The Solo Founder Discrimination

OK, no. I appreciate the support for single founders, but this isn't a supporting argument.<p>&#62; If books can be written by one person and become successful. Why can’t startups?<p>Because books and startups have nothing in common? Lots of successful endeavors are done by a single person, but that doesn't put the efforts of a single person vs. a team on the same footing, /especially/ as the problems increase in difficulty. Here's a better example:<p>"If children can be raised by one person and become successful, why can't startups?"<p>Sure. There are many children who have been raised by single parents and have become very successful. But that doesn't mean /statistically/, this is as easy as having both parents.[0]<p>The point that is being made counter to this is very simple: Yes, starting a startup can be done by one person. As can a lot of things. But statistically speaking, there are more successful startups that have multiple founders than single founders. You already provided the pie charts in support of this argument! Now to be fair, correlation does not prove causation, but the point is generally: Starting a startup is hard. Understanding the needs of your customers and both developing a solution to meet these need and reserving time to convince them that you've met their needs (selling) is very, very hard.<p>One of Ryan Carson's arguments (#2) was in essence that having no co-founders means you can top-down dictate leadership. I don't know about you, but I'm not always right. I've never actually met anybody who's always right. Having a team who's on equal footing with you allows you to vet concepts before they catastrophically destroy your company.<p>To paraphrase Chris Rock: Yes, you can do it without a [co-founder], but that doesn't mean it's to be done.<p>A good co-founder will almost always make your business more successful. And that's all there is to it.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.human.cornell.edu/pam/outreach/upload/parentalconflict.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.human.cornell.edu/pam/outreach/upload/parentalcon...</a>

Your examples all seem very flawed. Startups solve problems, problems that MANY people (customers) have.<p>Writing a successful book is not the same sort of problem solving. Neither is founding a religion. And developing a programming language may solve a problem that one developer has the time and dedication to solve.<p>Startups with multiple cofounders have multiple views of the a problem and will have a better chance of finding an optimal solution (wisdom of crowds) vs a single cofounder.

It is the same reason "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", namely its a variation of conventional wisdom (now).<p>Which, perhaps, is also to say its a combination of factors:<p>1) Herd mentality (also known as 'social proof')<p>2) Porfolio theory (diversification of ideas, attention to details)<p>3) Network effects (iff younger teams, 2x rolodexes &#62;1x)<p>4) Adverse selection (co-founder is a vetted hire; early hires are hard; and may imact outcome disproportionately).<p>So not entirely irrational either.The question is: is it remdiable and is such remidiation cost-effective? Two considerations: must be so for &#60;investors&#62; as well as for &#60;founders&#62;. But yes, a heuristic being overly generalized, is it seems to be a variation now of cognitive bias.

I think all this solo-founder talk is missing a key thing that even Ryan Carson acknowledges in his post. You can't do it alone forever.<p>I think this may be part of the investment bias. The same reasons why you will eventually need to promote people to very high positions in the company, could be the reasoning behind starting with people in those positions, or having them in place by the time you go for funding and essentially making them founders at that point.<p>Keep in mind, I'm a solo founder.

"If team is so important, how come the world’s biggest religions were started by one guy."<p>We don't know who founded any of the biggest religions. We know almost certainly that Jesus wasn't a real person because the story of his life predates him by hundreds of years. We know that hinduism wasn't founded by a single person. Buddha and Muhammed may have been real people, but there isn't any definitive evidence. And Steve Jobs had a co-founder.

I'm not sure the book analogy is appropriate. Books require concerted effort until publication, then nothing (this is changing but still the case, at large). Start-ups require constant maintenance and improvement. Care to comment on that?

There is a dream, a purpose slated only for you.You cant bureaucratically design how nature will channel talent and let it flower.The single founder plan hurts those who are very good at winning an argument by doing than by talking.They might be hoping to show something works in order to get others on board.Putting a rule that they must come in with someone deprives them of that opportunity to show what they are worth.