Search for advice on starting a company and you will find the same line repeated: get a technical co-founder.
It is good advice, and it is also incomplete.
What the advice is actually about
When people say you need a technical co-founder, they usually mean you need somebody who can build the product and who cares about it as much as you do. That is a real need.
But co-founder is a specific and heavy word. It means equity, a permanent seat, and a shared claim on everything the company becomes. Sometimes that is right. Often it is a decision made too early, by two people who have not worked together yet.
What you might need first
A technical collaborator: somebody who can build a first version with you, on a defined scope, without a permanent claim on the rest of your life.
That could be a paid contractor. It could be somebody from a community like ours, working on a first sprint before either side commits to anything. It could be a studio.
The point is that the first question is not who will be my co-founder. It is who can help me find out whether this is worth building.
The order that works better
Build the smallest real version. Put it in front of people. Learn what is wrong with it.
Then decide who should be on the team permanently. By that point you are choosing from evidence instead of from a conversation, and you know much more about what the company actually needs.
A co-founder chosen after a sprint is a different kind of decision. It is informed, and it is made by somebody who has already worked with you.
When a co-founder is right
If you find somebody who can build, who cares, and who you have already worked with under pressure, then make them a co-founder. That is the good case and it is worth the equity.
Just do not skip the part where you find out.
The relationship is the thing. The title comes after.
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