Instead of looking at "% of successful exits that had <i>n</i> founders", it seems more relevant to look at "% of startups with <i>n</i> founders that had a successful exit".<p>Without knowing the distribution of startups with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5+ etc founders, it's hard to tell how much more/less likely each group is to succeed.
You know, I'd venture to say the vast majority of businesses are started by one core person. One person has the idea and convinces others to follow. That's the most important metric to look for, can they create a team, can they convince others, etc.<p>Personally, I've started projects alone and with others, but by far all my most successful businesses/projects (one of which I'm applying to YC with) have been initialized by myself, and then I brought in others as needed.<p>Unfortunately, that creates some issues. For example, my most recent partner had to step back for personal reasons. Now, the question is - does that look bad? Now, I'm in an even weaker position because it looks like I failed to convince them the project was worth it, or we had a falling out. Neither of which was the case, we're still good friends, we just had different priorities and risk / reward levels.<p>Now I'm again a solo founder, searching for another partner. I know I could use one, which is why I'm doing it. There's a lot of work, and I'd move faster with help. I feel that's the only time I'd search for a co-founder going forward.<p>I kind of doubt people can bring people in just to increase fundability. They still have to be convinced and provide value.
I always feel that when I read these articles that the author is referring to a "single founder" as a hacker banging away at their Uber for Skateboards node or Rails app, as then applying the success of someone like Bezos, as if he built Amazon in a glorious one-person hackathon.
These types of article often list Jeff Bezos or Frederick Smith (Fedex) as examples. These guys were already millionaires when they started their company, I don't think they should be counted. There are enough solo startup founders who started from scratch in their kitchen/bedroom/garage, if look for them. No need to list less relevant cases IMO.
I see a lot of people questioning who is a solo founder or not.<p>To me, a cofounder is someone who has enough equity to veto your decisions if they don't like them. Everyone else is an employee, whether compensated in cash, equity, or thank yous.<p>Most of the objections I see here are, "well, they had a support group of X and Y".<p>No one does it alone. The issue is whether you have ultimate authority (and therefore responsibility) for the success or failure of the company.<p>I'd say everyone on the list of solo founders was personally responsible for the success of their company.
An anecdote to support this: not every business I've started myself was successful, but all the successful businesses I've started were without partners. On the other hand, every business I've started with one or more partners has failed.
As others have noted, the solo founder list is filled full of people that had immense help from other people, typically from day one.<p>For example: Henry Ford<p>He had half a dozen people building his first vehicle for him, most of them contributing their time to help at no cost, while he directed the implementation/vision/ideas. This is the first version of his quadricycle vehicle [1] he built in his little shed. Ford did some early experimentation work on his own, it wasn't very long however before he invited some extremely talented specialists to join in helping him, just to basically see if they could all pull it off. Ford had a high talent for gathering skilled specialists to follow him (messianic leader, he managed to do it throughout his career), all of which were better at specific tasks than he was (whether blue print drafters, or metal workers). Solo founder? Ford Motor wouldn't exist without Ford and it wouldn't have existed without the critical day-one contributions of those particularly talented people (some of which stayed with him for many years). When Ford built the Model T, he pulled together a very small team of hyper talented people just like with the quadricycle, and they did the actual work / implementation, while he played general (to take nothing away from that role, it's at least as critical as the other roles).<p>Ford as a solo founder is a big stretch.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Quadricycle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Quadricycle</a>
How hard is it to get into YC as a single founder? I'm pretty sure I could easily find a cofounder, but I'm not sure if I actually want to. I'm also not sure if I want to join an incubator, since bootstrapping and going at my own pace sounds nice.
The post mentions startups running afoul of minimum wage and overtime laws. The linked PDF mentions that anyone who owns at least 20% of the business can be considered an exempt executive. How exactly do startups wind up running afoul of these laws? The minimum pay is under $25k/year, surely if the startup is covering each founder's living expenses, then it shouldn't be too hard to meet that especially with vesting stock.
If your plan to grow your company by begging for money then you need have a co-founder: you need to convince somebody to work for free. That is first step toward convincing VCs to give you money.<p>If your plan to grow your company is thru business (actually making something) then having co-founder is not required: you can hire senior people since you are solving real problem.
Jeff bezos had 2 engineers working with him from the beginning. Maybe not the same as co-founders, but having a team and support structure can help.<p>Aaron Patzer, on the other, was truly on his own.
Regardless, it's so much more rewarding to share an experience like running a company, just like with most things.<p>In the end I would guess that the experience matters much more than the exact probability of success for most people.
Google for example could probably work with one person, but what would happen is that Sergey and Larry would have ended up inventing their own search engine companies and competed strongly with one another.<p>It wouldn't end up even half the size if it wasn't two equally intelligent cofounders working together. That's a huge advantage of the co-founder system: you absorb your competitor instead of fighting them.
rehashes a bit of this: <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional/</a>
The myth of the solo founder. I would venture that every founder has a support system that tangibly enables a business venture, whether it be family or peers or mentors.
Oh, shit! Time to update all the advice I've been spewing every time someone asks me "hey, what's a sign that my startup will fail?".<p>Switching from "if you don't have cofounders" to "if you have cofounders".<p>Done. 180 degree about face. Commence frenzy!
In my opinion, VCs prefer their investments to have more than one founder because teams are generally easier to manipulate / more willing to compromise. Solo founders, almost by definition, are going to be much more gregarious and stubborn. That doesn't equate into investor board control, which can cause issues down the road (see Uber)
Then, there's the silicon valley religion of idol-worship. Whatever Paul Graham, Elon Musk ... say must be true, and hence canon.<p>Ironic for all the AI, machine learning, data-science toting startups to go in the exact opposite direction when it comes to canonizing obvious non-science.