Lol this is a hilarious way of defining success. This data proves that if you want to have an "ongoing company" a few years after starting, you're better off going solo. But how many people, when starting a company, dream of reaching "ongoing" status? Why are they ignoring the data from the most valuable, most impactful, and most innovative startups?
Two creators are not always better than one
81–90 of 101 posts
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#82Critical detail beneath the fold: > The research is based on a survey of creators for thousands of Kickstarter projects between 2009 and May 2015. It would be crazy to generalize from this to most VC-backed (or seeking) businesses... and another thing still to compare the massively larger set of small businesses started by individuals without major external funding. Different kinds of firms face incredibly different…
Exactly! This headline is totally misleading!
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that this is a thing with VC's, but the claimed logic behind it is not credible. If you are able to recruit founders to work with each other, you didn't prove anything that couldn't be just as easily proven by recruiting a VC to invest in you. And if it's not sales/hype that we're trying to prove, but instead a technical review by a potential co-founder, then that's what technical due diligence is for. To me,…
> If you are able to recruit founders to work with each other, you didn't prove anything that couldn't be just as easily proven by recruiting a VC to invest in you. Eh, I think this is spurious. The specific post you're replying to is about a signal that seed funders can use to predict if founders have what it takes. Seed funders can't really use the signal of "did they get VC money?" Also, technical proof of concept…
> Eh, I think this is spurious. The specific post you're replying to is about a signal that seed funders can use to predict if founders have what it takes. Seed funders can't really use the signal of "did they get VC money?"
That's a fair point, but my point was really: if they can convince you as an investor to actually put in money, then they certainly have sales skills that outclass those of acquiring some random co-founder. Admittedly, maybe they don't have the technical skills, or perhaps you as an investor lacks the specific skills to evaluate those in the way that a potential co-founder might be able to, but (as I mentioned) that's what technical due diligence is for anyway.
> Also, technical proof of concept is definitely a positive signal, but is not at all sufficient to make a reasonable investment bet.
I don't see what you are saying. Are you saying that getting a co-founder is more sufficient than a technical proof of concept to make a reasonable investment bet? I wasn't arguing that one should make an entire investment based solely on one factor (the product itself).
My point is simply that: being able to sell a co-founder on the idea or product seems to be an easier lift than selling an investor to invest real money in the idea or product, irrespective of other factors.
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is affirmative action for non-technical cofounders if you ask me. The non-technical cofounders who become VCs want to support people who remind them of themselves in the past. This is why founder dating is like dating at a tech school. There are many non-technical cofounders who bring nothing to the table except the desire to make a huge amount of money. That is something to work with, but it is by no mean…
Paul Graham had a great article on Lisp. In his view, Lisp programmers love Lisp because it offers extremely powerful features in a way that other programming languages don't. Those who don't understand Lisp are (rightly) skeptical. Their thought process goes something like, "I don't need these features, and I do my work just fine". In other words, they don't know what they're missing out on, and so it appears useles…
The problem is there's no easy way to know which things will actually make you more productive and which won't. Will switching to lisp make me more productive or will it just mean I have to re-write 30 libraries from scratch that aren't written in lisp? Will that productivity multiply as I hire more people or will the fact that it's hard to find lisp programmers mean my options to expand will be limited? Does lisp work well on large teams or does the fact that it's typeless and every programmer makes their own DSL macros mean that it's actually harder to share knowledge?
Will switching from framework X to framework Y really increase my productivity? Is it a matter of not understanding how Y is so much more efficient to build thing than X or is it just hyperbole/marketing/cult. Switching to different product management software, different game engine, different 3d software, different wiki system, etc etc .. How can I know. If I believed everyone I'd be switching every week.
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#85Critical detail beneath the fold: > The research is based on a survey of creators for thousands of Kickstarter projects between 2009 and May 2015. It would be crazy to generalize from this to most VC-backed (or seeking) businesses... and another thing still to compare the massively larger set of small businesses started by individuals without major external funding. Different kinds of firms face incredibly different…
Wow, good catch. We replaced 'founder' with 'creator' in the title above.
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#86I think the reason Y-combinator and others like to see two or more founders is that at least those two people are willing to work with/for each other. It is a rough filtering mechanism, and probably a very useful one, especially if your philosophy is that technical people make great business founders. More honestly it is "Technical people can make great startup founders, but first filter on if they can recruit one ot…
Two people in head position are easier to sway in favor of investors' benefit than one.
Technical people as not stupid and can delegate that "recruitment" thing you pushed to front before us. I also would like to see something akin to the research we are talking about in the defense of your "much more likely to have skills to run a high growth startup".
High growth startup is of interest for investors, mainly. And that's why they prefer several cofounders, because it is easier to divide and control what can be divided. Single founder cannot be divided (except for medical conditions), two can be.
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#87Besides rare exceptions (that do exist!), there is nothing a co-founder can give that you can't hire.
Apart from input and challenge that you have to listen to. That might sound like a bad thing but there are plenty of successful founders who would have gone off the rails early if they didn't have someone else asking, "do we really need to do that"?
do we really need to build a company?
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#88I think the reason Y-combinator and others like to see two or more founders is that at least those two people are willing to work with/for each other. It is a rough filtering mechanism, and probably a very useful one, especially if your philosophy is that technical people make great business founders. More honestly it is "Technical people can make great startup founders, but first filter on if they can recruit one ot…
>I think the reason Y-combinator and others like to see two or more founders is that at least those two people are willing to work with/for each other.
No, investors prefer two or more founders because it dilutes the power of any individual and makes it easier for investors to play founders against each other and water down the influence of either of them. It makes investors much more influential.
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#89I 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…
In your view, why didn't it work out?
Re: Two creators are not always better than one
#90> Two creators are not always better than one
Agreed, but I want more than one Elon Musk