Finding a technical co-founder for equity in Australia.

Each of these is right for somebody. The mistake is picking one because it is the one you heard of.

• An agency. Predictable, expensive, and gone at handover. Right when you have funding and a clear spec.
• A freelancer. Cheaper and faster, and the same handover problem with fewer safeguards. Right for a prototype you will throw away.
• A CTO hire. The best answer if you can afford a senior salary before revenue. Most founders cannot.
• A technical co-founder. Someone who builds it for equity and stays. The best outcome and the hardest to find, because good ones are rare and get asked weekly.
• A partner model. A firm builds and runs the technical side for reduced cash plus equity, with a cap on how many they take on. This is what injuid does, and it sits between the co-founder and the agency.

Equity is the most expensive money you will ever spend, so the terms matter more than the percentage. A fair deal for a technical partner has a few fixed parts regardless of the number.

Vesting with a cliff. Equity is earned over time, typically years, and none of it is earned until a first milestone, typically a year. If either side walks in month four, the founder is not carrying dead equity and the builder is not walking away with a slice of nothing.

A shareholders agreement before any code. Drafted by a lawyer, signed by both sides, covering what happens if either side leaves, who owns the code and the infrastructure, and how decisions get made. Doing this second is how friendships end.

Some cash. A deal with no cash on the table is spec work, and spec work is what nobody prioritises. Even a heavily discounted cash component changes how both sides behave.

Two people with fifty percent each and no tiebreak is a company that cannot make a decision the day they disagree. It is also rarely fair. The founder who found the customer, knows the industry, and is working full time has contributed something different from the builder who shows up part time with a laptop, and equal splits pretend otherwise.

A minority stake for the technical side, large enough that the outcome matters to them and small enough that the founder is unambiguously running the company, is the shape most good deals settle into. The exact number depends on stage, cash, and what each side brings, which is why it should be agreed per company and written down.

Ask these of anyone offering to build for equity, injuid included. The answers tell you whether they have done this before.

• Who will own the domain, the hosting, the source code, and every account? If the answer is not the company, walk.
• What happens to the code and the infrastructure if you leave? If I leave?
• How many of these are you doing at once? A builder with eight equity projects is a builder with eight things that are not getting done.
• What is the cash component, and what does it buy?
• Show me the shareholders agreement template. If there is not one, there is no deal yet.
• What will you say no to? A partner who has never turned down a feature will not turn down the one that sinks version one.

The best technical partners are not looking for ideas. They have ideas. They are looking for a founder who has already found the customer, already heard someone say they would pay, and already knows the industry well enough to know which feature matters. If you cannot describe the customer problem in one sentence yet, that is the work to do first, and it costs nothing.