fill in the form below, or book a call directly if you'd rather talk. File attachments welcome: deck, napkin sketch, voice memo, anything.
I read it
Every pitch gets a hand read. No assistants. No AI filtering. Reply within 14 days with yes, no, or 'let's talk'.
30-minute call
If it's a maybe, we get on a call. I ask the hard questions about the idea and about you. You ask the harder ones about me.
Sleep on it
Nobody commits on the call. I sleep on it, you sleep on it. Next day we decide whether to take the next step.
We build
You register the company, I join as co-founder on paper, we ship the first real cut in 2–4 weeks. Everything tracked in a shared spreadsheet from day one.
The form is long on purpose.
Short answers won't make it past me. The questions below are the same ones I'd ask on a first call, save us both the time and answer them honestly in writing. I read every pitch by hand. Reply within 14 days: yes, no, or "let's talk".
The obvious questions.
What if my idea isn't tech-heavy?
Doesn't matter. I build what serves the idea, not the other way around. If the idea needs a marketplace, I build a marketplace. If it needs a newsletter and a Stripe link, I build a newsletter and a Stripe link. The tech is the means, not the point.
Do I need funding already?
No. You need to be able to cover about €100/month to start, Stripe, Google Workspace, one small server. That's the floor. We grow the budget as the company grows. I'm not gatekeeping on big capital. I'm gatekeeping on whether you'll put your own €100 on the line for something you believe in.
What happens if we disagree on direction?
My call in tech and product. Your call in distribution and the human side. The big strategic stuff, pivots, new markets, hires, partnerships, we decide together. And we talk about disagreements the week they come up, not in month three.
Can I pitch anonymously?
No. I need to see the person before I read the idea. If anonymity feels important, this isn't the right setup for you.
What happens to my idea if you say no?
Nothing. I don't take ideas, I don't have time to build something someone else imagined without them in the loop. If the answer is no, the answer is no, and your pitch goes in a folder nobody else ever opens.
How many pitches do you take?
One to two per quarter, usually. I'd rather go deep with the right person than wide with the wrong ones.
What's the clean exit look like?
Either of us can walk away in the first 90 days, no hard feelings, no equity transfer. After that, we have an agreed-upon exit process we'll write into the paperwork together. Nothing locks you in to something that's not working.
If you read this whole page and something in your chest said "that's me", send the pitch. Even if you're not sure. I'd rather read your uncertainty than miss someone I could have built with.
With respect,
Edvard
Edvard Grei · Aachen · edvone.dev