A problem:
Is it only me (maybe an antisocial freak who has been living a year in San Francisco, yet hasn't got any friends amongst developers) who thinks that the process of finding cofounders is shamefully hard? No matter if you want to create a company or just team up with someone to develop a simple idea just for fun, it is just not that easy to find a partner. What do people do to solve this problem?
They seek among their friends or coworkers, they visit conferences (if their companies are ready to spend ~$1000 for a ticket), or they hang out on IRC and tech blogs. These methods are certainly not bad, but are they in tune with the present times? Look at job sites, or, excuse me, dating services. Nowadays no one gives you advice to go seek a girlfriend in a library or a club. You go online and search through huge databases, see pictures, read profiles and have a chat before an actual meeting. This widens your choice and makes you life easier and happier. So why don't we make such a solution for ourselves, in order to find people to create companies or projects with? I know we all are skeptics and each of you will name me thousands of reasons why it won't work out but why not give it a try if it works great in other fields? I'm not saying that it will replace real communication and visiting real tech events, but it will probably help.
What solutions exist today:
In fact, there are some solutions already. For instance, http://techcofounder.com and https://spreadsheets.google.com. I tried to use techcofounder.com and it seems to work well. You can create a profile and receive some interesting proposition letters. Alas, it is still inconvenient to use: hard to browse, no search, no history of conversations. Same thing with spreadsheets.google.com, although amazingly simple, it is very difficult to browse.
So what have I done:
I've created a simple tool: http://yafounder.com. It is not another pretentious game-changing startup, I've just created it by myself and the idea was to try to find a simple solution for a problem and see if people like it.
What it does:
It allows you to search through profiles in the same fashion as you do on dating websites. Just choose who you are and who you are looking for. You can add some criteria such as location or skills. There are also message system, microblogs (funny, huh?) and an ideas list where you can discuss different startup ideas.
What it lacks is obviously users and I would be insanely grateful if some of you will register and give feedback.