Finding a co-founder for a startup can be a tricky proposition. Unless you have a lot of capital to hire help early on, you’ll probably want to find someone to work alongside you from the beginning.

Your co-founder will need to share your vision and passion for your idea. If they don’t share the dream, they’ll lose focus and interest when things get tight.

They’ll need to have skills and a personality that compliments yours. There will be plenty of disagreements and hardship in the early days of a startup and adding to it with personality conflicts is just asking for failure.

So when I saw someone advertising for a co-founder via Craigslist, I was dismayed. After I read the posting, however, I was left wondering if the startup founder has a clue at all.

We are a Web 2.0 Startup looking for the best web/graphic designer out there to join our team. Candidate should be familiar with all things Web 2.0 (tagging, bookmarklets, widgets, badges, etc.) You should be able to create a visually appealing, cutting edge, full featured, scalable, and optimized site. Must be familiar with Linux/Apache/Tomcat/AJAX/mySQL+PostgreSQL. Goal is to get up and running within next 3-6 months.

They need a web designer who knows Tomcat and databases? And the implication of this paragraph is that the designer should not only be able to create a beautiful site but is responsible for making it scalable as well? I suppose you could consider that a design needs to scale, but from the technologies described, I think they want their designer to build out the technology, too.

Position would have NO initial salary (like us) but equity between 3-5% and future salary upon funding - for the right person. Looking for candidate that is highly motivated, capable of designing what we are looking for, and entrepreneurial minded.

So they want a co-founder — a partner — who will build their vision for them, but for all this sweat equity they’ll only get 3-5% in an unfunded company with an unproven idea. If funding ever happens for this company, expect that 3-5% to turn into 1-3%. The more rounds of funding, the smaller this piece of pie will get.

Company based in Arlington, VA. We would like to have someone who can work along side of us but if you are outside the area and have the skills we can make it work!

This was advertised on Sacramento’s Craigslist. I’m betting if I looked I’d find it on every other local Craigslist site too. If you’re looking for a partner to build a company with, spam is probably not a great starting point.

Imagine looking for a spouse by posting “please marry me” on every message board you can find. You might get a favorable response from someone, but it’s probably not going to be from who you’d like.

Please respond to this email with references, portfolio, skills. If interested we require an NDA signed before proceeding with initial interview.

Before they’ll tell you about their fabulous, world changing vision that they’d like you to buy in to, you’ll have to sign a legal agreement not to discuss the idea with anyone else. But you don’t know anything about what you’ll be agreeing not to talk about. It might be very similar to something you’ve already thought of. After signing that NDA, they now own your thoughts.

This ad shows a number of signs of an inexperienced entrepreneur who’s had a few business classes. He might have a decent idea, but he doesn’t have the skills to implement it. And he’s showing he doesn’t have a clue about how to find help, either.

Don’t be like this guy.