The advice is pretty consistently that it is ideal to have a long-standing relationship with your co-founders but what if you don't know any kick-ass technical people? What are good ways to meet great technical co-founders and form long-lasting relationships?
I'm assuming you have an idea for a product and want someone to work with you on this. I agree with the comments that you should learn to build things. This doesn't mean you need to become a skilled programmer, but you should become familiar with the basic tools to build a first version of your product. There are a couple of reasons for this.
1. The best people are typically attracted by traction, metrics and numbers, not fluff ideas. If you can build a first version of your product and get initial traction it will be much easier to get people interested in what you're doing.
2. Putting in work shows that you're serious. For every 100 people that have "business ideas" there is maybe one that actually acts on them by investing their own time and money. This will set you apart from all the other people looking for technical co-founders.
3. It will make communication with your technical co-founder down the line easier. If you are doing anything related to software then you must understand (on a basic level) how things work and what tradeoffs and decisions go into building a product. Again, you don't need to become a programmer, but you should have enough knowledge to have an intelligence conversation with a technical person about important technical decisions. Otherwise there'll likely be a lot of frustration and bad surprises on both sides. Trust me, I've been there.
Btw, a "first version of your product" doesn't necessarily mean a be full-blown application. You could setup use a blog, newsletter, spreadsheets or whatever else to generate traction.
Technical folks are driven by challenges. If you really want to meet or know technical people, you have to yourself start working on "impossible" task. Once you struggle, you can ask online community to help. Some of them might help and then you can take this conversation forward. building relationship is the hardest thing and it takes time. Many a times, you might miss the market by the time you have built relationship. So it can't be the only thing you are doing. No body likes to join a ship going nowhere.... create a map, treasure hunt plan, buy a ship and then ask people to come join you along your pursuit
In the process of building things, you'll become confused and need help. Asking for help, you'll meet the kick-ass developers who want to share their knowledge.
In their course of helping you, you'll form a long-lasting relationship.
A long-standing relation with your co-founder is not primarily going to help you win in the end. You win by solving a problem that a lot of people have or will potentially have as a result of some major shift in how we do things. One of the ways to have an intuition about a big problem before most people is to be in the game. You get in the game by making things. When you make things you realize how little you know so you ask people for help. That's how you meet "kick-ass techies."
You don't need to be a kick-ass techie to start making things. Just hack them together.
In my experience, you can do what you like and then share, all the time. It really takes a great deal of effort to enable your peers to know what are your interests and what you are good at. In the end I had to force myself into writing articles, bringing the code to "ready for other people" state and etc. Once done — people will find you, then you just chat, try building something together and see how that comes out.
Good ways to meet technical people are to get involved in your local tech community. Look for MeetUps in your area and attend. Start networking. Building long-lasting relationships is something that just comes with time as the friendships you make develop.
1. The best people are typically attracted by traction, metrics and numbers, not fluff ideas. If you can build a first version of your product and get initial traction it will be much easier to get people interested in what you're doing.
2. Putting in work shows that you're serious. For every 100 people that have "business ideas" there is maybe one that actually acts on them by investing their own time and money. This will set you apart from all the other people looking for technical co-founders.
3. It will make communication with your technical co-founder down the line easier. If you are doing anything related to software then you must understand (on a basic level) how things work and what tradeoffs and decisions go into building a product. Again, you don't need to become a programmer, but you should have enough knowledge to have an intelligence conversation with a technical person about important technical decisions. Otherwise there'll likely be a lot of frustration and bad surprises on both sides. Trust me, I've been there.
Btw, a "first version of your product" doesn't necessarily mean a be full-blown application. You could setup use a blog, newsletter, spreadsheets or whatever else to generate traction.