What are the downsides of being a single founder (ie. not having a co-founder)?

Are you really good at everything you need to create a startup? If it's a web startup, I'd say the FIRST team you need is a designer and a few programmers. Nothing else.

So, as a single founder, are you doing everything? Or are you using the "bones" you've made to hire employees? If you have employees, then you really aren't benefiting that much from being a "single" -- you have a team, they are just compensated and motivated in a different way.

In my experience, a person who feels like a co-founder is a billion percent more motivated than an employee or consultant. Given this (and given that you need more than one skillset to build a good startup) why wouldn't you trade some equity to increase the motivation of your team? Surely this would raise your chances for success (which, as we all know, are generally pretty low!).

Unless you are one of those mythical people who are good at everything, you are handicapping yourself. And it's a pretty well-researched fact that two smart people are more effective problem solvers together than one genius.

But, at 48, that may be be necessary... As you say, who wants to partner with an old guy? grin

For the record, I am a 35 year old guy who has also made his bones selling two startups (just about to launch #3). Every time (including this one) I have have made damn sure that I had co-founders that had EQUAL partnership (when I could have gotten away with giving them minority partnership each time).

Ask Joshua Schachter. :-)

Lol about the "dreaded single founder thread". I don't keep up with YC News everyday, so after I posted I figured that this topic has definitely come up before. Oh well. Maybe people have changed their views since the last time it was posted and have interesting things to share.

Yeah, it seems like a good idea to just start building alone if there is no one else to do it with. People can be added later.

I've done both.

I started Swell Technology in 1999, ran it for seven years as the only stock holder. I made a pretty good living, worked on interesting problems, drove a 350Z, and had an office overlooking the corner of 6th and Congress in downtown Austin.

Now I'm a 47.5% stock holder in Virtualmin, Inc. (YC has 5%, and my co-founder has the other 47.5%). I work out of the second bedroom in a rental house a couple blocks away from downtown Mountain View, CA, make barely enough money to cover the rent, and don't own a car. But, having a co-founder is a still lot better. I fully expect that in a year, the success I had with my previous company will be dwarfed by what we can achieve with the new one, and a huge percentage of that is being able to share the load.

I worked all the time with my old company. For seven years running I never took a real vacation. The sound of a ringing phone makes my stomach hurt due to the constant support calls with my old business (so now, I don't have a phone...we have a bug tracker and public forums to help customers).

It's entirely possible to start a company solo. But there are some things you'll want to avoid. If you see yourself in any of the following situations, it is time to change your business:

1. More business than you can handle solo, but not enough revenue to hire help. You're in a bad business or not charging enough. Change something.

2. The mundane (taxes, paperwork, legal compliance, sales or support calls) is taking more than 25% of your time, in order to make ends meet. Pretty much the same reasons as in 1.

3. You realize that the "right price" on your products is such that you'll never be big enough to hire employees, even if 50% of the available market buys what you're selling. If you can't expand the available market, then you're in a bad market.

With a co-founder a lot of these things are more immediately obvious...it's easy to keep plugging along when only one paycheck has to be cut each month, and you can tighten your belt one more notch. With two or more, the math adds up, and one of you realizes "Hey, we're never going to build a business at this rate. We need to change things."

So, sure, there is a possibility that you'll be Markus Frind or Joshua Schacter. If the idea is really good, and you execute well, you can make great things solo. But the odds are against it.

"99% of the time, all of your equity is going to add up to nothing"

I think that's true no matter how many co-founders you have.

"Jealously guarding your equity when it's worth nothing seems silly to me."

Sorry you see it that way. I'd gladly accelerate my business with the right partners. In the meantime, I'll just keep on coding and selling until I find the right co-founder(s). Nothing jealous about it.