Ten months ago, I moved to Boston to attend Emerson College as a creative writing M.F.A. candidate with focused aspirations: I wanted to write and I wanted to teach. I certainly didn’t anticipate jumping head-first into the startup world in my first year here (or ever) – because I didn’t know I could. My undergraduate college transcript reads like something out of Emily Dickinson’s adolescent dreams: British Literature, Creative Writing Workshop, Introduction to Linguistics. Sales and marketing were the things I assumed I would never have to think about, outside trying to be a savvy consumer in my own life.

But after hearing about my struggle to find an engaging, exciting internship for my first summer in Boston, an entrepreneur friend reminded me that I had more options than the literary ones I had stuck to so blindly: writing, after all, is a highly marketable skill, especially in a city like Boston. Luckily – or shall I say, serendipitously – he convinced me to attend RubyRiot.  

You can't throw a stone in the startup community without hitting a blog post, tweet, or discussion around co-founders.  While I think there's a great deal of good advice out there on the search for a co-founder on places like Venture Hacks, Humbled MBA and OnStartups, it's as important to understand the potholes to avoid.  Just like a pothole will disable an otherwise great car, these mistakes will derail your company...and your cofounder search.

How do you attract a technical cofounder? What does it take to be a good business cofounder? How do you get your idea off the ground and make some progress without spending a lot of time coding? These are all questions a Northeastern student emailed me about earlier this week. 

So what can you do? Luckily, in the world of the web today, there are many tools, tips and tricks out there that can help.