I think that the (increasing but by no means new) viability of single-founder startups is an inevitable consequence of the environment for all startups continuing to get radically better. If two guys could make non-trivial web services back when making a web service started with, quite literally, programming your own HTTP server since you didn't have a hundred thousand to buy one, that implies very good things for a "team" which has a decade and change of OSS to lean on.
In addition to OSS, the huge existing distribution channels like organic SEO, AdWords, and all those things you cool people use are also a major draw. Infrastructure has improved by orders of magnitude. APIs and snap-in services are getting better all the time -- ten years ago, payment processing was a multi-week endeavor, now you can do voice calls in about ten minutes of work. Scaling is... is solved too strong a word? There has been huge diffusion of the black magic of how to setup and architect things, both in the n-tier server architecture sense of the word and in the "here's how you get capital without slicing open chicken entrails" and "here's how you get users" senses of the word.
I have always found the claim that single-founder startups are imperiled at odds with actually-existing reality; there have always been _tons_ of successful companies started and carried to fruition by highly motivated individuals. Individuals have been starting their own businesses since the very dawn of entrepreneurship. I don't know where the conventional wisdom that it's a bad idea ever came from. I see no basis for it other than in someone's thought experiment.
If you define a cofounder as someone who would continue the startup alone, two provide redundancy.
On the other hand, if you're overly emphatic about the peril of going it alone, then if one of two cofounders leaves, the remaining one won't want to continue.
What about Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Or Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak?
Motivation, more workers, and new ideas are all valuable contributions, but I feel like you might have missed the biggest benefit of all.
Co-founders can be good at the things you, personally, can't do. This is most visible in the business/technical co-founder division, but it can generalize to all kinds of tasks. If you're terrific at engineering large-scale filesystems (or whatever), but you can't build a web interface (or whatever), you might really need a technical co-founder with a different skill set. Every day or so, my co-founder cranks out something that would have taken me a week or more in a few hours.
Don't underestimate the value of teaming up with someone who's as good as you are at different things!
What about Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, or hell, Ray Kroc? No one is saying that it is not advantageous to team up, just that you cannot discount single founder successes.
Didn't Bezos start with a team? I think we need to distinguish between "one-founder" and "one-man" startups.
Speaking as a one-man startup, I think the problem is worse than skills-sets, and worse than the costs of switching between tasks; it's also values - not in terms of ethics, but in terms of where your attention goes. eg. attention to detail vs. big picture; the product vs. the market; the solution vs. the problem. One person definitely can do it all (and it's getting easier) but it's more than twice as hard as having two people.
However, whether it's easier or harder for two people is less important than whether it is easy enough for one particular person to do it.
Great point, thanks for bringing it up. I've had to learn to do lots of different things so I don't always think about this one, but it's certainly a big one. I'm always open to working with someone if they are the right match.
"In my case, my wife helps me get through. In many ways, although she is not technically a co-founder, she helps with a ton of admin work and, more importantly, has helped me stay positive. She has been as much a part of this startup as I have, and has suffered through the same things."
I'm curious about the line between co-founder on paper and the role a spouse or significant other plays? A spouse in this position is clearly contributing to the success and viability of the "single-founder" venture. If the spouse is not there to help this would increase the workload and the founder would have to seek out someone else for emotional support. The shared risk is there as well as the shared hardship. If the founder can say that their spouse has been as much a part of the start-up as they have, then how they not a co-founder?
They may not be a founder on paper, but especially in light of how assets are split during a divorce it seems the reality shows that they do have a stake in the business's earnings.
“#3 (a richer source of new ideas) may be even more important than #1 (emotional support)”
As a single founder, I don’t agree with that. Once I passed a few hundred signups, I found that people were willing to write in and tell me what they liked and didn’t like about my service. Now, I find myself with a list of things to get done because that’s what my customers want (not to mention what I personally want). Like the author, I “never feel at a loss for ideas (and have more than I know what to do with)”.
Emotional support, however, is hard because it’s not something you can take care of on your own; until you have people validating your work as worthwhile, it can be difficult to believe in yourself.
I think that “two (or more) heads are better than one” for solving issues, whether they be technical or with regard to how an idea should be executed.
Otherwise, nice essay (although I was hoping for a discussion on why single founders use “we” in their text instead of “I”).
I was hoping for a discussion on why single founders use “we” in their text instead of “I”
As was I. My own thoughts are that "I" sounds unnatural when you're talking about a non-human entity like a corporation. Somehow, "we" does not. When I say "I launched a product", I feel like it means that I, the person did it. When I say "We launched a product", it means the company did it, even if it's just me. "We" might be more than me (or not me at all!) in the future but I will always be just me.
I think it depends on the person. I don't have any problem at all with the emotional support, but I really miss being able to sit down with someone and have a strong brainstorming session. I do talk to other people to get their advice/ideas, but it is not the same as talking to someone who also has their head in the game and is doing it 100% like you.
I was partly referring to ideas in solving issues as well because sometimes you just solve problems and sometimes problems are an opportunity to look at things in an entirely new light. People who can do both well are rare in my experience.
Regarding "we" vs. "I", I actually had that in my draft but it didn't flow well with the rest of the post.
I'm guessing that YC's existence as a seed fund has a lot to do with it. How do you sell a company that is essentially a one-man shop? If I were buying a company, I'd want to see that it's leader(s) are team players.
As the article says, you can draw other people to the company as soon as you can afford it. There you can demonstrate that you are a team player (and a team leader).
It's not that hard when you're selling a company with cashflow and / or IP. I don't think being a single founder and being a team player are necessarily orthogonal.
My point was not to try to refute his arguments. He has good reasons and tons of experience.
That said, there are still people who are going to do startups on their own anyway and some will be successful. I wanted to share what's worked for me so far.
Not trying to be rude, but it seems like the piece does devote more space to defending single founder startups than offering advice. I think that's why I'm not alone in responding to it on that level.
I think you may be reading more into it than is there. I don't feel any particular need to defend them.
The background I began with was to provide clarity around why people advise against going it alone and some creative ways of making it work when you don't have the natural advantage of co-founders.
It's rare for good engineers to have an entrepreneurial/business mind - thinking about, and being aware of, the business world outside of code (business strategy); understanding people (sales/marketing/team leadership, when there is a team). These kinds of engineers are amazing!! :)
Popular opinion may be that you need a co-founder; but once advice is doled out, its not necessarily relevant any longer. It's getting easier and easier to get started on your own; and you can avoid all of the friction that comes along with sharing a company with another owner.
Even among more traditional businesses, you see more than one founder being the norm.
For example, in a retail or fast food establishment, one person will usually handle the operations side and the other will handle the business side.
I really don't think a startup is really a startup if you don't have anybody working with or for you. That's also legally reflected in the difference between a sole-proprietorship and C/S corps.
In addition to OSS, the huge existing distribution channels like organic SEO, AdWords, and all those things you cool people use are also a major draw. Infrastructure has improved by orders of magnitude. APIs and snap-in services are getting better all the time -- ten years ago, payment processing was a multi-week endeavor, now you can do voice calls in about ten minutes of work. Scaling is... is solved too strong a word? There has been huge diffusion of the black magic of how to setup and architect things, both in the n-tier server architecture sense of the word and in the "here's how you get capital without slicing open chicken entrails" and "here's how you get users" senses of the word.
It is a great time to be alive.