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. T

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.