4 ms·

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.

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.

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.