Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder • Hacker News Board

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#11

Post by waterhouse » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 9:14 AM UTC

Reflexive question from reading the title: Suppose lots of people have been told that you shouldn't start a startup by yourself, and people are inclined to heed that. Some people will disobey this advice. These will disproportionately be people who have strong reasons to believe they'll succeed. If their judgment is at all accurate, then we might well get the result that single-founder startups are generally more successful, even if the single-founder status is always and everywhere mildly detrimental to the business. The question is, did someone mention this possibility?

And it turns out the article doesn't even mention the relative success ratios (i.e. percentage of startups that succeeded out of startups that were started, broken down by founder count), AFAICT. D'oh. I guess it's valuable information that there are a lot of successful single-founder companies. But "data shows" sounds like a lot more than what is shown.

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#12

Post by eb0la » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 9:16 AM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #8

> Sooooo… You can start a company alone. Should you? Only if you are young and without dependents or if you can afford to write the effort off. Success is one metric, but another metric is the stress levels. Having been through both single- and multi-founder startups I can certainly confirm that former is incomparably more stressful than the latter. Assuming of course you are trying to build a functional company and…

Totally agree.

I remember a beautiful family vacation that went wrong because as a solo founder everything that happened got routed to me.

If you decide to go solo, you will start hiring very soon just to make stuff happening before you run out of bandwidth.

And you'll need really high quality hires... wich need a lot of bandwidth to acquire so plan accordingly (if you can ;-).

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#13

Post by smb06 » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 9:26 AM UTC

T2_t2 wrote: post #7

smb06 wrote: post #4

The data could be biased by early exits (Series A) of several SaaS or mobile app startups. Those tend to have less need for a co-founder. Try building a scalable, enterprise IT business on your own...

That's a good point. Startups are not about exits, but big exits. I wonder if the $$ stack up, and where the sweet spot is, given 2 founders need twice the money from an exit.

Usually a tech and a non-tech co-founder partnership works really well because you cannot scale up if the person building the technology/product is also building the marketing and sales machinery.

Single co-founders only work in domains where either of those two - technology/product and sales/marketing - are much less resource consuming than the other so that one person is able to focus on both. That model breaks at scale.

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#14

Post by afoihfoina » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 9:34 AM UTC

The question that most people are interested in is

  P(Success | Number of Founders)

but what the article has answered is

  P(Number of Founders | Success)

for a couple of different metrics of "success".

They are not the same question! In particular, the average number of founders for a successful startup might be low, but the chances could still be better with more founders.

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#15

Post by benevol » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 9:36 AM UTC

throwaway7312 wrote: post #9

I've cofounded 4 different startups. All were good ideas that bled cash or time and flopped, largely due to infighting or founder differences. One cofounder of one of the companies got really nasty about trying to leave with the rights to the company and we other two cofounders just let him have it. He sold the rights and it's now a successful venture-backed startup with soaring profits (two cofounders). Good for tha…

> pick a behind-the-scenes guy if you're a visionary, or make sure you're comfortable as the behind-the-scenes guy if you're partnering with a visionary

What's your take on the situation where you are both? (Where somebody is visionary, "knows business" and codes as well.)

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#16

Post by pyromine » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 9:50 AM UTC

benevol wrote: post #15

throwaway7312 wrote: post #9

I've cofounded 4 different startups. All were good ideas that bled cash or time and flopped, largely due to infighting or founder differences. One cofounder of one of the companies got really nasty about trying to leave with the rights to the company and we other two cofounders just let him have it. He sold the rights and it's now a successful venture-backed startup with soaring profits (two cofounders). Good for tha…

> pick a behind-the-scenes guy if you're a visionary, or make sure you're comfortable as the behind-the-scenes guy if you're partnering with a visionary What's your take on the situation where you are both? (Where somebody is visionary, "knows business" and codes as well.)

Not OP, but I'd say consider if you really are all those things. Very few people are, even Zuckerberg isn't, he was a competent coder not a great one but a visionary for sure.

Ultimately no one can have it all, learn to focus on the strengths, though if truly all of those are your strengths break forward and absolutely kill it.

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#17

Post by cyphar » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 9:50 AM UTC

afoihfoina wrote: post #14

The question that most people are interested in is P(Success | Number of Founders) but what the article has answered is P(Number of Founders | Success) for a couple of different metrics of "success". They are not the same question! In particular, the average number of founders for a successful startup might be low, but the chances could still be better with more founders.

mumble Bayes' Rule mumble :P

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#18

Post by brador » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 10:02 AM UTC

afoihfoina wrote: post #14

The question that most people are interested in is P(Success | Number of Founders) but what the article has answered is P(Number of Founders | Success) for a couple of different metrics of "success". They are not the same question! In particular, the average number of founders for a successful startup might be low, but the chances could still be better with more founders.

Isn't the second one just a subset of the first (post-event and excluding the failures)?

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#19

Post by charlesdm » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 10:06 AM UTC

throwaway7312 wrote: post #9

I've cofounded 4 different startups. All were good ideas that bled cash or time and flopped, largely due to infighting or founder differences. One cofounder of one of the companies got really nasty about trying to leave with the rights to the company and we other two cofounders just let him have it. He sold the rights and it's now a successful venture-backed startup with soaring profits (two cofounders). Good for tha…

> Since then, I've managed my own single-founder startup. We're profitable, growing, and valued at about $2.2 million. We're implementing a lot more over the course of this year and next, and I will look to exit in early 2018, once our valuation is closer to the $10 million or $20 million range.

Did you raise any capital on that one? Or was it bootstrapped + growing?

Re: Breaking a myth: Data shows you don’t actually need a co-founder

#20

Post by charlesdm » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 10:08 AM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #8

> Sooooo… You can start a company alone. Should you? Only if you are young and without dependents or if you can afford to write the effort off. Success is one metric, but another metric is the stress levels. Having been through both single- and multi-founder startups I can certainly confirm that former is incomparably more stressful than the latter. Assuming of course you are trying to build a functional company and…

It is, however, significantly easier to walk away after several years with a meaningful amount of money. One founder means you get all the profit (either in its entirety, or shared with investors)