Two creators are not always better than one
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Two creators are not always better than one
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Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#2What I wonder (and search for "hours" had 0 hits) is the number of hours solo founders put in vs 2+ founders. I founded a company with 5 founds, 3 of which were in daily operations. It was a lot of work and I can't imagine doing a lot of that early work by myself (until there was enough revenue to support hiring).
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#3From the article:
>The research is based on a survey of creators for thousands of Kickstarter projects between 2009 and May 2015.
From the paper:
>This suggests that the taken-for-granted assumption among scholars that entrepreneurship is best performed by teams should be reevaluated, with implications for theories of team performance and entrepreneurial strategy.
The claims in the paper are pretty limited and based on a questionably representative sample. Extrapolating to "solo founders are better" seems like a leap at this stage. The results seem interesting and worthy of further evaluation, though!
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#4I am a solo founder. And I didn't see any mention of actual income value of the "successful" businesses in this article. I suspect you can easily get more successful very small businesses a leg up in sheer numbers alone just from personality conflicts wrecking multi-founder businesses.
I had a partner very early on, and it didn't work out. And it was really nice having someone on board that really cared about success the same way I did. Not an employee, client, friend or family member. But another "me" as part of the group.
If I could go back in time, and truly fix the problems, I would rather have kept my co-founder.
Also, they end with this, so maybe there is more to this story.
>...are already working on their next paper, which looks specifically at co-founding teams, and what factors determine their success and failure.
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#5I wonder if this has more to do with what level of success is sufficient for individuals vs teams. If you're doing this for money, teams need to be 2x+ as profitable. This would track with the result that larger teams are more likely to start have a non-profit.
In a world where you're swinging for the fences, this model would still argue for teams.
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#6What I wonder (and search for "hours" had 0 hits) is the number of hours solo founders put in vs 2+ founders. I founded a company with 5 founds, 3 of which were in daily operations. It was a lot of work and I can't imagine doing a lot of that early work by myself (until there was enough revenue to support hiring).
I think it just depends on the kind of product you're building. It sounds like you were tackling a fairly ambitious problem, so maybe it couldn't have been done by one person.
I've been working on a small bootstrapped service. There have been some long hours, but nothing too crazy. I've also taken a few breaks to do some contract projects (I'm actually looking for a new project now, and you can find some links in my HN profile.) I'm working on a fairly niche product, so I think I can afford to go at a slower pace and not have any cofounders.
Sometimes a startup idea does require a team and some VC funding. Those ones are far more risky and have a lower chance of success, but it's a totally different game.
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#7What I wonder (and search for "hours" had 0 hits) is the number of hours solo founders put in vs 2+ founders. I founded a company with 5 founds, 3 of which were in daily operations. It was a lot of work and I can't imagine doing a lot of that early work by myself (until there was enough revenue to support hiring).
As a solo founder of a SaaS launching next month, I tracked my time and am at 1350ish hour in the past 10 months. This is my first startup so I made some mistakes along the way with future creep so deadlines got pushed. I worked around 35 - 40 hours outside of my full-time job a week. Felt really burnt out so skipped one month of work 3 months ago but finally trying to get into the mindset of sales and marketing.
I do think though this is all entirely dependent on the scope of your project.
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#8Is anyone aware of similar data on the YC company set?
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#9Is anyone aware of similar data on the YC company set?
YC pushes against solo founders. Dropbox was a notable one (even though Drew Houston added a "co-founder" right about when they were accepted...)
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#10I think most of the research like these are pretty much useless. This is because they assume that the success of a startup has correlation with the founders/co-founders - there well might be, but imo the biggest correlation with success is time.
Some startups go bust when they are launched in an unfavourable climate - sometimes the tech is too raw, othertimes the market is just not ready. Move them a couple of years before or after and they take off. Lots of startups which take off, dont keep the momentum - market forces disrupt startups a lot more than the other way around.
When a startup takes off, often for no fault of the founders/co-founders - it creates a strong incentive for the founders to keep aligned and work together. If a startup does not take off it creates a strong incentive for founders to NOT work together.
Often when a startup takes off - or if it raises a big round from a huge VC it creates a strong signal for co-founders to get on board. Case in point is dropbox - they got accepted into YC and it allowed the founder to 'hire' a co-founder.