How do I find a developer to partner with?
Short answer
Go where they already congregate and demonstrate the thing they cannot do. Indie developer communities are full of people with working products and no traffic. A short, specific, unpaid piece of analysis about why their landing page is not converting is more persuasive than any pitch, because it proves the skill instead of describing it.
The longer version
Go where they already are and lead with proof rather than a pitch. Indie developer communities — r/SideProject, Indie Hackers, the smaller Discords, Show HN — are full of people who have shipped something real and are getting no traffic. They are not short of offers from marketers; they are short of evidence that any of them are any good.
So do not open with what you do. Pick a product you genuinely find interesting, spend an hour on it, and send the founder a short specific note about why their page is not converting — the sentence that is missing, the audience they are describing wrong, the three places their users are gathering that they are not in. Free, no strings, no attachment.
That does two things a pitch cannot. It proves the skill instead of describing it, and it shows what working with you would actually feel like. Most of these notes go nowhere and that is fine. The hit rate does not need to be high, because you only need one.
The one to avoid is the founder who wants marketing but has not finished the product. You will spend six months waiting to have something to sell.
The full argument, with the rest of the picture around it:
Your Marketing Career Was Training For This