5 ms·

The Solo Founder Discrimination

25 points by liquimoon 14y ago

cllns 14y ago
I'm not sure the book analogy is appropriate. Books require concerted effort until publication, then nothing (this is changing but still the case, at large). Start-ups require constant maintenance and improvement. Care to comment on that?
- graeme 14y ago
  I've written a book (non-fiction), and work for a startup. The latter is considerably more complex than the former. It's often better to write a book by secluding yourself in a room or cabin. You can't run a startup that way. A book has a clear ending. A startup does not.
- liquimoon 14y ago
  I think it's probably harder to be on the NYT best seller list as an author than to run a billion dollar company. If you consider the number of writers vs the number of startups, I think the odds are probably the same. So, if majority of the NYT best sellers come from single authors, what does that say about the actual potential of a single founder being successful?
001sky 14y ago
It is the same reason "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", namely its a variation of conventional wisdom (now). Which, perhaps, is also to say its a combination of factors: 1) Herd mentality (also known as 'social proof') 2) Porfolio theory (diversification of ideas, attention to details) 3) Network effects (iff younger teams, 2x rolodexes >1x) 4) Adverse selection (co-founder is a vetted hire; early hires are hard; and may imact outcome disproportionately). So not entirely irrational either.The question is: is it remdiable and is such remidiation cost-effective? Two considerations: must be so for <investors> as well as for <founders>. But yes, a heuristic being overly generalized, is it seems to be a variation now of cognitive bias.
pedalpete 14y ago
I think all this solo-founder talk is missing a key thing that even Ryan Carson acknowledges in his post. You can't do it alone forever. I think this may be part of the investment bias. The same reasons why you will eventually need to promote people to very high positions in the company, could be the reasoning behind starting with people in those positions, or having them in place by the time you go for funding and essentially making them founders at that point. Keep in mind, I'm a solo founder.
- liquimoon 14y ago
  That's what I mean. I hired a designer and an intern to work on my startup. I am not working alone. But then I don't have a cofounder. And this is being discriminated in the investor world. Why is that? Is it because it's harder to control from an investor's point of view? I actually think it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Like 001sky mentioned. The conventional wisdom is that you should have a cofounder in order to be successful. And it's really hard to break this once it's THE conventional wisdom. So single founders don't get investment, so they are less successful. Then it shows in the data...
  - pedalpete 14y ago
    I don't read the data like that. What's missing in that data is how many solo founders there are compared to non-solo. I think you are assuming that their are an equal number of solo-founder companies as multi-founder companies, but I don't believe that is true. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that 80+% of companies that are looking for funding are multi-founder. If that is the case, then the odds of getting funded as a solo-founder are equal to the odds of a multi-founder company. However, we also need to consider how we qualify those companies which are likely to get funding or ready. Many solo-founder companies are not ready, but by the time they are ready, will possibly have added a co-founder. Either way, the advice I think should be just to keep doing what you're doing. If YOU think you need a co-founder to be active in the company, you get one, if not, you don't. Investment shouldn't come as a result of that decision, unless investors are thinking that you can't do it without a co-founder, and they might be right.
mikeg8 14y ago
Your examples all seem very flawed. Startups solve problems, problems that MANY people (customers) have. Writing a successful book is not the same sort of problem solving. Neither is founding a religion. And developing a programming language may solve a problem that one developer has the time and dedication to solve. Startups with multiple cofounders have multiple views of the a problem and will have a better chance of finding an optimal solution (wisdom of crowds) vs a single cofounder.
- liquimoon 14y ago
  If you are serious about solving problems, you should be talking to customers rather than talking with your cofounders. So, is the value of having cofounder more of an emotional support given that you can equally just hire someone?
Alex3917 14y ago
"If team is so important, how come the world’s biggest religions were started by one guy." We don't know who founded any of the biggest religions. We know almost certainly that Jesus wasn't a real person because the story of his life predates him by hundreds of years. We know that hinduism wasn't founded by a single person. Buddha and Muhammed may have been real people, but there isn't any definitive evidence. And Steve Jobs had a co-founder.
- liquimoon 14y ago
  Steve Jobs didn't build the PC. Wozniak did. I am not trying to build a rocket in today's age. I am launching a website. And I know how to build it myself. I can hire a designer to help out with design. I can hire interns to work on marketing. Why is it such a taboo that I am a solo founder in the investor's world?
  - pedalpete 14y ago
    I think maybe you are getting downvoted because you are mis-understanding the co-founder relationship. Steve Jobs didn't build the PC, but he knew how to get market it and get investors involved and run a business (or at least he was learning at the time, which gave Woz the opportunity to keep building and coding). The company is nothing without a product, so in that case you are correct, but often the co-founder relationship isn't everybody building, it's sharing of all the responsibilities necessary to run a business. Just to note, I'm a coder, so don't think I'm some MBA guy trying to justify my value.
aclimatt 14y ago
OK, no. I appreciate the support for single founders, but this isn't a supporting argument. > If books can be written by one person and become successful. Why can’t startups? Because books and startups have nothing in common? Lots of successful endeavors are done by a single person, but that doesn't put the efforts of a single person vs. a team on the same footing, /especially/ as the problems increase in difficulty. Here's a better example: "If children can be raised by one person and become successful, why can't startups?" Sure. There are many children who have been raised by single parents and have become very successful. But that doesn't mean /statistically/, this is as easy as having both parents.[0] The point that is being made counter to this is very simple: Yes, starting a startup can be done by one person. As can a lot of things. But statistically speaking, there are more successful startups that have multiple founders than single founders. You already provided the pie charts in support of this argument! Now to be fair, correlation does not prove causation, but the point is generally: Starting a startup is hard. Understanding the needs of your customers and both developing a solution to meet these need and reserving time to convince them that you've met their needs (selling) is very, very hard. One of Ryan Carson's arguments (#2) was in essence that having no co-founders means you can top-down dictate leadership. I don't know about you, but I'm not always right. I've never actually met anybody who's always right. Having a team who's on equal footing with you allows you to vet concepts before they catastrophically destroy your company. To paraphrase Chris Rock: Yes, you can do it without a [co-founder], but that doesn't mean it's to be done. A good co-founder will almost always make your business more successful. And that's all there is to it. [0] http://www.human.cornell.edu/pam/outreach/upload/parentalconflict.pdf http://www.human.cornell.edu/pam/outreach/upload/parentalcon...
- liquimoon 14y ago
  Perhaps I should rephrase this. The odds of getting onto the NYT as an author is the probably the same as creating the next billion dollar company. And I think the ease of technology has gone down so much that the amount of effort it takes in writing a book is almost the same as writing a basic web app. So, if productivity gain has improved so dramatically, perhaps we should question our decades old assumptions. It's easy to bring up example like Steve Jobs and Wozniak. But creating a web app nowadays is considerably easier than building the first PC. Even marketing is easier now. So, why is it that we still hold the same belief about starting companies?
ekm2 14y ago
There is a dream, a purpose slated only for you.You cant bureaucratically design how nature will channel talent and let it flower.The single founder plan hurts those who are very good at winning an argument by doing than by talking.They might be hoping to show something works in order to get others on board.Putting a rule that they must come in with someone deprives them of that opportunity to show what they are worth.

25 points by liquimoon 14y ago

cllns 14y ago

I'm not sure the book analogy is appropriate. Books require concerted effort until publication, then nothing (this is changing but still the case, at large). Start-ups require constant maintenance and improvement. Care to comment on that?

graeme 14y ago
I've written a book (non-fiction), and work for a startup. The latter is considerably more complex than the former. It's often better to write a book by secluding yourself in a room or cabin. You can't run a startup that way. A book has a clear ending. A startup does not.
liquimoon 14y ago
I think it's probably harder to be on the NYT best seller list as an author than to run a billion dollar company. If you consider the number of writers vs the number of startups, I think the odds are probably the same. So, if majority of the NYT best sellers come from single authors, what does that say about the actual potential of a single founder being successful?

001sky 14y ago

It is the same reason "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", namely its a variation of conventional wisdom (now). Which, perhaps, is also to say its a combination of factors: 1) Herd mentality (also known as 'social proof') 2) Porfolio theory (diversification of ideas, attention to details) 3) Network effects (iff younger teams, 2x rolodexes >1x) 4) Adverse selection (co-founder is a vetted hire; early hires are hard; and may imact outcome disproportionately). So not entirely irrational either.The question is: is it remdiable and is such remidiation cost-effective? Two considerations: must be so for <investors> as well as for <founders>. But yes, a heuristic being overly generalized, is it seems to be a variation now of cognitive bias.

pedalpete 14y ago

I think all this solo-founder talk is missing a key thing that even Ryan Carson acknowledges in his post. You can't do it alone forever. I think this may be part of the investment bias. The same reasons why you will eventually need to promote people to very high positions in the company, could be the reasoning behind starting with people in those positions, or having them in place by the time you go for funding and essentially making them founders at that point. Keep in mind, I'm a solo founder.

liquimoon 14y ago
That's what I mean. I hired a designer and an intern to work on my startup. I am not working alone. But then I don't have a cofounder. And this is being discriminated in the investor world. Why is that? Is it because it's harder to control from an investor's point of view? I actually think it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Like 001sky mentioned. The conventional wisdom is that you should have a cofounder in order to be successful. And it's really hard to break this once it's THE conventional wisdom. So single founders don't get investment, so they are less successful. Then it shows in the data...
- pedalpete 14y ago
  I don't read the data like that. What's missing in that data is how many solo founders there are compared to non-solo. I think you are assuming that their are an equal number of solo-founder companies as multi-founder companies, but I don't believe that is true. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that 80+% of companies that are looking for funding are multi-founder. If that is the case, then the odds of getting funded as a solo-founder are equal to the odds of a multi-founder company. However, we also need to consider how we qualify those companies which are likely to get funding or ready. Many solo-founder companies are not ready, but by the time they are ready, will possibly have added a co-founder. Either way, the advice I think should be just to keep doing what you're doing. If YOU think you need a co-founder to be active in the company, you get one, if not, you don't. Investment shouldn't come as a result of that decision, unless investors are thinking that you can't do it without a co-founder, and they might be right.

mikeg8 14y ago

Your examples all seem very flawed. Startups solve problems, problems that MANY people (customers) have. Writing a successful book is not the same sort of problem solving. Neither is founding a religion. And developing a programming language may solve a problem that one developer has the time and dedication to solve. Startups with multiple cofounders have multiple views of the a problem and will have a better chance of finding an optimal solution (wisdom of crowds) vs a single cofounder.

liquimoon 14y ago
If you are serious about solving problems, you should be talking to customers rather than talking with your cofounders. So, is the value of having cofounder more of an emotional support given that you can equally just hire someone?

Alex3917 14y ago

"If team is so important, how come the world’s biggest religions were started by one guy." We don't know who founded any of the biggest religions. We know almost certainly that Jesus wasn't a real person because the story of his life predates him by hundreds of years. We know that hinduism wasn't founded by a single person. Buddha and Muhammed may have been real people, but there isn't any definitive evidence. And Steve Jobs had a co-founder.

liquimoon 14y ago
Steve Jobs didn't build the PC. Wozniak did. I am not trying to build a rocket in today's age. I am launching a website. And I know how to build it myself. I can hire a designer to help out with design. I can hire interns to work on marketing. Why is it such a taboo that I am a solo founder in the investor's world?
- pedalpete 14y ago
  I think maybe you are getting downvoted because you are mis-understanding the co-founder relationship. Steve Jobs didn't build the PC, but he knew how to get market it and get investors involved and run a business (or at least he was learning at the time, which gave Woz the opportunity to keep building and coding). The company is nothing without a product, so in that case you are correct, but often the co-founder relationship isn't everybody building, it's sharing of all the responsibilities necessary to run a business. Just to note, I'm a coder, so don't think I'm some MBA guy trying to justify my value.

aclimatt 14y ago

OK, no. I appreciate the support for single founders, but this isn't a supporting argument. > If books can be written by one person and become successful. Why can’t startups? Because books and startups have nothing in common? Lots of successful endeavors are done by a single person, but that doesn't put the efforts of a single person vs. a team on the same footing, /especially/ as the problems increase in difficulty. Here's a better example: "If children can be raised by one person and become successful, why can't startups?" Sure. There are many children who have been raised by single parents and have become very successful. But that doesn't mean /statistically/, this is as easy as having both parents.[0] The point that is being made counter to this is very simple: Yes, starting a startup can be done by one person. As can a lot of things. But statistically speaking, there are more successful startups that have multiple founders than single founders. You already provided the pie charts in support of this argument! Now to be fair, correlation does not prove causation, but the point is generally: Starting a startup is hard. Understanding the needs of your customers and both developing a solution to meet these need and reserving time to convince them that you've met their needs (selling) is very, very hard. One of Ryan Carson's arguments (#2) was in essence that having no co-founders means you can top-down dictate leadership. I don't know about you, but I'm not always right. I've never actually met anybody who's always right. Having a team who's on equal footing with you allows you to vet concepts before they catastrophically destroy your company. To paraphrase Chris Rock: Yes, you can do it without a [co-founder], but that doesn't mean it's to be done. A good co-founder will almost always make your business more successful. And that's all there is to it. [0] http://www.human.cornell.edu/pam/outreach/upload/parentalconflict.pdf http://www.human.cornell.edu/pam/outreach/upload/parentalcon...

liquimoon 14y ago
Perhaps I should rephrase this. The odds of getting onto the NYT as an author is the probably the same as creating the next billion dollar company. And I think the ease of technology has gone down so much that the amount of effort it takes in writing a book is almost the same as writing a basic web app. So, if productivity gain has improved so dramatically, perhaps we should question our decades old assumptions. It's easy to bring up example like Steve Jobs and Wozniak. But creating a web app nowadays is considerably easier than building the first PC. Even marketing is easier now. So, why is it that we still hold the same belief about starting companies?

ekm2 14y ago

There is a dream, a purpose slated only for you.You cant bureaucratically design how nature will channel talent and let it flower.The single founder plan hurts those who are very good at winning an argument by doing than by talking.They might be hoping to show something works in order to get others on board.Putting a rule that they must come in with someone deprives them of that opportunity to show what they are worth.