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You can certainly start a business without a cofounder. What's hard to do, empirically, is to start one that gets really big. There are a handful of counterexa

by pg 14y ago

You can certainly start a business without a cofounder. What's hard to do, empirically, is to start one that gets really big. There are a handful of counterexamples, like Amazon, but Treehouse is not one of them yet. We have a lot more data about what happens in startups than any individual founder does. What interest would we have in mischaracterizing it?

ryancarson 14y ago
I don't think you're mischaracterizing it (new word for me :D). I'm writing the post out of my own personal experience. I wanted to point out that your advice is optimized for the success of Y Combinator (as it should be). This of course doesn't mean it's good general advice for all Startups. Single-Founders who grow their revenue to medium size ($5-$25m) will usually be extremely happy. They don't need to be doing $100m of revenue to succeed.
- pg 14y ago
  It's rather low to say that I tell people this because it's "optimized for the success of Y Combinator." I was saying it before we started Y Combinator. For example, in "How to Start a Startup" (http://paulgraham.com/start.html http://paulgraham.com/start.html): Ideally you want between two and four founders. It would be hard to start with just one. One person would find the moral weight of starting a company hard to bear. Even Bill Gates, who seems to be able to bear a good deal of moral weight, had to have a co-founder. I already knew then, both from my own experience and from watching other startups, how necessary cofounders were. Since then I've observed the trajectories of over 450 startups YC has funded. I'm even more convinced now that cofounders are necessary. And that you dismiss as "rhetoric" and offer instead one piece of anecdotal evidence that is not even conclusive yet? You do not make a very convincing case.
  - ryancarson 14y ago
    Fair point on the timing of your essay. I didn't realize it was written before you started YC. Can you guys please release your empirical data about the success rates of YC companies, broken down by various things like market, year founded, location, number of founders, etc?
    - pg 14y ago
      It would be hard to disclose the raw data without also disclosing the secrets of individual startups, but we might publish some trendlines one day. In a sense, I already do disclose such data in a general way, because whenever I write or say anything about startups, I wouldn't contradict trends I know about.
      - ryancarson 14y ago
        You could anonymize the data and release a pretty monumental study. I would imagine the PR bump would be great too. My post is not an attack on you or TechStars. It's just a counter-point to your data, based on my own personal experience.
        pg 14y ago
        It's hard to anonymize a data set that's both small and has a lot of variation.
        dmk23 14y ago
        I'm sure you would find a way to anonymize the data if it would result in a compelling story for YC. But as we all know so well the "startup outcomes" follow a power law. Dropbox and AirBnB make for a great YC PR, but are certainly nothing like a statistical mean outcome (aka "expected value"). I'd say it is a pretty reasonable thing to postulate that "doing things YC way" would result in a worse expected outcome for an individual founder vs. retaining control of a profitable business. If this statement is wrong please refute it with data. The way things are right now, YC is selling the "possibility" of becoming an outlier, while downplaying what "typical results" usually look like. If you were in a consumer product market it could likely break FTC rules on truth in advertising: http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/starek/nima96d4.shtm http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/starek/nima96d4.shtm EDIT / RESPONSE 1: This is not an "accusation". I am simply stating as fact that YC's model is focused on promoting its largest outlier successes (which form the bulk of YC portfolio value) while releasing no real data on the "mean outcome". Take it for what it is worth. As far as my statement about comparing "mean outcomes" it is obviously just a subjective judgement based on anecdotal evidence because there is no publicly released data from YC. EDIT / RESPONSE 2: Let's be realistic. Any VC firm can release % of IPOs, M&A and failures as well as IRR figures and exit bands. There is no reason to include any company-specific proprietary data. The only reason for YC to not give such estimates is because it would highlight the fact that most startups are nothing like Dropbox.
  - chimi 14y ago
    It's also rather low to hate on the OP's startup because it doesn't fit your definition of great success. You do that a lot and it's not nice. In the realm of startups -- single-founder or not -- Treehouse may very well be well above average. There are thousands of single founder companies out there. Your system is biased and your predilection toward group founded companies may self-fulfill your prophecy. In a way, you're like the coach or owner of an NFL team telling kids to stay in school and do well in sports because they may be a pro-baller some day, when really, they need to hit the books if they want a positive outcome in the average end. Noam Wasserman wrote about plenty of reasons to be a solo-founder in his book, "The Founder's Dilemma." Some people would rather be king and your proposed path of group founded companies going on to VC fueled greatness is not the map for kings. http://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma/ar/1
    - pg 14y ago
      You do that a lot and it's not nice. For example?
      - chimi 14y ago
        There have been several threads like this pop up from time to time arguing that there are successful paths outside group founded vc backed avenues. I've seen people list a number of great startups that didn't take your proposed path and you knock them because they don't meet your criteria for successful company. I'll look for a thread, I can't think of any search terms that would lead me to one at the moment. I'm not saying that your data doesn't support your hypothesis, but I think you need to recognize the plethora of examples of single founded companies that achieve great success and know better than to apply to ycombinator because you don't like single founder applicants. As someone else said above, success is relative and people deserve their success even if it isn't a billion dollar IPO or 10x cash out that may, in the end, have left them with less money than they'd make over the life of a smaller achievement through some other path, be it group founded, bootstrapped, or whatever. My point is, there is a lot of greatness to be had that doesn't meet your standard and it'd be nicer to recognize greatness that doesn't follow your rules than to knock it because it is a counterpoint.
  - koide 14y ago
    I think there are (at least) two parameters needing concrete definition: 1) What is success? 2) What's the ratio of solo startups that achieve the level defined in 1). As has been mentioned, either an exit of a few million or a stream of a million of profit a year for a couple of years are more than enough to many potential founders. That's the parameter I'm missing when you say cofounders are necessary. Necessary to achieve what, exactly?
    - ryancarson 14y ago
      I agree. It'd be awesome if PG would release the data they have on the outcomes of YC companies. There would be a lot we could all learn from it. This would also allow everyone to come to their own conclusions.
      - rdl 14y ago
        The #1 piece of data I wish pg would release is a comprehensive (if anonymous) survey of every YC founder "would you do YC again?" and the related "would you recommend YC to a friend doing a startup?". (although as a control, "If you were doing another startup, and couldn't get into YC again for that business, would you still go ahead with it?")
  - keeptrying 14y ago
    PG, I always wanted to ask you. What do you mean by "moral weight" exactly? Thanks.
    - jcampbell1 14y ago
      It is a word play on "moral support". e.g. a cofounder provides moral support when external pressures are high. Bill doesn't seem like the type to need "moral support" because he can alone handle a high "moral weight".
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - huhtenberg 14y ago
    > Since then I've observed the trajectories of over 450 startups YC has funded. ... many of which may be a result of your inherit selection bias. Starting a company "that gets really big" is hardly a success criteria that an average first-time entrepreneur has in mind. You might not like how Ryan expressed it, but he's right - do not let the lack of a co-founder stop you from starting a company. It's a non-issue. If you have this option - great, if not - fine, and there are several upsides to it.
robomartin 14y ago
Everything is relative, isn't it? Most people would live a very good life as the solo driver of a business that did two or three million a year. As an investor these businesses are probably of no real interest to you unless they can be taken way past this revenue level. And that's OK. I think you realize that tons of people would be very happy if they could pay off their home, cars, etc., have one or two very nice vacations a year, pay for their kid's every needs and their college education and maintain a very nice lifestyle during retirement. That being the context, I've seen tons of solo-founder businesses do very well and come up to that cruising altitude with hard work and dedication. And that's OK. Also, the OP's point on young-inexperienced solo founders vs. older experienced founders resonates with me. All I've done is solo and self-funded. I've made a ton of mistakes. I've made a ton of money and lost a lot of it. If I were in your shoes I would not, in a million years, hand the keys of a startup to a young just-out-of-college kid. Business can be brutal. It is very, very easy to become your own worst enemy. If you have a small team motivated to succeed because they each own a piece of the thing they are building they'll probably help each other stay on point and get it done. Of course, they also need extensive external coaching, support, guidance, etc. How many of your startups would have succeeded if the infrastructure you provide (beyond just the initial small funding amount) did not exist? My prediction is that most of these teams of young founders would crumble under the pressure of doing a business without the team that you put into place to make it happen. Example: I have a friend who started a very successful courier company. He now employs north of a hundred drivers. No formal education. High-school drop out. Makes loads of money. For nearly a whole year he lived, ate and slept in his car as he service this one mid-size client who gave him a shot making deliveries. He literally slept in his car in the parking lot outside of their offices and workers would come wake him up when a delivery had to be made. No support system, no coaching, no, well, nothing. I don't know many people who would be willing to endure such torture. My very first startup. Self-funded it with $250K I made after a heavy couple of years of consulting work. My own money on the table. Had my first kid. My wife didn't work. I then spent a year and a half in the garage working 18 hour days --seven days a week-- writing code, designing electronics and everything else needed to get my first product done. It was not fun, but it was a lot of fun. Weird statement, I know. Again, I don't know many people willing to do something like that. I am not saying that all solo founders engage in heroic acts of self-sacrifice to bring their ventures to flight altitude. But I do think that it isn't quite fair to characterize the solo-founder equation as a formula for failure when the vantage point from which this conclusion is reached is one where there's a huge enterprise and ecosystem behind the startups to provide funding, coaching, guidance and all that might be required in order to succeed. Take all of that away and maybe we can compare apples to apples.
calinet6 14y ago
Certainly once a company becomes larger, it no longer has only one person doing everything. I think it might prolong the takeoff phase, but there's no reason it's not possible to achieve success if done correctly. My guess is that the true reason is psychological and social; decisions are made better when discussed from 2 or more points of view. Ideas are hashed out. That, and mutual accountability is a powerful motivational force. There are reasons, I think, but they're not being elucidated very well here.
- erichocean 14y ago
  None of the things you describe require multiple "founders". I'm a solo founder, and have 10+ people who have equity in my company, that I can talk to about any of the things you described above (and do). I'm still just the one founder though. Do people not talk to employees? I don't get it. Apparently, there's a belief that you can only bounce ideas off of other "founders" around here. In my experience, that's completely false. I also, BTW, bounce ideas off of other business owners, friends, relatives, people on the Internet I've never met, etc. Being a "solo founder" hasn't prevented any of that. And I'm an introvert!
marshallp 14y ago
You had a really biased sample, you only ever took on teams right from the start so how would you know. And secondly, there's only a few outstanding companies and they seem to be equally split. Most of the world's richest people are not from teams but single individuals. The google boys are the only split fortune in the self-made billionaire club. If anything, the evidence is against you.
gtd 14y ago
But haven't you been consistent on the co-founder line since before YC was founded, and hence before you had significant data? Wouldn't that bias your YC data as well, which as far as I know only has a tiny minority of single founders?
ThomPete 14y ago
I wonder if there are more successful co-founder situations because there are more companies that start with co-founders? A few single founders: Overture (Bill Gross), eBay (Pierre Omidyar), Napster (Sean Fanning), Amazon (Jeff Bezos), AOL (William von Meister), Digg (Kevin Rose), SuccessFactors (Lars Dalgaard). And then I guess there are many examples where one of the founders is actually driving the whole thing even though he/she has co-founders. In some ways the whole discussion of co-founder/single-founder seem to be missing a bigger point which should be; What is needed to be a successful company? How the equity falls out and who get to call themselves co-founders seem to be less important.
- rdl 14y ago
  Some of your examples are wrong (in the same way pg's essay points out -- most successful sole-founder businesses tend to have actually had cofounders) Sean Parker was a cofounder of Napster. WvM left AOL when it was nearly bankrupt in the early 80s; a team (including Steve Case) basically restarted the company. I'd either ignore this case or consider it a cofounder case. Pierre Omidyar left eBay quite early, and raised money even earlier (including hiring Meg Whitman); it's a good example, but probably not as relevant today. Overture/GoTo was part of Bill Gross's IdeaLab, which is a pretty unique situation. I don't think I'd call Bill Gross a solo founder there; he may have been the solo founder of IdeaLab. Digg, probably not in the "successful" camp. Amazon is a good example of a successful single founder. SuccessFactors too, even though I know ~nothing about their business other than it being highly successful -- it seems like a black box inside.
  - ThomPete 14y ago
    I know Lars personally the others are actually solo founders. Sean Paker didn't found napster.
    - rdl 14y ago
      Napster is probably most accurately described as originally conceived of by Shawn Fanning, but the company was founded by Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker, and John Fanning (Shawn's uncle), and Jordan Ritter is often considered a co-founder (who is IMO probably the strongest of the team). It's not as complex as "who founded PayPal" (merger between two companies). Or anywhere near as complex as Facebook. No one is arguing that a single person can't create software. (and, the "invention" aspect of creating a new product is almost always solitary!) pg's argument (and the general argument here) is that to grow to a big, successful business, cofounders are highly correlated with success. That has to do with everything after the initial idea.
tptacek 14y ago
I can't see why you'd chose to nurture a conflict here; you're picking on a small part of his post, reading it in the worst possible light, and blowing it out of proportion. It's everything you hate about message board arguments, down to its position on the comment thread.
- csallen 14y ago
  I'm not sure he's doing any of the things you claim. Pretty much any opinion he gives in response to a post is going to "nurture a conflict" simply because he's pg. But I think HN would be worse off if that caused him to stop giving opinions altogether. Also, it's hard to see how he's picking on a small part of the op. A significant portion of it references pg, quotes him, and speculates on his thought process. What small part, exactly, did he pick on, and how did he blow it out of proportion? If anything, it seems to me that he agreed with the gist of the post, while at the same time clarifying his own position. Ironically, your response seems to commit the very crimes it criticizes.
  - jfoster 14y ago
    "If anything, it seems to me that he agreed with the gist of the post, while at the same time clarifying his own position." Your conclusion is probably most likely to represent reality because it assumes the best in both the Ryan and pg. Assuming the best in others is usually a good approach.
- pg 14y ago
  The post begins by quoting me at length, and ends by dismissing what I say as "rhetoric," and I'm the one making this a conflict? If this had just been the usual post arguing from anecdotal evidence that it was no problem to be a single founder, I wouldn't even have responded.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I think you shouldn't have, because I am atypically alert to digs at you and I didn't detect anything like what you describe. It is the prevailing wisdom that founders need cofounders, and he was just trying to put that in perspective. I'd put money on it: He's probably actually an admirer of yours.
chubot 14y ago
His position and yours aren't incompatible. He says he wants to "succeed" -- he didn't say he wants to get "really big" anywhere. In your "startup = growth" essay you laid it out very clearly. From the investor perspective, the only thing that influences success (returns) in any way is when a company gets "really big". Everything else is noise. But he's just giving a founder perspective. It's not contradictory, and to me it makes sense. I would definitely call what he described in the post "success", i.e. using the proceeds from a previous company to start a profitable new one. You might argue from the data that he could have grown faster with a co-founder. That could be true in aggregate, but there might be some other factor which makes it untrue for certain situations. As he points out, there are also risks involved, i.e. fights between co-founders which I think you pointed out as a huge source of failure. Also, you only really have data from YC companies, which lately are biased towards having multiple founders. edit: I guess the undertone is that people perceive that you've redefined the rules of the game (certainly "startup = growth" does that) and are trying to restore some balance in the dialogue. I think they perceive a misalignment of interests in terms of pushing for extremely high growth whereas you would argue there is none.
dbecker 14y ago
I'm building something, and I haven't found the right co-founder yet. I constantly hear "you need a co-founder" from around the startup community. I don't know the exact source, but I suspect some of this is just repeating what people have read in pg essays. Reading pg's clarification of what he means, I think the community has taken his observation that you can't make many millions without a co-founder, and mis-read it to mean you can't build something you love and put on the table without a co-founder.
- adidash 14y ago
  Exactly my thought!
erichocean 14y ago
What interest would we have in mischaracterizing it? Advantages to YC of multi-founder companies that have nothing to do with "growing really big": 1. Multi-founder companies shrink the available pool of founders. Assume the pool of available founders is fixed at any given point in time. By requiring start ups to have 2 or more founders, YC is able to capture a larger part of that pool, harming competitive incubators and increasing the likelihood that the founders they've been able to capture will produce for YC. 2. Split ownership is much easier for YC to manipulate favorably. By providing YC with two or more avenues to affect the actions of a company, the autonomy of a founder is reduced even below the numerical amount: a single founder in a company with two isn't just half as influential, it's probably more like 1/3. The extra influence is retained by YC, which can play the founders against each other. 3. To maintain this competitive advantage and influence, YC effectively forces successful single founder companies like Dropbox to dilute themselves and gain a founder. The entire process is now self-reinforcing, with YC actively manipulating the inputs while claiming the outputs are unbiased. (1) and (2) above demonstrate why YC has incentives to do this. Of course, pg is a good person and would never blah blah blah. I agree, he is a good person. That doesn't mean the above things are untrue though, even if YC is consciously telling themselves they don't matter, or even "don't want" these advantages. Humans are really good at deluding themselves, especially when they have something to gain.
- rdl 14y ago
  I don't think #1 is a goal of YC at all, nor does it particularly help YC. There are plenty of founders of businesses who will never consider YC (99% of small businesses, and many startups which don't want to move to the Bay Area, or which just don't know about YC). #2 is utterly incorrect; YC, like any other seed stage investor, basically doubles down (in time/effort, not money, I guess) on winners and puts minimal effort into failures. Pitting founders against each other is a pretty easy way to move businesses from "winners" to "losers", so it makes no sense whatsoever. The damage to a business from founder strife outweighs the returns from almost any decision (other than "should we sell", which YC or a seed investor has essentially no influence over, or maybe "continue vs. shut down". 3. YC has accepted enough single founder companies which remain single founder companies that they don't force anyone to do this. I fail to see how an investor taking a 2-10% common equity stake could force anything except disclosure, and I don't see how a relatively small investor like YC would be able to manage the administrative overhead or psychic cost of forcing startup founders to do anything.
aswanson 14y ago
I can't knock your methodology, as it has produced some black-swan type results (Dropbox, etc). But the only justification you have articulated against single founder prospects thus far is some ineffable "esprit-de-corps" in an earlier essay. Right or wrong, most determined single founders would look askance at such intangible, unquantifiable justification of their dismissal.
- erichocean 14y ago
  Dropbox was a single founder, which pg converted into a nominally multi-founder startup. Does anyone here think that Dropbox would have been successful by firing Drew Houston and replacing him with Arash Ferdowsi and some other "founder", as if having 'two' founders is what made it work -- and not what actually made Dropbox possible, which was Drew Houston? Drew was doing Dropbox regardless, had already written most of the code, and could have cared less if YC chose him or not. And pg wanted him to have a co-founder, so he got paired up with Arash Ferdowsi, and the rest is history. Note: none of this is meant to disparage Arash Ferdowsi or his contribution in any way. But I would strongly argue that Ferdowsi, without Houston, isn't a name any of us knows today, at least for a Dropbox-like product. And I would strongly argue that we'd still know Houston's name, and that Dropbox's success would be in the same order-of-magnitude that it is today.
  - aswanson 14y ago
    Totally agree, which is one of the main reasons I feel there is after-the-fact attribution bias in the yc model. What's weird is that there seems to be evidence to the contrary that they are making a deliberate effort to ignore. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's how it appears.
  - ludicast 14y ago
    Yep. And obviously if asked about Arash's role, Drew would say something classy like "I couldn't have done it without him". But that doesn't mean he couldn't/wouldn't.
diego 14y ago
It's worth noting that as investors (you a professional, me small fry) we are biased. I just wrote a quick post about my reasons to prefer startups with more than one founder: http://diegobasch.com/why-investors-want-co-founders http://diegobasch.com/why-investors-want-co-founders
pretoriusB 14y ago
>There are a handful of counterexamples, like Amazon, but Treehouse is not one of them yet. Still it's does a lot better than 90% of YC companies. Why compare it to Amazon-size businesses? With or without a co-founder, those are few and far-between anyway.
bodegajed 14y ago
The question is, how solid is your data? Having that strong bias against single founder companies, do you think your data is still dependable?
snambi 14y ago
eBay is another example of one founder company. It is an insanely successful company.
bluethunder 14y ago
1. If we are talking about really big companies there are a handful of examples anyhow. I am not sure if an empirical comparison is even possible. 2. I think there is a survivor bias here. Most of the biggest companies reach scale very quickly. The scale creates an incentive for the other co-founder to stick on. There is some anecdotal evidence to believe that if scale does not come early on - most likely there won't be a 'really big' company. If the co-founder quits and the founder soldiers on - it just adds another data point to pg's co-founder theory.

by pg 14y ago

ryancarson 14y ago

I don't think you're mischaracterizing it (new word for me :D). I'm writing the post out of my own personal experience. I wanted to point out that your advice is optimized for the success of Y Combinator (as it should be). This of course doesn't mean it's good general advice for all Startups. Single-Founders who grow their revenue to medium size ($5-$25m) will usually be extremely happy. They don't need to be doing $100m of revenue to succeed.

pg 14y ago
It's rather low to say that I tell people this because it's "optimized for the success of Y Combinator." I was saying it before we started Y Combinator. For example, in "How to Start a Startup" (http://paulgraham.com/start.html http://paulgraham.com/start.html): Ideally you want between two and four founders. It would be hard to start with just one. One person would find the moral weight of starting a company hard to bear. Even Bill Gates, who seems to be able to bear a good deal of moral weight, had to have a co-founder. I already knew then, both from my own experience and from watching other startups, how necessary cofounders were. Since then I've observed the trajectories of over 450 startups YC has funded. I'm even more convinced now that cofounders are necessary. And that you dismiss as "rhetoric" and offer instead one piece of anecdotal evidence that is not even conclusive yet? You do not make a very convincing case.
- ryancarson 14y ago
  Fair point on the timing of your essay. I didn't realize it was written before you started YC. Can you guys please release your empirical data about the success rates of YC companies, broken down by various things like market, year founded, location, number of founders, etc?
  - pg 14y ago
    It would be hard to disclose the raw data without also disclosing the secrets of individual startups, but we might publish some trendlines one day. In a sense, I already do disclose such data in a general way, because whenever I write or say anything about startups, I wouldn't contradict trends I know about.
    - ryancarson 14y ago
      You could anonymize the data and release a pretty monumental study. I would imagine the PR bump would be great too. My post is not an attack on you or TechStars. It's just a counter-point to your data, based on my own personal experience.
      - pg 14y ago
        It's hard to anonymize a data set that's both small and has a lot of variation.
        dmk23 14y ago
        I'm sure you would find a way to anonymize the data if it would result in a compelling story for YC. But as we all know so well the "startup outcomes" follow a power law. Dropbox and AirBnB make for a great YC PR, but are certainly nothing like a statistical mean outcome (aka "expected value"). I'd say it is a pretty reasonable thing to postulate that "doing things YC way" would result in a worse expected outcome for an individual founder vs. retaining control of a profitable business. If this statement is wrong please refute it with data. The way things are right now, YC is selling the "possibility" of becoming an outlier, while downplaying what "typical results" usually look like. If you were in a consumer product market it could likely break FTC rules on truth in advertising: http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/starek/nima96d4.shtm http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/starek/nima96d4.shtm EDIT / RESPONSE 1: This is not an "accusation". I am simply stating as fact that YC's model is focused on promoting its largest outlier successes (which form the bulk of YC portfolio value) while releasing no real data on the "mean outcome". Take it for what it is worth. As far as my statement about comparing "mean outcomes" it is obviously just a subjective judgement based on anecdotal evidence because there is no publicly released data from YC. EDIT / RESPONSE 2: Let's be realistic. Any VC firm can release % of IPOs, M&A and failures as well as IRR figures and exit bands. There is no reason to include any company-specific proprietary data. The only reason for YC to not give such estimates is because it would highlight the fact that most startups are nothing like Dropbox.
- chimi 14y ago
  It's also rather low to hate on the OP's startup because it doesn't fit your definition of great success. You do that a lot and it's not nice. In the realm of startups -- single-founder or not -- Treehouse may very well be well above average. There are thousands of single founder companies out there. Your system is biased and your predilection toward group founded companies may self-fulfill your prophecy. In a way, you're like the coach or owner of an NFL team telling kids to stay in school and do well in sports because they may be a pro-baller some day, when really, they need to hit the books if they want a positive outcome in the average end. Noam Wasserman wrote about plenty of reasons to be a solo-founder in his book, "The Founder's Dilemma." Some people would rather be king and your proposed path of group founded companies going on to VC fueled greatness is not the map for kings. http://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma/ar/1
  - pg 14y ago
    You do that a lot and it's not nice. For example?
    - chimi 14y ago
      There have been several threads like this pop up from time to time arguing that there are successful paths outside group founded vc backed avenues. I've seen people list a number of great startups that didn't take your proposed path and you knock them because they don't meet your criteria for successful company. I'll look for a thread, I can't think of any search terms that would lead me to one at the moment. I'm not saying that your data doesn't support your hypothesis, but I think you need to recognize the plethora of examples of single founded companies that achieve great success and know better than to apply to ycombinator because you don't like single founder applicants. As someone else said above, success is relative and people deserve their success even if it isn't a billion dollar IPO or 10x cash out that may, in the end, have left them with less money than they'd make over the life of a smaller achievement through some other path, be it group founded, bootstrapped, or whatever. My point is, there is a lot of greatness to be had that doesn't meet your standard and it'd be nicer to recognize greatness that doesn't follow your rules than to knock it because it is a counterpoint.
- koide 14y ago
  I think there are (at least) two parameters needing concrete definition: 1) What is success? 2) What's the ratio of solo startups that achieve the level defined in 1). As has been mentioned, either an exit of a few million or a stream of a million of profit a year for a couple of years are more than enough to many potential founders. That's the parameter I'm missing when you say cofounders are necessary. Necessary to achieve what, exactly?
  - ryancarson 14y ago
    I agree. It'd be awesome if PG would release the data they have on the outcomes of YC companies. There would be a lot we could all learn from it. This would also allow everyone to come to their own conclusions.
    - rdl 14y ago
      The #1 piece of data I wish pg would release is a comprehensive (if anonymous) survey of every YC founder "would you do YC again?" and the related "would you recommend YC to a friend doing a startup?". (although as a control, "If you were doing another startup, and couldn't get into YC again for that business, would you still go ahead with it?")
- keeptrying 14y ago
  PG, I always wanted to ask you. What do you mean by "moral weight" exactly? Thanks.
  - jcampbell1 14y ago
    It is a word play on "moral support". e.g. a cofounder provides moral support when external pressures are high. Bill doesn't seem like the type to need "moral support" because he can alone handle a high "moral weight".
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  > Since then I've observed the trajectories of over 450 startups YC has funded. ... many of which may be a result of your inherit selection bias. Starting a company "that gets really big" is hardly a success criteria that an average first-time entrepreneur has in mind. You might not like how Ryan expressed it, but he's right - do not let the lack of a co-founder stop you from starting a company. It's a non-issue. If you have this option - great, if not - fine, and there are several upsides to it.

robomartin 14y ago

Everything is relative, isn't it? Most people would live a very good life as the solo driver of a business that did two or three million a year. As an investor these businesses are probably of no real interest to you unless they can be taken way past this revenue level. And that's OK. I think you realize that tons of people would be very happy if they could pay off their home, cars, etc., have one or two very nice vacations a year, pay for their kid's every needs and their college education and maintain a very nice lifestyle during retirement. That being the context, I've seen tons of solo-founder businesses do very well and come up to that cruising altitude with hard work and dedication. And that's OK. Also, the OP's point on young-inexperienced solo founders vs. older experienced founders resonates with me. All I've done is solo and self-funded. I've made a ton of mistakes. I've made a ton of money and lost a lot of it. If I were in your shoes I would not, in a million years, hand the keys of a startup to a young just-out-of-college kid. Business can be brutal. It is very, very easy to become your own worst enemy. If you have a small team motivated to succeed because they each own a piece of the thing they are building they'll probably help each other stay on point and get it done. Of course, they also need extensive external coaching, support, guidance, etc. How many of your startups would have succeeded if the infrastructure you provide (beyond just the initial small funding amount) did not exist? My prediction is that most of these teams of young founders would crumble under the pressure of doing a business without the team that you put into place to make it happen. Example: I have a friend who started a very successful courier company. He now employs north of a hundred drivers. No formal education. High-school drop out. Makes loads of money. For nearly a whole year he lived, ate and slept in his car as he service this one mid-size client who gave him a shot making deliveries. He literally slept in his car in the parking lot outside of their offices and workers would come wake him up when a delivery had to be made. No support system, no coaching, no, well, nothing. I don't know many people who would be willing to endure such torture. My very first startup. Self-funded it with $250K I made after a heavy couple of years of consulting work. My own money on the table. Had my first kid. My wife didn't work. I then spent a year and a half in the garage working 18 hour days --seven days a week-- writing code, designing electronics and everything else needed to get my first product done. It was not fun, but it was a lot of fun. Weird statement, I know. Again, I don't know many people willing to do something like that. I am not saying that all solo founders engage in heroic acts of self-sacrifice to bring their ventures to flight altitude. But I do think that it isn't quite fair to characterize the solo-founder equation as a formula for failure when the vantage point from which this conclusion is reached is one where there's a huge enterprise and ecosystem behind the startups to provide funding, coaching, guidance and all that might be required in order to succeed. Take all of that away and maybe we can compare apples to apples.

calinet6 14y ago

Certainly once a company becomes larger, it no longer has only one person doing everything. I think it might prolong the takeoff phase, but there's no reason it's not possible to achieve success if done correctly. My guess is that the true reason is psychological and social; decisions are made better when discussed from 2 or more points of view. Ideas are hashed out. That, and mutual accountability is a powerful motivational force. There are reasons, I think, but they're not being elucidated very well here.

erichocean 14y ago
None of the things you describe require multiple "founders". I'm a solo founder, and have 10+ people who have equity in my company, that I can talk to about any of the things you described above (and do). I'm still just the one founder though. Do people not talk to employees? I don't get it. Apparently, there's a belief that you can only bounce ideas off of other "founders" around here. In my experience, that's completely false. I also, BTW, bounce ideas off of other business owners, friends, relatives, people on the Internet I've never met, etc. Being a "solo founder" hasn't prevented any of that. And I'm an introvert!

marshallp 14y ago

You had a really biased sample, you only ever took on teams right from the start so how would you know. And secondly, there's only a few outstanding companies and they seem to be equally split. Most of the world's richest people are not from teams but single individuals. The google boys are the only split fortune in the self-made billionaire club. If anything, the evidence is against you.

gtd 14y ago

But haven't you been consistent on the co-founder line since before YC was founded, and hence before you had significant data? Wouldn't that bias your YC data as well, which as far as I know only has a tiny minority of single founders?

ThomPete 14y ago

I wonder if there are more successful co-founder situations because there are more companies that start with co-founders? A few single founders: Overture (Bill Gross), eBay (Pierre Omidyar), Napster (Sean Fanning), Amazon (Jeff Bezos), AOL (William von Meister), Digg (Kevin Rose), SuccessFactors (Lars Dalgaard). And then I guess there are many examples where one of the founders is actually driving the whole thing even though he/she has co-founders. In some ways the whole discussion of co-founder/single-founder seem to be missing a bigger point which should be; What is needed to be a successful company? How the equity falls out and who get to call themselves co-founders seem to be less important.

rdl 14y ago
Some of your examples are wrong (in the same way pg's essay points out -- most successful sole-founder businesses tend to have actually had cofounders) Sean Parker was a cofounder of Napster. WvM left AOL when it was nearly bankrupt in the early 80s; a team (including Steve Case) basically restarted the company. I'd either ignore this case or consider it a cofounder case. Pierre Omidyar left eBay quite early, and raised money even earlier (including hiring Meg Whitman); it's a good example, but probably not as relevant today. Overture/GoTo was part of Bill Gross's IdeaLab, which is a pretty unique situation. I don't think I'd call Bill Gross a solo founder there; he may have been the solo founder of IdeaLab. Digg, probably not in the "successful" camp. Amazon is a good example of a successful single founder. SuccessFactors too, even though I know ~nothing about their business other than it being highly successful -- it seems like a black box inside.
- ThomPete 14y ago
  I know Lars personally the others are actually solo founders. Sean Paker didn't found napster.
  - rdl 14y ago
    Napster is probably most accurately described as originally conceived of by Shawn Fanning, but the company was founded by Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker, and John Fanning (Shawn's uncle), and Jordan Ritter is often considered a co-founder (who is IMO probably the strongest of the team). It's not as complex as "who founded PayPal" (merger between two companies). Or anywhere near as complex as Facebook. No one is arguing that a single person can't create software. (and, the "invention" aspect of creating a new product is almost always solitary!) pg's argument (and the general argument here) is that to grow to a big, successful business, cofounders are highly correlated with success. That has to do with everything after the initial idea.

tptacek 14y ago

I can't see why you'd chose to nurture a conflict here; you're picking on a small part of his post, reading it in the worst possible light, and blowing it out of proportion. It's everything you hate about message board arguments, down to its position on the comment thread.

csallen 14y ago
I'm not sure he's doing any of the things you claim. Pretty much any opinion he gives in response to a post is going to "nurture a conflict" simply because he's pg. But I think HN would be worse off if that caused him to stop giving opinions altogether. Also, it's hard to see how he's picking on a small part of the op. A significant portion of it references pg, quotes him, and speculates on his thought process. What small part, exactly, did he pick on, and how did he blow it out of proportion? If anything, it seems to me that he agreed with the gist of the post, while at the same time clarifying his own position. Ironically, your response seems to commit the very crimes it criticizes.
- jfoster 14y ago
  "If anything, it seems to me that he agreed with the gist of the post, while at the same time clarifying his own position." Your conclusion is probably most likely to represent reality because it assumes the best in both the Ryan and pg. Assuming the best in others is usually a good approach.
pg 14y ago
The post begins by quoting me at length, and ends by dismissing what I say as "rhetoric," and I'm the one making this a conflict? If this had just been the usual post arguing from anecdotal evidence that it was no problem to be a single founder, I wouldn't even have responded.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I think you shouldn't have, because I am atypically alert to digs at you and I didn't detect anything like what you describe. It is the prevailing wisdom that founders need cofounders, and he was just trying to put that in perspective. I'd put money on it: He's probably actually an admirer of yours.

chubot 14y ago

His position and yours aren't incompatible. He says he wants to "succeed" -- he didn't say he wants to get "really big" anywhere. In your "startup = growth" essay you laid it out very clearly. From the investor perspective, the only thing that influences success (returns) in any way is when a company gets "really big". Everything else is noise. But he's just giving a founder perspective. It's not contradictory, and to me it makes sense. I would definitely call what he described in the post "success", i.e. using the proceeds from a previous company to start a profitable new one. You might argue from the data that he could have grown faster with a co-founder. That could be true in aggregate, but there might be some other factor which makes it untrue for certain situations. As he points out, there are also risks involved, i.e. fights between co-founders which I think you pointed out as a huge source of failure. Also, you only really have data from YC companies, which lately are biased towards having multiple founders. edit: I guess the undertone is that people perceive that you've redefined the rules of the game (certainly "startup = growth" does that) and are trying to restore some balance in the dialogue. I think they perceive a misalignment of interests in terms of pushing for extremely high growth whereas you would argue there is none.

dbecker 14y ago

I'm building something, and I haven't found the right co-founder yet. I constantly hear "you need a co-founder" from around the startup community. I don't know the exact source, but I suspect some of this is just repeating what people have read in pg essays. Reading pg's clarification of what he means, I think the community has taken his observation that you can't make many millions without a co-founder, and mis-read it to mean you can't build something you love and put on the table without a co-founder.

adidash 14y ago
Exactly my thought!

erichocean 14y ago

What interest would we have in mischaracterizing it? Advantages to YC of multi-founder companies that have nothing to do with "growing really big": 1. Multi-founder companies shrink the available pool of founders. Assume the pool of available founders is fixed at any given point in time. By requiring start ups to have 2 or more founders, YC is able to capture a larger part of that pool, harming competitive incubators and increasing the likelihood that the founders they've been able to capture will produce for YC. 2. Split ownership is much easier for YC to manipulate favorably. By providing YC with two or more avenues to affect the actions of a company, the autonomy of a founder is reduced even below the numerical amount: a single founder in a company with two isn't just half as influential, it's probably more like 1/3. The extra influence is retained by YC, which can play the founders against each other. 3. To maintain this competitive advantage and influence, YC effectively forces successful single founder companies like Dropbox to dilute themselves and gain a founder. The entire process is now self-reinforcing, with YC actively manipulating the inputs while claiming the outputs are unbiased. (1) and (2) above demonstrate why YC has incentives to do this. Of course, pg is a good person and would never blah blah blah. I agree, he is a good person. That doesn't mean the above things are untrue though, even if YC is consciously telling themselves they don't matter, or even "don't want" these advantages. Humans are really good at deluding themselves, especially when they have something to gain.

rdl 14y ago
I don't think #1 is a goal of YC at all, nor does it particularly help YC. There are plenty of founders of businesses who will never consider YC (99% of small businesses, and many startups which don't want to move to the Bay Area, or which just don't know about YC). #2 is utterly incorrect; YC, like any other seed stage investor, basically doubles down (in time/effort, not money, I guess) on winners and puts minimal effort into failures. Pitting founders against each other is a pretty easy way to move businesses from "winners" to "losers", so it makes no sense whatsoever. The damage to a business from founder strife outweighs the returns from almost any decision (other than "should we sell", which YC or a seed investor has essentially no influence over, or maybe "continue vs. shut down". 3. YC has accepted enough single founder companies which remain single founder companies that they don't force anyone to do this. I fail to see how an investor taking a 2-10% common equity stake could force anything except disclosure, and I don't see how a relatively small investor like YC would be able to manage the administrative overhead or psychic cost of forcing startup founders to do anything.

aswanson 14y ago

I can't knock your methodology, as it has produced some black-swan type results (Dropbox, etc). But the only justification you have articulated against single founder prospects thus far is some ineffable "esprit-de-corps" in an earlier essay. Right or wrong, most determined single founders would look askance at such intangible, unquantifiable justification of their dismissal.

erichocean 14y ago
Dropbox was a single founder, which pg converted into a nominally multi-founder startup. Does anyone here think that Dropbox would have been successful by firing Drew Houston and replacing him with Arash Ferdowsi and some other "founder", as if having 'two' founders is what made it work -- and not what actually made Dropbox possible, which was Drew Houston? Drew was doing Dropbox regardless, had already written most of the code, and could have cared less if YC chose him or not. And pg wanted him to have a co-founder, so he got paired up with Arash Ferdowsi, and the rest is history. Note: none of this is meant to disparage Arash Ferdowsi or his contribution in any way. But I would strongly argue that Ferdowsi, without Houston, isn't a name any of us knows today, at least for a Dropbox-like product. And I would strongly argue that we'd still know Houston's name, and that Dropbox's success would be in the same order-of-magnitude that it is today.
- aswanson 14y ago
  Totally agree, which is one of the main reasons I feel there is after-the-fact attribution bias in the yc model. What's weird is that there seems to be evidence to the contrary that they are making a deliberate effort to ignore. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's how it appears.
- ludicast 14y ago
  Yep. And obviously if asked about Arash's role, Drew would say something classy like "I couldn't have done it without him". But that doesn't mean he couldn't/wouldn't.

diego 14y ago

It's worth noting that as investors (you a professional, me small fry) we are biased. I just wrote a quick post about my reasons to prefer startups with more than one founder: http://diegobasch.com/why-investors-want-co-founders http://diegobasch.com/why-investors-want-co-founders

pretoriusB 14y ago

>There are a handful of counterexamples, like Amazon, but Treehouse is not one of them yet. Still it's does a lot better than 90% of YC companies. Why compare it to Amazon-size businesses? With or without a co-founder, those are few and far-between anyway.

bodegajed 14y ago

The question is, how solid is your data? Having that strong bias against single founder companies, do you think your data is still dependable?

snambi 14y ago

eBay is another example of one founder company. It is an insanely successful company.

bluethunder 14y ago

1. If we are talking about really big companies there are a handful of examples anyhow. I am not sure if an empirical comparison is even possible. 2. I think there is a survivor bias here. Most of the biggest companies reach scale very quickly. The scale creates an incentive for the other co-founder to stick on. There is some anecdotal evidence to believe that if scale does not come early on - most likely there won't be a 'really big' company. If the co-founder quits and the founder soldiers on - it just adds another data point to pg's co-founder theory.