3 ms·

One of the most interesting questions in the whole single founder v.s. co-founder debate, is how having a co-founder profoundly impacts your personal net gain f

One of the most interesting questions in the whole single founder v.s. co-founder debate, is how having a co-founder profoundly impacts your personal net gain from a given start-up venture. The way I see it, taking on a co-founder is a form of start-up insurance. You increase your overall chance of success by giving up a huge portion of the upside in that eventuality. It makes sense that a VC would prefer companies that have more than one founder if they believe it increases their statistical chance of success. Just understand that this may come at the expense of your personal gain, which is of minimal concern to an outside investor.

cwilson 14y ago
While I agree, there is also a balance to be struck. The more co-founders you have, the more likely there will be overlapping skill-sets and disagreements which can lead to various forms of failure as well. From what I can tell, and personal experience, 3 founders seems to be a very good balance.
johnrob 14y ago
Your math/point-of-view is intuitive and quite common. However, startups are a game of large multipliers. At any given stage, you're always pushing to be 10X of where you are now. Your long term goal is probably to be 1000X more valuable than where you start out. Dividing stock amongst 2 or 3 co-founders is a small order multiplier. You lose half or two thirds of the company. Hitting (or missing) the 1000X goal will determine your personal outcome - the amount of stock given to other co-founders, as an input variable, has virtually no comparative effect on the outcome.
a5seo 14y ago
I've solo founded, founded w/ a partner but split when we raised external money (and losing 6 figures of my own cash in the process), and founded solo again. This week, I'm signing on to start up something new with 2 co-founders. Here's what I've observed: - Having co-founders raises your odds of success AND the scale of your outcome (to replicate this, a solo founder would need to raise money quickly and hire up... staying solo too long limits your potential outcome) - I believe having complementary co-founders will allow me to specialize and kick ass at what I'm best at (being solo meant doing a look of things sort of ok at, but not great) - I haven't worked with these co-founders before, however, I think it's extraordinarily unlikely to expect to find 1-2 other people who you know really well AND are available AND skilled AND interested in the same space AND complementary. When you see an opportunity, you have to play the cards you have. In lieu of all of the above, the best approach is to work together and "run some cheap experiments" with nobody jumping in until you've decided if you can work together and there's some positive results. - As a single founder, I felt like my skills were stagnating-- I hacked kludgy solutions to all manner of problems (tech and non-tech) because I wasn't learning from others' experience. Overall I felt extraordinarily out of touch, HN notwithstanding. Bottom line, for me, the learning, specialization, and upside of having co-founders outweigh the control, ownership, and conflict avoidance of being a single founder.

cwilson 14y ago

While I agree, there is also a balance to be struck. The more co-founders you have, the more likely there will be overlapping skill-sets and disagreements which can lead to various forms of failure as well. From what I can tell, and personal experience, 3 founders seems to be a very good balance.

johnrob 14y ago

Your math/point-of-view is intuitive and quite common. However, startups are a game of large multipliers. At any given stage, you're always pushing to be 10X of where you are now. Your long term goal is probably to be 1000X more valuable than where you start out. Dividing stock amongst 2 or 3 co-founders is a small order multiplier. You lose half or two thirds of the company. Hitting (or missing) the 1000X goal will determine your personal outcome - the amount of stock given to other co-founders, as an input variable, has virtually no comparative effect on the outcome.

a5seo 14y ago

I've solo founded, founded w/ a partner but split when we raised external money (and losing 6 figures of my own cash in the process), and founded solo again. This week, I'm signing on to start up something new with 2 co-founders. Here's what I've observed: - Having co-founders raises your odds of success AND the scale of your outcome (to replicate this, a solo founder would need to raise money quickly and hire up... staying solo too long limits your potential outcome) - I believe having complementary co-founders will allow me to specialize and kick ass at what I'm best at (being solo meant doing a look of things sort of ok at, but not great) - I haven't worked with these co-founders before, however, I think it's extraordinarily unlikely to expect to find 1-2 other people who you know really well AND are available AND skilled AND interested in the same space AND complementary. When you see an opportunity, you have to play the cards you have. In lieu of all of the above, the best approach is to work together and "run some cheap experiments" with nobody jumping in until you've decided if you can work together and there's some positive results. - As a single founder, I felt like my skills were stagnating-- I hacked kludgy solutions to all manner of problems (tech and non-tech) because I wasn't learning from others' experience. Overall I felt extraordinarily out of touch, HN notwithstanding. Bottom line, for me, the learning, specialization, and upside of having co-founders outweigh the control, ownership, and conflict avoidance of being a single founder.