13 ms·

Two creators are not always better than one

264 points by contingencies 8y ago

e40 8y ago
What I wonder (and search for "hours" had 0 hits) is the number of hours solo founders put in vs 2+ founders. I founded a company with 5 founds, 3 of which were in daily operations. It was a lot of work and I can't imagine doing a lot of that early work by myself (until there was enough revenue to support hiring).
- nathan_f77 8y ago
  I think it just depends on the kind of product you're building. It sounds like you were tackling a fairly ambitious problem, so maybe it couldn't have been done by one person. I've been working on a small bootstrapped service. There have been some long hours, but nothing too crazy. I've also taken a few breaks to do some contract projects (I'm actually looking for a new project now, and you can find some links in my HN profile.) I'm working on a fairly niche product, so I think I can afford to go at a slower pace and not have any cofounders. Sometimes a startup idea does require a team and some VC funding. Those ones are far more risky and have a lower chance of success, but it's a totally different game.
- jordiee 8y ago
  As a solo founder of a SaaS launching next month, I tracked my time and am at 1350ish hour in the past 10 months. This is my first startup so I made some mistakes along the way with future creep so deadlines got pushed. I worked around 35 - 40 hours outside of my full-time job a week. Felt really burnt out so skipped one month of work 3 months ago but finally trying to get into the mindset of sales and marketing. I do think though this is all entirely dependent on the scope of your project.
  - TremendousJudge 8y ago
    so you've been working 80 hours a week for almost a year now?
    - _hyn3 8y ago
      This is the norm in any high-growth startups, or at least it was for me. A few people seem to fall into things that don't require working all the time, but 16 hour days and two day weekends seem completely normal to me now.
    - jordiee 8y ago
      Yes. Here is to hoping it starts slowing down now that the development is done and I can automate some of the sales/marketing process.
kyleashipley 8y ago
From the article: >The research is based on a survey of creators for thousands of Kickstarter projects between 2009 and May 2015. From the paper: >This suggests that the taken-for-granted assumption among scholars that entrepreneurship is best performed by teams should be reevaluated, with implications for theories of team performance and entrepreneurial strategy. The claims in the paper are pretty limited and based on a questionably representative sample. Extrapolating to "solo founders are better" seems like a leap at this stage. The results seem interesting and worthy of further evaluation, though!
- mkong1 8y ago
  How many high-growth companies came out of Kickstarter? The ones that jump to mind are Oculus and Pebble, but I can't think of others.
  - mojuba 8y ago
    Interestingly enough, both Oculus and Pebble were started by sole founders. Others even though officially titled "co-founders" joined later if I'm not mistaken.
  - jwilliams 8y ago
    Off the top of my head I’d add Lifx and Nuraphone.
Vanderson 8y ago
I am a solo founder. And I didn't see any mention of actual income value of the "successful" businesses in this article. I suspect you can easily get more successful very small businesses a leg up in sheer numbers alone just from personality conflicts wrecking multi-founder businesses. I had a partner very early on, and it didn't work out. And it was really nice having someone on board that really cared about success the same way I did. Not an employee, client, friend or family member. But another "me" as part of the group. If I could go back in time, and truly fix the problems, I would rather have kept my co-founder. Also, they end with this, so maybe there is more to this story. >...are already working on their next paper, which looks specifically at co-founding teams, and what factors determine their success and failure.
- avinium 8y ago
  In your view, why didn't it work out?
  - Vanderson 8y ago
    Personal problems with co-founder. I wasn't mature enough (I really had a lot of personal issues myself) to truly help that person overcome their issues. Eventually he stopped being productive and just played video games. He knew he was screwing me over, but he simply couldn't get out of his own personal funk. (it was the days of Everquest and large group raids, it was really bad) In retrospect, I really really wish I had been more patient and actually tried to encourage him and get him back on track. I learned a valuable lesson from this though, to not let my temporary grief blind me to other people's distress.
Eridrus 8y ago
I wonder if this has more to do with what level of success is sufficient for individuals vs teams. If you're doing this for money, teams need to be 2x+ as profitable. This would track with the result that larger teams are more likely to start have a non-profit. In a world where you're swinging for the fences, this model would still argue for teams.
LukeWalsh 8y ago
Is anyone aware of similar data on the YC company set?
- jppope 8y ago
  YC pushes against solo founders. Dropbox was a notable one (even though Drew Houston added a "co-founder" right about when they were accepted...)
  - petilon 8y ago
    Investors in general prefer multiple founders, and they want the founders to have roughly equal equity too. In part this is because they want the ability to push a founder out if he/she isn't working out.
    - superplussed 8y ago
      I also hear that it's protection against a founder quitting. Though this to me seems dubious as I would guess that sole founders are much less likely to quit prematurely (for obvious reasons) than a co-founder.
      - KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago
        Really doubt that this is true.
        cyberferret 8y ago
        Speaking from nearly 40 years experience over several businesses - this is VERY true.
    - jppope 8y ago
      From what I've seen it also smooths out interactions between founders and staff... people will prefer to talk to one founder over another for certain things.
modi15 8y ago
I think most of the research like these are pretty much useless. This is because they assume that the success of a startup has correlation with the founders/co-founders - there well might be, but imo the biggest correlation with success is time. Some startups go bust when they are launched in an unfavourable climate - sometimes the tech is too raw, othertimes the market is just not ready. Move them a couple of years before or after and they take off. Lots of startups which take off, dont keep the momentum - market forces disrupt startups a lot more than the other way around. When a startup takes off, often for no fault of the founders/co-founders - it creates a strong incentive for the founders to keep aligned and work together. If a startup does not take off it creates a strong incentive for founders to NOT work together. Often when a startup takes off - or if it raises a big round from a huge VC it creates a strong signal for co-founders to get on board. Case in point is dropbox - they got accepted into YC and it allowed the founder to 'hire' a co-founder.
- burtonator 8y ago
  You're right but the investors and founders can't control for time. so you optimize for the variables you CAN control.
trjordan 8y ago
Two founders are better than one when one of the key problems you will face is hiring. One founder hasn't proven they can recruit. Two founders have proved they can convince at least one other idiot to join them. This is important for VC businesses, where hiring quickly is the only way to grow. But it's not important for smaller businesses, where cash management matters more.
- airocker 8y ago
  Is being able to recruit the most important trait? I think it is overall selling that matters. Why can selling potential not be demonstrated by other means? Playing with human relationships can come later.
  - icedchai 8y ago
    I'd argue that "recruiting" is a form of selling. Especially in the beginning, when you're selling the dream...
    - airocker 8y ago
      In the initial phase, we can only sell to people who trust us. Becoming a co-founder is a big commitment and a challenge to long-term relationships. Why can't it be something like, get five customers you know using your product/service. I have been through a bad co-founder divorce and I think it is bad advice that co-founder will increase your success chances. I think the mostly one co-founder gets a free(er) ride. Werner Vogels in his startup school lecture says "Have you seen a group with one head monkey and a leiutenant monkey?"
  - lbriner 8y ago
    If you sell well, the VCs want you to scale so yes, lots of time spent recruiting. If you have a smaller business making enough money and don't want to scale and therefore don't need VC money - then selling is definitely the number one requirement.
- dgudkov 8y ago
njarboe 8y ago
I think the reason Y-combinator and others like to see two or more founders is that at least those two people are willing to work with/for each other. It is a rough filtering mechanism, and probably a very useful one, especially if your philosophy is that technical people make great business founders. More honestly it is "Technical people can make great startup founders, but first filter on if they can recruit one other person to work with them." In any team of two, most of the time there was one person that had the idea and drive and asked the other to join them. A technical person with this type of skill, that is willing to spit the ownership of a company with someone else, is much more likely to have the skills and talents to run a high growth startup than someone who has not recruited their first person to join them. I would imagine that when interviewing a pair of founders, whether consciously or not, people place one of them into the CEO role and the other into the CTO role. Don't most startup teams split up work like this pretty quickly?
- PaulHoule 8y ago
  I think it is affirmative action for non-technical cofounders if you ask me. The non-technical cofounders who become VCs want to support people who remind them of themselves in the past. This is why founder dating is like dating at a tech school. There are many non-technical cofounders who bring nothing to the table except the desire to make a huge amount of money. That is something to work with, but it is by no means enough in a world where billions of people are hungry.
  - kbuchanan 8y ago
    This is an extraordinarily myopic view of business. Most firms do not create new tech; all firms (including tech startups) need individuals capable of selling, winning over the faith of others (recruiting), and who have an eye for creating business processes and operations for delivery, support, and so on. To watch engineers attempt to do all these things on their own is also a comedy. This idea reminds me of things developers say to disparage anyone who operates on a higher abstraction layer than they do (e.g. Rust sucks cause it's not C. Ruby sucks cause it's for beginners. Salesforce sucks cause it's not real programming.)
graeme 8y ago
Am a solo founder of a bootstrapped business. One advantage is that you only need half the profit for the equivalent income to each founder. This gets even more important in small niches. A downside is during those times when you work less, little happens.
josh_carterPDX 8y ago
When you think about how 80% of startups fail because of founder issues, this makes a lot of sense. However, to some of the other points made here, investors like to see that you are able to convince at least one person to go all in with you.
GnarfGnarf 8y ago
If you're lacking a skill, hire an employee, don't invite a second founder. He who manages the accounting controls the company. If you must have a co-founder, makes sure he works as long/hard as you do.
- crispytx 8y ago
  This. I hate hearing all this co-founder stuff all the time. While I'm sure it works for some people, I've found the whole co-founder thing to be a terrible idea. The only positive benefit I've found is having someone to talk to about what you're working on, but I haven't found co-founders to be helpful other than that in the cheerleader department.
- fourseventy 8y ago
  You need capital to do that... Co-founders are free.
mgamache 8y ago
The title of the article should be: "2 founders are not always better than 1 for Kickstarter" Also, they didn't define success. I bet it was just getting the project funded. The bar for VC success and Kickstarter are very different. Kickstarter doesn't have growth and ROI requirements. This might be a proxy for a lifestyle business, but not VC funded companies.
- judofyr 8y ago
  > Also, they didn't define success. It's mentioned in the paper. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3107898 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3107898 > First, we examine continuation of business operations at the time of the survey (The options were: “Still in operation as an ongoing for-profit business,” “Still in operation as an ongoing not-forprofit, artistic, or other type of endeavor,” “Still in operation, but acquired by/merged with another organization,” “Not operating as a result of being acquired by/merged with another organization,” “Not operating, temporarily stopped operations,” “Not operating, permanently stopped operations,” and “Not operating for another reason.”) > We also used reported non-crowdfunding revenue based on a 12-point categorical scale ranging from none to over $10 million, using this as a direct measure of company success. > The first model is an unconditional model, and reveals that solo founders do no worse with respect to average income than teams of three or more.
gwbas1c 8y ago
Every best practice has an exception
baxtr 8y ago
Even though the method can be challenged, I think it is great that people are trying to understand entrepreneurship based on data. Most founder and startup advice is not based on any data. YC could have a great impact here I believe with the vast amount of data they should have
sunseb 8y ago
I think VC prefer two founders because it's simply easier to have leverage on them than on a single guy.
- airocker 8y ago
  --TRUTH--
crispytx 8y ago
The reason YC is always talking about finding co-founders is because Paul Graham had co-founders. Had Paul Graham gone at things alone, YC would probably be preaching the virtues of flying solo.
deleted 8y ago
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_hyn3 8y ago
Ten cynical reasons why VC's like to see multiple founders: 10. Sometimes (perhaps rarely) a better idea comes from a group. 9. There really is a lot of work to go around. 8. If one of the founders is willing to sell, take more investment or worse terms, perhaps they can apply pressure to the ones who are reluctant. 7. Most humans like to be around other humans, so cooperation is the norm among people who self-group. 6. Expertise can be complementary and allow a natural division of labor in the early days. 5. Hard feelings are more evenly distributed as the founders get pushed out or diluted one-by-one; push out the weakest contributors and least resistant first. 4. More founders = reduced risk and decreased dependency on one possibly loose cannon 3. If the board stops getting along with one founder, perhaps another will be a better fit. (see: Twitter) 2. Multiple complementary founders are rarely of one mind, and therefore it's easy to split control. .. and the number one reason why VC's like multiple founders: 1. Extra founders cost them nothing
robterrin 8y ago
I'm a teaching assistant for a class called Entrepreneurial Finance at my alma mater, which always has a good draw of entrepreneur and investor guest speakers. One of the recent speakers was Kent Collier, CEO of Reorg (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reorg-research#section-overview https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reorg-research#secti...), an information service to the buy-side that focuses on arcane and opaque information, particularly bankruptcy. They are a smash hit that only took $1.3M in financing that now does $1M a week in revenues. His view is that solo founders and preferable. The reason he gave was that it takes such a clear and unambiguous vision, with total dedication to that vision, that any space between multiple founders creates drag and can kill the startup.
- mojuba 8y ago
  > takes such a clear and unambiguous vision, with total dedication to that vision This is very true. For most startups building a product is not just an ongoing engineering/business development task as much as it is an ongoing product development task. Your vision of the product (if you have one) is something that is most difficult to share with others. I think a great entrepreneur is closer to being an artist than to anything else: imagine two painters trying to create one painting at the same time. At times it can get as absurd. That is not to say you don't need co-founders but maybe, just maybe, sometimes one of the founders needs a slightly dominating position in defining (and refining) the product in the process.
- lbriner 8y ago
  That works both ways. Sure, if someone has all they need to succeed, the distraction of a co-founder might be a problem. For the rest of us, we need the balance, challenge and questions of a peer so that we have to listen and justify decisions. Questions around skills, again, depend on the scenario. I might be an engineer but I sell online and don't need "sales skills" so don't need a co-founder. In other companies, the need for certain skillsets which I don't have needs a co-founder who can give your business the bandwidth. I can't honestly see that either way is always preferable - depends on the person, the company, the market etc.
nishantvyas 8y ago
"Solo founders are twice as likely to succeed in business as co-founders" by research from Jason Greenberg, PhD ’09, and Ethan Mollick, PhD ’10 and MBA ’04. :-) hmmm... co-researchers to research on NO need of co-researchers/founders...
baccheion 8y ago
Based on success rates, 1 founder is best. Then 2. Then 3. Etc. One founder that's in their late 30s (ie, 15-20 years experience and effectively retired due to savings). The trend of having 2+ founders is a compromise and a result of BS mumbled by VCs.
dgudkov 8y ago
Besides rare exceptions (that do exist!), there is nothing a co-founder can give that you can't hire.
- lbriner 8y ago
  Apart from input and challenge that you have to listen to. That might sound like a bad thing but there are plenty of successful founders who would have gone off the rails early if they didn't have someone else asking, "do we really need to do that"?
  - airocker 8y ago
    do we really need to build a company?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
josephhurtado 8y ago
The most important part of the article is that is shatters the myth of having a co-founder to succeed. The stats don’t say that two founders are better than one, it fact is the opposite, more than one is WORSE. So what would be my take-away; if you are thinking of pursuing a business, and have the energy, contacts and network to make it, go ahead. However if having help from a valuable co-founder who you trust is possible, then compromise, and get a helping hand. Otherwise is better to go it alone.
tidwall 8y ago
But are solos happier?
cyberferret 8y ago
Having gone through the solo founder -> co-founder -> back to solo founder route with my latest (bootstrapped) startup, I can honestly concur that: * The most contentful working time for me was when I had a co-founder. It was good to bounce ideas off someone, and having another person with equal share in the business increased accountability and my motivation to keep pushing. * The most effective working time for me was as a solo-founder. I felt that I wasn't compromising every decision I made to keep my co-founder happy, and that I could make decisions much more quickly and change direction whenever I wanted. I think the main problem with the time with a co-founder was that we were too similar. We worked great together and got on well, but there wasn't that spark that pushed the business forward. Since being on my own again and pushing against the limitation of my own personality and abilities, I have managed to grow the business trifold since my co-founder left.
isalmon 8y ago
I'll share my story. Solo technical founder. Hired my first sales employee long after I established a product-market fit, got a few paying customers and $300K in annual revenue. I gave him a co-founder title, but we were never equal. It was one of the best decision that I have made. The company would not have been able to survive if 2 of us were equal - we would have gone out of business. Instead, 1 year after I pushed him out we had a moderately successful exit (8 figure). I think that having a solo founder is beneficial AS LONG AS that one person is great. Otherwise you, as a VC, kind of bet that at least 1 of them will be great and it will all work out.
evrydayhustling 8y ago
Critical detail beneath the fold: > The research is based on a survey of creators for thousands of Kickstarter projects between 2009 and May 2015. It would be crazy to generalize from this to most VC-backed (or seeking) businesses... and another thing still to compare the massively larger set of small businesses started by individuals without major external funding. Different kinds of firms face incredibly different pressures and failure modes at every stage.
- arjun_tina 8y ago
  Exactly! This headline is totally misleading!
- dang 8y ago
  Wow, good catch. We replaced 'founder' with 'creator' in the title above.
arjun_tina 8y ago
Lol this is a hilarious way of defining success. This data proves that if you want to have an "ongoing company" a few years after starting, you're better off going solo. But how many people, when starting a company, dream of reaching "ongoing" status? Why are they ignoring the data from the most valuable, most impactful, and most innovative startups?
app4soft 8y ago
> Two creators are not always better than one Agreed, but I want more than one Elon Musk
Lumenora 8y ago
Check out my article on it, too https://medium.com/@haftrm/successful-solo-founders-5c7f60ef6a0e https://medium.com/@haftrm/successful-solo-founders-5c7f60ef... It is true in many ways, not just Kickstarter.
BerislavLopac 8y ago
A startup has three main functions: - define the product - build the product - sell the product As long as you can successfully execute all those functions, it doesn't matter how many people you have doing it, and it becomes the matter of resource availability.

264 points by contingencies 8y ago

e40 8y ago

What I wonder (and search for "hours" had 0 hits) is the number of hours solo founders put in vs 2+ founders. I founded a company with 5 founds, 3 of which were in daily operations. It was a lot of work and I can't imagine doing a lot of that early work by myself (until there was enough revenue to support hiring).

nathan_f77 8y ago
I think it just depends on the kind of product you're building. It sounds like you were tackling a fairly ambitious problem, so maybe it couldn't have been done by one person. I've been working on a small bootstrapped service. There have been some long hours, but nothing too crazy. I've also taken a few breaks to do some contract projects (I'm actually looking for a new project now, and you can find some links in my HN profile.) I'm working on a fairly niche product, so I think I can afford to go at a slower pace and not have any cofounders. Sometimes a startup idea does require a team and some VC funding. Those ones are far more risky and have a lower chance of success, but it's a totally different game.
jordiee 8y ago
As a solo founder of a SaaS launching next month, I tracked my time and am at 1350ish hour in the past 10 months. This is my first startup so I made some mistakes along the way with future creep so deadlines got pushed. I worked around 35 - 40 hours outside of my full-time job a week. Felt really burnt out so skipped one month of work 3 months ago but finally trying to get into the mindset of sales and marketing. I do think though this is all entirely dependent on the scope of your project.
- TremendousJudge 8y ago
  so you've been working 80 hours a week for almost a year now?
  - _hyn3 8y ago
    This is the norm in any high-growth startups, or at least it was for me. A few people seem to fall into things that don't require working all the time, but 16 hour days and two day weekends seem completely normal to me now.
  - jordiee 8y ago
    Yes. Here is to hoping it starts slowing down now that the development is done and I can automate some of the sales/marketing process.

kyleashipley 8y ago

From the article: >The research is based on a survey of creators for thousands of Kickstarter projects between 2009 and May 2015. From the paper: >This suggests that the taken-for-granted assumption among scholars that entrepreneurship is best performed by teams should be reevaluated, with implications for theories of team performance and entrepreneurial strategy. The claims in the paper are pretty limited and based on a questionably representative sample. Extrapolating to "solo founders are better" seems like a leap at this stage. The results seem interesting and worthy of further evaluation, though!

mkong1 8y ago
How many high-growth companies came out of Kickstarter? The ones that jump to mind are Oculus and Pebble, but I can't think of others.
- mojuba 8y ago
  Interestingly enough, both Oculus and Pebble were started by sole founders. Others even though officially titled "co-founders" joined later if I'm not mistaken.
- jwilliams 8y ago
  Off the top of my head I’d add Lifx and Nuraphone.

Vanderson 8y ago

I am a solo founder. And I didn't see any mention of actual income value of the "successful" businesses in this article. I suspect you can easily get more successful very small businesses a leg up in sheer numbers alone just from personality conflicts wrecking multi-founder businesses. I had a partner very early on, and it didn't work out. And it was really nice having someone on board that really cared about success the same way I did. Not an employee, client, friend or family member. But another "me" as part of the group. If I could go back in time, and truly fix the problems, I would rather have kept my co-founder. Also, they end with this, so maybe there is more to this story. >...are already working on their next paper, which looks specifically at co-founding teams, and what factors determine their success and failure.

avinium 8y ago
In your view, why didn't it work out?
- Vanderson 8y ago
  Personal problems with co-founder. I wasn't mature enough (I really had a lot of personal issues myself) to truly help that person overcome their issues. Eventually he stopped being productive and just played video games. He knew he was screwing me over, but he simply couldn't get out of his own personal funk. (it was the days of Everquest and large group raids, it was really bad) In retrospect, I really really wish I had been more patient and actually tried to encourage him and get him back on track. I learned a valuable lesson from this though, to not let my temporary grief blind me to other people's distress.

Eridrus 8y ago

I wonder if this has more to do with what level of success is sufficient for individuals vs teams. If you're doing this for money, teams need to be 2x+ as profitable. This would track with the result that larger teams are more likely to start have a non-profit. In a world where you're swinging for the fences, this model would still argue for teams.

LukeWalsh 8y ago

Is anyone aware of similar data on the YC company set?

jppope 8y ago
YC pushes against solo founders. Dropbox was a notable one (even though Drew Houston added a "co-founder" right about when they were accepted...)
- petilon 8y ago
  Investors in general prefer multiple founders, and they want the founders to have roughly equal equity too. In part this is because they want the ability to push a founder out if he/she isn't working out.
  - superplussed 8y ago
    I also hear that it's protection against a founder quitting. Though this to me seems dubious as I would guess that sole founders are much less likely to quit prematurely (for obvious reasons) than a co-founder.
    - KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago
      Really doubt that this is true.
      - cyberferret 8y ago
        Speaking from nearly 40 years experience over several businesses - this is VERY true.
  - jppope 8y ago
    From what I've seen it also smooths out interactions between founders and staff... people will prefer to talk to one founder over another for certain things.

modi15 8y ago

I think most of the research like these are pretty much useless. This is because they assume that the success of a startup has correlation with the founders/co-founders - there well might be, but imo the biggest correlation with success is time. Some startups go bust when they are launched in an unfavourable climate - sometimes the tech is too raw, othertimes the market is just not ready. Move them a couple of years before or after and they take off. Lots of startups which take off, dont keep the momentum - market forces disrupt startups a lot more than the other way around. When a startup takes off, often for no fault of the founders/co-founders - it creates a strong incentive for the founders to keep aligned and work together. If a startup does not take off it creates a strong incentive for founders to NOT work together. Often when a startup takes off - or if it raises a big round from a huge VC it creates a strong signal for co-founders to get on board. Case in point is dropbox - they got accepted into YC and it allowed the founder to 'hire' a co-founder.

burtonator 8y ago
You're right but the investors and founders can't control for time. so you optimize for the variables you CAN control.

trjordan 8y ago

Two founders are better than one when one of the key problems you will face is hiring. One founder hasn't proven they can recruit. Two founders have proved they can convince at least one other idiot to join them. This is important for VC businesses, where hiring quickly is the only way to grow. But it's not important for smaller businesses, where cash management matters more.

airocker 8y ago
Is being able to recruit the most important trait? I think it is overall selling that matters. Why can selling potential not be demonstrated by other means? Playing with human relationships can come later.
- icedchai 8y ago
  I'd argue that "recruiting" is a form of selling. Especially in the beginning, when you're selling the dream...
  - airocker 8y ago
    In the initial phase, we can only sell to people who trust us. Becoming a co-founder is a big commitment and a challenge to long-term relationships. Why can't it be something like, get five customers you know using your product/service. I have been through a bad co-founder divorce and I think it is bad advice that co-founder will increase your success chances. I think the mostly one co-founder gets a free(er) ride. Werner Vogels in his startup school lecture says "Have you seen a group with one head monkey and a leiutenant monkey?"
- lbriner 8y ago
  If you sell well, the VCs want you to scale so yes, lots of time spent recruiting. If you have a smaller business making enough money and don't want to scale and therefore don't need VC money - then selling is definitely the number one requirement.
dgudkov 8y ago

njarboe 8y ago

I think the reason Y-combinator and others like to see two or more founders is that at least those two people are willing to work with/for each other. It is a rough filtering mechanism, and probably a very useful one, especially if your philosophy is that technical people make great business founders. More honestly it is "Technical people can make great startup founders, but first filter on if they can recruit one other person to work with them." In any team of two, most of the time there was one person that had the idea and drive and asked the other to join them. A technical person with this type of skill, that is willing to spit the ownership of a company with someone else, is much more likely to have the skills and talents to run a high growth startup than someone who has not recruited their first person to join them. I would imagine that when interviewing a pair of founders, whether consciously or not, people place one of them into the CEO role and the other into the CTO role. Don't most startup teams split up work like this pretty quickly?

PaulHoule 8y ago
I think it is affirmative action for non-technical cofounders if you ask me. The non-technical cofounders who become VCs want to support people who remind them of themselves in the past. This is why founder dating is like dating at a tech school. There are many non-technical cofounders who bring nothing to the table except the desire to make a huge amount of money. That is something to work with, but it is by no means enough in a world where billions of people are hungry.
- kbuchanan 8y ago
  This is an extraordinarily myopic view of business. Most firms do not create new tech; all firms (including tech startups) need individuals capable of selling, winning over the faith of others (recruiting), and who have an eye for creating business processes and operations for delivery, support, and so on. To watch engineers attempt to do all these things on their own is also a comedy. This idea reminds me of things developers say to disparage anyone who operates on a higher abstraction layer than they do (e.g. Rust sucks cause it's not C. Ruby sucks cause it's for beginners. Salesforce sucks cause it's not real programming.)

graeme 8y ago

Am a solo founder of a bootstrapped business. One advantage is that you only need half the profit for the equivalent income to each founder. This gets even more important in small niches. A downside is during those times when you work less, little happens.

josh_carterPDX 8y ago

When you think about how 80% of startups fail because of founder issues, this makes a lot of sense. However, to some of the other points made here, investors like to see that you are able to convince at least one person to go all in with you.

GnarfGnarf 8y ago

If you're lacking a skill, hire an employee, don't invite a second founder. He who manages the accounting controls the company. If you must have a co-founder, makes sure he works as long/hard as you do.

crispytx 8y ago
This. I hate hearing all this co-founder stuff all the time. While I'm sure it works for some people, I've found the whole co-founder thing to be a terrible idea. The only positive benefit I've found is having someone to talk to about what you're working on, but I haven't found co-founders to be helpful other than that in the cheerleader department.
fourseventy 8y ago
You need capital to do that... Co-founders are free.

mgamache 8y ago

The title of the article should be: "2 founders are not always better than 1 for Kickstarter" Also, they didn't define success. I bet it was just getting the project funded. The bar for VC success and Kickstarter are very different. Kickstarter doesn't have growth and ROI requirements. This might be a proxy for a lifestyle business, but not VC funded companies.

judofyr 8y ago
> Also, they didn't define success. It's mentioned in the paper. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3107898 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3107898 > First, we examine continuation of business operations at the time of the survey (The options were: “Still in operation as an ongoing for-profit business,” “Still in operation as an ongoing not-forprofit, artistic, or other type of endeavor,” “Still in operation, but acquired by/merged with another organization,” “Not operating as a result of being acquired by/merged with another organization,” “Not operating, temporarily stopped operations,” “Not operating, permanently stopped operations,” and “Not operating for another reason.”) > We also used reported non-crowdfunding revenue based on a 12-point categorical scale ranging from none to over $10 million, using this as a direct measure of company success. > The first model is an unconditional model, and reveals that solo founders do no worse with respect to average income than teams of three or more.

gwbas1c 8y ago

Every best practice has an exception

baxtr 8y ago

Even though the method can be challenged, I think it is great that people are trying to understand entrepreneurship based on data. Most founder and startup advice is not based on any data. YC could have a great impact here I believe with the vast amount of data they should have

sunseb 8y ago

I think VC prefer two founders because it's simply easier to have leverage on them than on a single guy.

airocker 8y ago
--TRUTH--

crispytx 8y ago

The reason YC is always talking about finding co-founders is because Paul Graham had co-founders. Had Paul Graham gone at things alone, YC would probably be preaching the virtues of flying solo.

deleted 8y ago

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_hyn3 8y ago

Ten cynical reasons why VC's like to see multiple founders: 10. Sometimes (perhaps rarely) a better idea comes from a group. 9. There really is a lot of work to go around. 8. If one of the founders is willing to sell, take more investment or worse terms, perhaps they can apply pressure to the ones who are reluctant. 7. Most humans like to be around other humans, so cooperation is the norm among people who self-group. 6. Expertise can be complementary and allow a natural division of labor in the early days. 5. Hard feelings are more evenly distributed as the founders get pushed out or diluted one-by-one; push out the weakest contributors and least resistant first. 4. More founders = reduced risk and decreased dependency on one possibly loose cannon 3. If the board stops getting along with one founder, perhaps another will be a better fit. (see: Twitter) 2. Multiple complementary founders are rarely of one mind, and therefore it's easy to split control. .. and the number one reason why VC's like multiple founders: 1. Extra founders cost them nothing

robterrin 8y ago

I'm a teaching assistant for a class called Entrepreneurial Finance at my alma mater, which always has a good draw of entrepreneur and investor guest speakers. One of the recent speakers was Kent Collier, CEO of Reorg (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reorg-research#section-overview https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reorg-research#secti...), an information service to the buy-side that focuses on arcane and opaque information, particularly bankruptcy. They are a smash hit that only took $1.3M in financing that now does $1M a week in revenues. His view is that solo founders and preferable. The reason he gave was that it takes such a clear and unambiguous vision, with total dedication to that vision, that any space between multiple founders creates drag and can kill the startup.

mojuba 8y ago
> takes such a clear and unambiguous vision, with total dedication to that vision This is very true. For most startups building a product is not just an ongoing engineering/business development task as much as it is an ongoing product development task. Your vision of the product (if you have one) is something that is most difficult to share with others. I think a great entrepreneur is closer to being an artist than to anything else: imagine two painters trying to create one painting at the same time. At times it can get as absurd. That is not to say you don't need co-founders but maybe, just maybe, sometimes one of the founders needs a slightly dominating position in defining (and refining) the product in the process.
lbriner 8y ago
That works both ways. Sure, if someone has all they need to succeed, the distraction of a co-founder might be a problem. For the rest of us, we need the balance, challenge and questions of a peer so that we have to listen and justify decisions. Questions around skills, again, depend on the scenario. I might be an engineer but I sell online and don't need "sales skills" so don't need a co-founder. In other companies, the need for certain skillsets which I don't have needs a co-founder who can give your business the bandwidth. I can't honestly see that either way is always preferable - depends on the person, the company, the market etc.

nishantvyas 8y ago

"Solo founders are twice as likely to succeed in business as co-founders" by research from Jason Greenberg, PhD ’09, and Ethan Mollick, PhD ’10 and MBA ’04. :-) hmmm... co-researchers to research on NO need of co-researchers/founders...

baccheion 8y ago

Based on success rates, 1 founder is best. Then 2. Then 3. Etc. One founder that's in their late 30s (ie, 15-20 years experience and effectively retired due to savings). The trend of having 2+ founders is a compromise and a result of BS mumbled by VCs.

dgudkov 8y ago

Besides rare exceptions (that do exist!), there is nothing a co-founder can give that you can't hire.

lbriner 8y ago
Apart from input and challenge that you have to listen to. That might sound like a bad thing but there are plenty of successful founders who would have gone off the rails early if they didn't have someone else asking, "do we really need to do that"?
- airocker 8y ago
  do we really need to build a company?

deleted 8y ago

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josephhurtado 8y ago

The most important part of the article is that is shatters the myth of having a co-founder to succeed. The stats don’t say that two founders are better than one, it fact is the opposite, more than one is WORSE. So what would be my take-away; if you are thinking of pursuing a business, and have the energy, contacts and network to make it, go ahead. However if having help from a valuable co-founder who you trust is possible, then compromise, and get a helping hand. Otherwise is better to go it alone.

tidwall 8y ago

But are solos happier?

cyberferret 8y ago

Having gone through the solo founder -> co-founder -> back to solo founder route with my latest (bootstrapped) startup, I can honestly concur that: * The most contentful working time for me was when I had a co-founder. It was good to bounce ideas off someone, and having another person with equal share in the business increased accountability and my motivation to keep pushing. * The most effective working time for me was as a solo-founder. I felt that I wasn't compromising every decision I made to keep my co-founder happy, and that I could make decisions much more quickly and change direction whenever I wanted. I think the main problem with the time with a co-founder was that we were too similar. We worked great together and got on well, but there wasn't that spark that pushed the business forward. Since being on my own again and pushing against the limitation of my own personality and abilities, I have managed to grow the business trifold since my co-founder left.

isalmon 8y ago

I'll share my story. Solo technical founder. Hired my first sales employee long after I established a product-market fit, got a few paying customers and $300K in annual revenue. I gave him a co-founder title, but we were never equal. It was one of the best decision that I have made. The company would not have been able to survive if 2 of us were equal - we would have gone out of business. Instead, 1 year after I pushed him out we had a moderately successful exit (8 figure). I think that having a solo founder is beneficial AS LONG AS that one person is great. Otherwise you, as a VC, kind of bet that at least 1 of them will be great and it will all work out.

evrydayhustling 8y ago

Critical detail beneath the fold: > The research is based on a survey of creators for thousands of Kickstarter projects between 2009 and May 2015. It would be crazy to generalize from this to most VC-backed (or seeking) businesses... and another thing still to compare the massively larger set of small businesses started by individuals without major external funding. Different kinds of firms face incredibly different pressures and failure modes at every stage.

arjun_tina 8y ago
Exactly! This headline is totally misleading!
dang 8y ago
Wow, good catch. We replaced 'founder' with 'creator' in the title above.

arjun_tina 8y ago

Lol this is a hilarious way of defining success. This data proves that if you want to have an "ongoing company" a few years after starting, you're better off going solo. But how many people, when starting a company, dream of reaching "ongoing" status? Why are they ignoring the data from the most valuable, most impactful, and most innovative startups?

app4soft 8y ago

> Two creators are not always better than one Agreed, but I want more than one Elon Musk

Lumenora 8y ago

Check out my article on it, too https://medium.com/@haftrm/successful-solo-founders-5c7f60ef6a0e https://medium.com/@haftrm/successful-solo-founders-5c7f60ef... It is true in many ways, not just Kickstarter.

BerislavLopac 8y ago

A startup has three main functions: - define the product - build the product - sell the product As long as you can successfully execute all those functions, it doesn't matter how many people you have doing it, and it becomes the matter of resource availability.