I thought it was too hard to start a company with a single founder because Paul Graham said so. That guy knows everything about start ups. He is possibly the greatest entrepreneur of all time and didn't benefit from a bubble or anything. Anybody more successful than pg only got there due to luck. Everybody involved with start ups should just read everything he writes, conform to it, and help spread the word. You can't become a trailblazer until you embrace this dogma.
This deserves the down votes because it's a little more smirky than funny, but there's a valid point here.
YC has has been called a cult before, and I don't think anyone would argue that there are some eccentricities, and one of these is the over-valuing of the two founder model.
You can't become a trailblazer until you embrace this dogma.
That's a great line, actually, and says it all.
Wasn't balsamiq (Peldi) a single founder? I've founded a few startups as a single founder, but they'd most likely be classified as Micro-ISV's instead of startups. But I'm okay with that.
I'm another single founder. I spent a lot of time looking for cofounders but after a few months without success I decided it was better to create something, even if it wasn't an optimum setup, than to keep spending energy playing matchmaker.
I've found that people have wildly different ideas about both the reason to do a startup, how to execute, what's important, and where to exit. There's a great diversity even among people who know/read a lot about it. In fact, I'm amazed that the multiple founder system works at all. Except for cases where everybody is a college friend or something, it looks like a recipe for a lot of conflict.
Yes, it probably is a recipe for a lot of conflict. But that's part of the idea. If you and your partners work the same and think the same, a lot of the point of having a partner is lost.
The question is not whether or not you and your cofounder disagree. The question is whether you can nonetheless find a way to make decisions and move on. If every disagreement causes your progress to stop dead, you've got a problem. If every disagreement is resolved in favor of the person with the loudest voice, you've got a problem. But it is in fact possible to make progress even with a team full of people who disagree, provided everyone is sufficiently open-minded, mutually respectful, and willing to indulge in whimsical experiments.
A lot of startup stories contain moments in which the cofounders had big disagreements; e.g. the time when Steve Wozniak had to be dragged kicking and screaming into quitting his day job with Hewlett-Packard.
I'm a big believer and promoter in small, highly-performing teams. Teams get that way by having a lot of different skills and worldviews and still managing to mesh. So I'm on-board with your comment.
What I've found, however, is that cofounders are especially tricky to integrate. I think once you have a running app/business it gets easier, but that entire process of taking something fuzzy and making it concrete is just a very difficult process for some folks. People are really good at BSing! Heck, if there was a prize for sitting around talking about startups it'd be a big bunch of folks winning it (myself included at times). But once you move past idle talk and start feeling for a market and a problem? It's not so sexy any more. And then when you're talking about all the hours that's required? People have a tendency to melt into the woodwork.
The ones that are extremely motivated are usually that way because they're emotionally attached to some concept -- and that concept may or may not be workable in the market. Which means it's like pulling teeth trying to have an honest conversation about viability.
Then there are the technology bigots, of course, and the "idea" guys.
I don't know about other startups, but the one I'm working on now is a pretty big commitment -- big enough that my "day off" is basically taking a long lunch today and surfing HN. The rest of the week, day and night, I'm working.
I don't see that combination of willingness to work on something that might not be hot at first and also being able to pivot when needed as being very prevalent. It's probably just me, though.
I agree. I hate the "all talk and no bite" talks .. we can argue to death about every single point, but we need some execution, even if it's to disprove a hypothesis
“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration!” - Edison
Starting a company has been compared to getting married, and while plenty of people have met their future spouses on dating sites, they don't meet, talk a few times, and then get hitched. Perhaps the missing bit is finding something people can work on for a while without the commitment of a company (sort of like dating...).
Agreed. That's why if you check out the concept of virtual company, it's a great way to start working with someone else with limited committment.
To me, first and foremost, the fact that you don't have any out of pocket expenses is a good thing, it eliminates one barrier to entry. Virtual companies achieve that. In comparison, joining a "real" incorporated startup as co-founder, the first thing you do is split the legal costs and buy your shares. So right there, a few thousand dollars before you even know if you should work together. And there is no "undo" button, unlike virtual companies.
That's also why in the co-founders meetup I ask the presenters to not only present their business, but reveal a bit of their own personality. I believe that compatibility as co-founders comes equally from being passionate about the same things but also being compatible personality-wise (read this http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/11/19/first-co-founders-me... for more on the topic).
...while plenty of people have met their future spouses on dating sites, they don't meet, talk a few times, and then get hitched.
This is true only of American dating sites. A number of Indian dating sites are based on that exact model.
I guess the lesson to take from that is this: if your expectations are low enough, and social pressures not to quit are strong enough, any reasonable pairing can be made to work.
Shawn also had an incredible amount of help from Jordan Ritter and Ali Aydar before the company was even a company. He also would have been a lot better as a single-founder, as his co-founder uncle John Fanning took advantage of his inexperience.
Lycos was not a single founder startup. It was a weird deal where CMGI bought the technology, turned it into a company, and then hired someone to run it.
Nor was Amazon, really: Bezos had a de facto cofounder called Shel Kaphan, who wrote all the initial code.
They used that phrasing because that's how Amazon's PR people described the situation to them. The reality seems to have been more like two cofounders than boss + employee. Though I would not be surprised if Shel was actually a cofounder in the strict legal sense as well, meaning that he got stock at the time the company was founded. I'll ask him next time I talk to him.
ojbyrne would take issue with you calling Kevin Rose a single founder. ;-)
A bunch of the other ones seem suspect too. Wikipedia lists the founder and first CEO of Lycos as Bob Davis - Michael Mauldin invented it as a research project, but if you go by research project inception and not incorporation, Larry Page is the sole founder of Google.
...which was around when Berkshire Hathaway turned from a textile manufacturer to an investment vehicle.
It's hard to lump financials in with tech startups, though. Technically, when he Buffett started the Buffett partnership, he had lots of cofounders. The structure of an investment fund is a single managing partner (who makes the decisions) and then lots of limited partners (who put up the money). In the eyes of the law, they're all cofounders.
If you go by practical instead of legal definitions - who provided the know-how? - then Buffett's early partner was effectively Benjamin Graham. After all, it was at Benjamin Graham's firm that Buffett first learned about investing, and Graham served as a mentor long afterwards.
You're probably thinking of Buffett Partnership, an investment fund which he ran largely by himself, using friends' and family money as initial capital.
Berkshire Hathaway is a textile mill that Buffett turned into an investment company, but by then he had been a successful investor for over 10 years.
I'm a single founder. Thinking about crossing over to the dark side, but it's not such a bad life. You keep more control of the company, but things move slower as a result.
Please, would experienced someones address this question?
For example, the essential difference between a co-founder and employee #1, and why you might want the one to perform some set of duties rather than the other.
cofounders typically have a lot more equity, and hence are typically much more motivated to work 24x7 until things are up and running. employees are not motivated in the same way.
I haven't employed anyone, but I'd say if the only thing you need is to 'speed up' as OP says, employing someone is probably the way to go. If you're still feeling your way around finding traction then maybe a cofounder. But this is just my 2c.
To be a single founder, you need to be quite special. Most people are not that special. A lot of those who think they are that special, actually are not.
It's not smarts you need - it's self organisational ability, and most people lack that if there is nobody else watching them.
If you cannot self-organize then you likely would not make a very good co-founder either. I do not want to be the co-founder who needs watching over nor would I want to have a co-founder that needed me to watch over them. It's all external motivation and that's the worst kind.
Actually to me one of the things I miss is being able to show what I've done. It is engergizing to show your work and if you don't have anyone as exited is harder. Same thing happens when you work on a company that doesn't understand what you are doing.
Finding a co-founder who matches your views and passion on all the points mentioned above to a reasonable degree is as hard as finding the mythical soulmate.
Maybe someone can have a startup like eHarmony (eCoFounder?) for finding such like minded people.
It's sort of worse. With relationships, if you break up, you move on, find another mate. You get over it. Once you're sure they're "the one", then if you like you can do a family startup and create some babies.
But with a startup, you don't usually have any time before you start building something. So if something does go wrong, the split up is bad.
It'd be like having a baby with every one of your ex girlfriends :/
I think ideally founders should have already worked together on something.
This prospect is just scary to me. Personally I'd be looking for a co-founder as driven to succeed as I am. I've sat down with 1/2 dozen potential co-founders for one of my projects and have decided to go it alone because of this. I'm building a company to make money, not to give away the fruits of my labor.
This prospect is just scary to me. Personally I'd be looking for a co-founder as driven to succeed as I am. I've sat down with 1/2 dozen potential co-founders for one of my projects and have decided to go it alone because of this. I'm building a company to make money, not to give away the fruits of my labor.
This prospect is just scary to me. Personally I'd be looking for a co-founder as driven to succeed as I am. I've sat down with 1/2 dozen potential co-founders for one of my projects and have decided to go it alone because of this. I'm building a company to make money, not to give away the fruits of my labor.
Single founder here. But I'll admit it: I can use as much support as I can get sometimes.
I've been thinking of starting a "braintrust" of solo entrepreneurs so that we can pursue our respective passions but also reap some of the benefits of having a co-founder, by sharing ideas, debating stuff, etc.
To find someone to devote free time to more work, to reach the end goal that maybe months down the line is hard to do. I've been approached by others to join their side projects, but I would rather work on my own and I think this is maybe how a lot of people feel. Any other founders in this predicament as well ?
Me! while i always try to find someone to help me on my projects, it really is difficult to find someone as passionate a founder as I am. But I never let that fact stop me from doing what I do. It's also forced me to become technical.
Getting users is just as hard building a product. In a way it's harder, because it is very easy to put energy into product that should have gone to user acquisition. The biggest weakness of being a single founder is that you can't put 100% effort into getting customers (since you're distracted by building the product).
Startups come in all shapes and sizes and there is plenty of room in there for single-founder companies. I have represented at least one single-founder company that eventually grew to $16B valuation in the fiber optics space and another that grew to $1B valuation in consumer electronics software. Are these unusual exceptions to the rule? Sure. But they do exist and there are undoubtedly a reasonable percentage of successful startups like them that start in just this way.
The startup process is best viewed as a continuum, ranging from the very early formative steps to much-more sophisticated steps later on. At some point along the continuum it is essential for most successful startups to add other team members because, when you scale to something great, you basically can't do it alone. But no one says this teaming process has to occur as the absolute first step in the process. It can occur later and, indeed, much later (both of the multi-B companies I mention above were several years into the process before the sole founders brought in other key team players).
The key at the beginning is founder credibility, whether found singly or in a team. If someone is sharp enough, he will find the means eventually to add key people even though, at inception, he finds himself working all alone.
Having said that, I will be the first to say that it takes a pretty exceptional founder to be able to start alone and build to large success. But many such founders exist and they can rank right up there with other founders in all the qualities that count toward success. At least that has been my direct experience in having worked with a broad range of founders over many years.
I'm also single founder. I've spent quite a bit of time looking for a co-founder and would like a co-founder, but at this point, I figure I just need to ship something and worry about it later.
CodeReviewer is one of the slowest/buggiest crap developer tools on Earth, largely due to its reliance on windows file sharing. It's often using 40% CPU for no reason, sometimes does not notify on new reviews, goes unresponsive every 2-3 days, etc.
Purely from an FU-money-exit point of view, I suppose SB was successful. But IMO that guy seriously needed a good technical cofounder.
My first startup I was the sole Founder and I had a number of early employees. I was the prime mover and I was the one who had the most stock. Until we were funded, their salaries were paid with my savings. My second startup I was the Founder but I had a bunch of early employees who were called co-Founders. I was still the prime mover but no one was getting paid until we started to ship products. We basically had equal amount of stock even though I started the company first and I took risk when no one else would. My experience is that it was a lot harder to get VC fundings when there were large number of co-Founders. VC's are not company builders and in order to ensure timely execution towards a financially successful exit, they would have no problem firing the Founder(s). So in some way, having a large number of co-Founders is sub-optimal (for the VC's).
I'm now a single founder (again). I also was a single founder with the first three startups I did. I keep trying out cofounders, but they all seem to lack perseverance. Most also have difficulty understanding the tech. I would welcome a business cofounder any day. Email me if you are interested.
I'm a single founder. I fall in the "tech cofounder" and would welcome a "business cofounder" any day. And, speaking of which, find me if you'd be interested.
Nothing wrong with being a single founder, a 1 founder business with 40K in profit is already ramen profitable. A 2-3 founder business with 40K in profit is not.
156 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadYC has has been called a cult before, and I don't think anyone would argue that there are some eccentricities, and one of these is the over-valuing of the two founder model.
You can't become a trailblazer until you embrace this dogma. That's a great line, actually, and says it all.
(He's also remarkably forthright about his experiences and finances... something I find really motivating)
I've found that people have wildly different ideas about both the reason to do a startup, how to execute, what's important, and where to exit. There's a great diversity even among people who know/read a lot about it. In fact, I'm amazed that the multiple founder system works at all. Except for cases where everybody is a college friend or something, it looks like a recipe for a lot of conflict.
The question is not whether or not you and your cofounder disagree. The question is whether you can nonetheless find a way to make decisions and move on. If every disagreement causes your progress to stop dead, you've got a problem. If every disagreement is resolved in favor of the person with the loudest voice, you've got a problem. But it is in fact possible to make progress even with a team full of people who disagree, provided everyone is sufficiently open-minded, mutually respectful, and willing to indulge in whimsical experiments.
A lot of startup stories contain moments in which the cofounders had big disagreements; e.g. the time when Steve Wozniak had to be dragged kicking and screaming into quitting his day job with Hewlett-Packard.
What I've found, however, is that cofounders are especially tricky to integrate. I think once you have a running app/business it gets easier, but that entire process of taking something fuzzy and making it concrete is just a very difficult process for some folks. People are really good at BSing! Heck, if there was a prize for sitting around talking about startups it'd be a big bunch of folks winning it (myself included at times). But once you move past idle talk and start feeling for a market and a problem? It's not so sexy any more. And then when you're talking about all the hours that's required? People have a tendency to melt into the woodwork.
The ones that are extremely motivated are usually that way because they're emotionally attached to some concept -- and that concept may or may not be workable in the market. Which means it's like pulling teeth trying to have an honest conversation about viability.
Then there are the technology bigots, of course, and the "idea" guys.
I don't know about other startups, but the one I'm working on now is a pretty big commitment -- big enough that my "day off" is basically taking a long lunch today and surfing HN. The rest of the week, day and night, I'm working.
I don't see that combination of willingness to work on something that might not be hot at first and also being able to pivot when needed as being very prevalent. It's probably just me, though.
“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration!” - Edison
(I'm behind both)
To me, first and foremost, the fact that you don't have any out of pocket expenses is a good thing, it eliminates one barrier to entry. Virtual companies achieve that. In comparison, joining a "real" incorporated startup as co-founder, the first thing you do is split the legal costs and buy your shares. So right there, a few thousand dollars before you even know if you should work together. And there is no "undo" button, unlike virtual companies.
That's also why in the co-founders meetup I ask the presenters to not only present their business, but reveal a bit of their own personality. I believe that compatibility as co-founders comes equally from being passionate about the same things but also being compatible personality-wise (read this http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/11/19/first-co-founders-me... for more on the topic).
This is true only of American dating sites. A number of Indian dating sites are based on that exact model.
I guess the lesson to take from that is this: if your expectations are low enough, and social pressures not to quit are strong enough, any reasonable pairing can be made to work.
Source: "If you’re going to launch a startup, how many friends do you need?": http://buzzpal.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/if-youre-going-to-la...
Nor was Amazon, really: Bezos had a de facto cofounder called Shel Kaphan, who wrote all the initial code.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/bezos_pr.html
"Over blueberry pancakes at the Sash Mill Cafe in Santa Cruz, Bezos managed to convince one of them, Shel Kaphan, to become employee number one."
A bunch of the other ones seem suspect too. Wikipedia lists the founder and first CEO of Lycos as Bob Davis - Michael Mauldin invented it as a research project, but if you go by research project inception and not incorporation, Larry Page is the sole founder of Google.
Be wary of information from random blogs. ;-)
It's hard to lump financials in with tech startups, though. Technically, when he Buffett started the Buffett partnership, he had lots of cofounders. The structure of an investment fund is a single managing partner (who makes the decisions) and then lots of limited partners (who put up the money). In the eyes of the law, they're all cofounders.
If you go by practical instead of legal definitions - who provided the know-how? - then Buffett's early partner was effectively Benjamin Graham. After all, it was at Benjamin Graham's firm that Buffett first learned about investing, and Graham served as a mentor long afterwards.
Berkshire Hathaway is a textile mill that Buffett turned into an investment company, but by then he had been a successful investor for over 10 years.
For example, the essential difference between a co-founder and employee #1, and why you might want the one to perform some set of duties rather than the other.
But assuming you can afford employee #1 (making cost somewhat moot), why otherwise might you decide to go in either direction?
I haven't employed anyone, but I'd say if the only thing you need is to 'speed up' as OP says, employing someone is probably the way to go. If you're still feeling your way around finding traction then maybe a cofounder. But this is just my 2c.
I just wanted to see further discussion of co-founder vs. employee (#1). I tried to ask it in an enthusiastic way.
This is why I'm single, I guess. :)
It's not smarts you need - it's self organisational ability, and most people lack that if there is nobody else watching them.
But with a startup, you don't usually have any time before you start building something. So if something does go wrong, the split up is bad.
It'd be like having a baby with every one of your ex girlfriends :/
I think ideally founders should have already worked together on something.
I've been thinking of starting a "braintrust" of solo entrepreneurs so that we can pursue our respective passions but also reap some of the benefits of having a co-founder, by sharing ideas, debating stuff, etc.
Anyone interested in joining?
Startups come in all shapes and sizes and there is plenty of room in there for single-founder companies. I have represented at least one single-founder company that eventually grew to $16B valuation in the fiber optics space and another that grew to $1B valuation in consumer electronics software. Are these unusual exceptions to the rule? Sure. But they do exist and there are undoubtedly a reasonable percentage of successful startups like them that start in just this way.
The startup process is best viewed as a continuum, ranging from the very early formative steps to much-more sophisticated steps later on. At some point along the continuum it is essential for most successful startups to add other team members because, when you scale to something great, you basically can't do it alone. But no one says this teaming process has to occur as the absolute first step in the process. It can occur later and, indeed, much later (both of the multi-B companies I mention above were several years into the process before the sole founders brought in other key team players).
The key at the beginning is founder credibility, whether found singly or in a team. If someone is sharp enough, he will find the means eventually to add key people even though, at inception, he finds himself working all alone.
Having said that, I will be the first to say that it takes a pretty exceptional founder to be able to start alone and build to large success. But many such founders exist and they can rank right up there with other founders in all the qualities that count toward success. At least that has been my direct experience in having worked with a broad range of founders over many years.
(edit: His name is Jason Cohen)
Purely from an FU-money-exit point of view, I suppose SB was successful. But IMO that guy seriously needed a good technical cofounder.
Maybe we should start a list of companies interested in finding cofounders?