The Case for Single Founder Startups | Hacker News Reader

The Case for Single Founder Startups

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96 pointsrgrieselhuber38 comments

I actually set out looking for a co-founder a few months ago when I was starting to build the product. Since most of my friends went to big-name jobs right after graduation, nobody was particularly keen on starting up.

I hit up all the networking events - barcamps, startup events, and other miscellaneous meetups. I met a lot of people, offered to buy them beer in exchange for hearing out my idea, and made some great friends. The people who were capable and experienced were already in a job, or a startup of their own. The ones who were interested to join me were ready to do it part-time and half heartedly. The two people who were enamored by the idea and wanted in couldn't code for nuts.

Two months later, I am still single, two weeks away from launch, and things are going great. I have some unconventional little discoveries by my tiny amount of experience:

1. Go somewhere you'll be surrounded by people. I went back to college and have friends all around. In the event that I get bored or need to take a break, a coffee break with five people is just a phone call away.

2. I realized that it's hard to stay fully motivated through the entire thing. Talk to your friends and family about it and tell them it'll take their help. My parents were extremely helpful, and my mother patiently used to listen to my ideas, even though she couldn't really understand what an alpha release is.

I actually found some minor advantages of being a single founder. For instance - you get the flexibility to travel around and relocate if you want. But the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages.

In programmerspeak - I felt being a single founder instead of having a co-founder is somewhat like writing a web application in C++ instead of Rails. It's harder, though not impossible. And you learn a lot more about yourself and your limits.

I founded a company with my twin brother which is a unique situation since we often act as one person. So we get the best of both worlds in a way.

However, I can't imagine starting a company alone. The roller coaster ride is very tough at times, and we somehow rotate picking each other up during difficult periods.

Starting a company with someone is like marriage, but you don't really have a method to get divorced. A few comments mention meeting people at events to start a company with them, but I'd be careful with that. I know a founder who recruiters his co-founders that way and he has already fired 3 of them.

Not having a co-founder isn't usually a choice. But if not having a co-founder stops you from doing what you want, then that's a choice. You should always keep going and make the best of your situation, co-founder or not.

Agreed. I struggled to make things work with my ex-co-founder for three months before deciding to go solo. It's working out just fine.

Everyone will tell you you can't do it alone. I'd modify that a little: don't do it alone if you have a choice. Otherwise, go right ahead. Be your own data point.

I also want to add that 2 is not necessarily always greater than 1. I think that's the hardest part: determining if your cofounder is there because you think everyone says it's better to have one, or because you two are equal and perfect partners. If you two aren't equal, I think that might cause problems in terms of motivation if one of you thinks the other doesn't deserve the 50%.

I have been (and am) a single founder and also have been a co-founder in the past.

From my perspective the positives of having a co-founder include the motivation at the early stages, when there's just a couple of you. Tasks can be handed off easily, based on skill-set and it can help to accelerate the start-up. In my own experience, the negatives can be a vision/goal that is different to what you thought it was at the start (despite a lot of talking about it) and also sometimes the partners (ie girlfriends/wives) can have a direct impact on relationships. Its also easier I think to start with a co-founder as you feel you have someone to 'share' decisions with, though in my experience this can sometimes slow down decisions. As a single founder you make a decision quickly and move on.

Now that I've had a few businesses over the last 15 years I much prefer to be a single founder. I hire in the talent that I don't have and this means that I can be more agile with what I do.

There is NO right or wrong answer here. It's whatever is the best fit for you as a person and for the business.

Got to agree with this:

> But Grieselhuber argues that entrepreneurs should worry less about having "everything perfectly meet other people's criteria," and instead focus on, to quote Nike, "just doing it."

One thing that will definitely kill your startup faster than not having a co-founder is if you never attempt it because you can't find a co-founder. Like it or not, good co-founders are rare people and ones who will come on board with somebody who has nothing to show are even rarer. So just do it. Keep looking for a co-founder, for sure, but part of finding one is just getting on with it.

My hat is off to you and you make a good point that you can act autonomously and you didn't waste time searching for a co-founder.

While going solo does have these benefits, I personally think that lasts only so long before you start to miss out on the benefits of having a co-founder working along side you. You will fight, argue, and yell at each other for sure, but you'll also collaborate, pick up each others spirits when times are tough, and have a more diverse set of skills that pack your startup's talent portfolio.

In general, if you can start out working alone and get as much done as you have, then by all means do it; but I'd be on the look out for someone that compliments you and can help propel your company forward that much faster. Don't force the connection, but don't take the mind set that "I've come this far alone, I don't need anyone else" either.

That's one thing that I think needs to be explained a little better. I'm always open to working with somebody else and will be hiring at some point.

The point is that by deciding to just do it on your own if you don't have a co-founder is you remove a factor that you have little control over anyway and can focus on things you can control.

I am a part time single founder of www.socialadmanager.com and a part-time co-founder (adult site). I have found that it helps not only in terms of working on the product at a faster pace but things just get done at a must faster pace in general as a single founder.

As a single founder if users are complaining about something then I am the only one there to fix it so the most important things (the ones being bitched about the most) always get done first and if it needs to be implemented as a product feature I don't have to discuss things with people like i do at work.

At work everyone wants to feel as if their opinion matters even if it does not. We have to get a consensus on things and trade emails, phone calls, text messages etc... just to get a simple feature out the door or any similar task.

I can just get in and fucking do it. We spend so much time at work justifying shit to morons that want to play devils advocate or salesmen that are asking for random things that they don't even really understand.

As a single founder when I develop I keep in mind that I will need to maintain and manage this feature myself so it is mandatory that all features have proper test and administration tools that facilitate this. Then if and when something happens I can quickly deal with it and move on to something else.

At work I am usually outvoted since we all agreed to do "group product development" (Note: this was done to ensure the authenticity of the site within its niche (xxx)). Even though I make sure we have test the maintenance portion is usually seen as a luxury so we go without until something fucks up. At that time a day or so is spent paralyzed by indecision and a few more asking how to fix the issue with minimal impact to users blah blah blah it eventually gets done but its never smooth.

Oddly enough I think that one place being a single founder also helps is in customer service. I always make sure that every one gets an answer to their questions. And 2 (or half lol) of my agency clients actually have my cell phone number and call me whenever they really need something important or right now. Some people would think thats lame but what I have found is that it makes me focus on what the most common things people call me about are and work them into the product asap so that I don't have to be involved in the task.

Anyway... this is just my two cents.

The success of a venture is going to have much more to do with WHO starts the company than whether or not there is one or more of them. Look at history and we see all kinds of successful companies that were started by sole founders on the one hand and more than one founder on the other. Maybe there is a statistical likelihood of a company being more successful if there is more than one founder... but no entrepreneur in their right mind is going to base their decisions on those kinds of stats. So much depends on the unique circumstances that you find yourself in. I particularly like this quote:

'But Grieselhuber argues that entrepreneurs should worry less about having "everything perfectly meet other people's criteria," and instead focus on, to quote Nike, "just doing it."'

Investors frequently look to others for votes of confidence in a potential deal, whether it's PG wanting multiple-person teams or VCs who close when other VCs take an interest. The "vote of no confidence" argument is for why having multiple founders is an indicator of success but does not directly imply causality.

There are plenty of actual reasons why multiple founders would be a cause of success, but they rest entirely on having the right cofounder:

* Having a cofounder keeps you committed, if your cofounder is committed.

* A startup is a ton of work. Make sure your cofounder understands this from the beginning. Especially watch out for the chicken/pig situation.

* A startup is an emotional roller coaster, so make sure you surround yourself with people who will hold you up. Actively avoid anyone who creates excess negativity or drama.

This all seems obvious now, but I made the mistake of being too careless/lax with all three of these points. The temptation is to assume that you will work things out. Trust, but verify, preferably before you put in time and money.

Now I'm a single founder. I'm looking for a cofounder but am rather picky. If I miss my chance at YC funding due to lack of partner, I have other options. If I were to rush the process and take on a bad relationship, it would probably doom the venture.

Interesting but it's a shame that R/WW only dedicates a few lines to this. I'd have loved to have scratched beneath the surface to discover more about how the founder balances dev tasks and admin, and also stuff like product acceptance testing if he is also the engineer building it.

I'm not ratting on R/WW per se but I am disappointed by the 'bare minimum' blogging to just rack up a page impression rather than deliver an insight.

I've written about some of this before (http://ginzametrics.com/the-royal-we-single-founder-startups...) but you bring up a good point as a lot of making this work is a balancing act. I'll write something up when I get a chance.

Thanks rgrieselhuber. It was very touching to see someone put in words what I learnt myself in past 1.5 years. We may not have co-founders, but we find people like us all around the world thanks to this connected world.

Beautifully put and written. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

I agree about the idea generation (along with the rest of the article), its not as tough as one thinks it out to be. Being open to more information from whatever source one can get it from, books, videos, customers, friends, etc is the first step in idea generation.

This is the way I like to put it:

Given the same level of creativity or intelligence, a person with more information can come up with more ideas than the one with less information.

Another way I like to put it (my 'understanding' of how to increase the rate of innovation):

If a hypothetical innovation/solution (idea) needs 10 points of information (now don't take the 'points' in a literal sense, its a metaphor) connected in a particular pattern (the points together with the pattern, constituting the 'idea/innovation/solution'), given two people or teams with equal intelligence or creative capability, the team which already has 8 points of information will have a better chance of making that innovation or finding that solution than the team with just 5 points of information.

Because the first team/person has to creatively find out where or what just the other 2 points are while the second team has to creatively find out about those 5 missing points. The odds are definitely in favor of the team with 8 existing points of information and just 2 missing points.

Of course, this is a theory/principal that assumes equality of all other resources to make a point.

End of the day, information rules.

Was reading pg's comments about single founders:

"What's wrong with having one founder? To start with, it's a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn't talk any of his friends into starting the company with him. That's pretty alarming, because his friends are the ones who know him best."

Someone else mentioned it on this thread, but I'll expound. The majority of good solid people who are capable of being 'co-founders' of something are likely already doing it. 'Capable' has many dimensions - financial stability, personal drive, motivation, risk tolerance, etc. This notion of 'get your friends to join you' is extremely narrow, and while this may be how life in the Valley is, I can assure you it's not like that in most of the country where the rest of us live.

Also: "And you learn a lot more about yourself and your limits." That's right. One of the things that happens with 'co-founder' situations is that you're both learning about yourselves and each other at the same time. Taking on a 'co-founder' who's "good with sales" - unless there's a demonstrable (and ideally long) track record is essentially a huge gamble, as both of you are making a guess about someone's ability. Personally, I tend to discount anyone's self-estimate about their own ability - show me the track record.

As for the other comment about 'only being able to do so much on your own' - that's what hiring other people is all about. I understand there's not always money up front to do that. But I'd say you'll be in a much better position to contract out the bits you can't do, either at a reduced rate or some sort of time-limited profit sharing, but in no way just bring someone on as a 'co-founder'. If they are truly starting at the beginning, that's different, but bringing someone on after you've done much of the hard work - nope. Yes, you might not be able to find quality talent, but you couldn't find it in the beginning anyway.

My own view is I'd be much more likely to want to work with someone after they've demonstrated the ability to do something on their own which produces revenue (or something insanely innovative from a technology viewpoint that I grok instantly and see a distinct vision for, but that's not crossed my path yet). If you've got 'a cool idea', and want me to come on board as a 'co-founder' and do all the hard tech work, and you've never sold anything to anyone, and want to veto every suggestion I have, we're not co-founders - you're looking for hired help. And that's fine, but the hired help need to be paid.

I've been approached numerous times over the past few years about coming on as a 'technical cofounder'. Only once did someone even have a proof of concept put together that was demonstrating the idea in rough form (including a revenue stream, however meager it was). In all other cases, the execution onus is entirely on me, and in every case, there were some rather odd directions people wanted to move in. When questioned, in every case the 'founder' (who hadn't done anything except float an idea by people) was adamant that the vision was great and couldn't be changed. And without me (or someone) it couldn't be executed, but that point seemed to be lost. It seemed people I was talking to would generally rather have 100% control of an idea rather than, say, 80% control over an actual working service/product. Maybe my experiences are radically different from others who get approached about being 'co-founders'?

Short view - I agree with the notion of 'DIY' as far as you can as a single founder in your enterprise before you start looking for help. With the luxury of some initial success behind you, you'll be in a much better bargaining position when bringing help on board in whatever capacity (paid, equity, etc).

One thing that is worth mentioning about pg because he is brought up in these conversations: many investors talk about investing in the team and not the product, but this is often just lip service.

PG not only actually invests in people, but is also willing to overlook his own criteria when he finds people he believes in. It's one of the things that really sets him apart.

I remembered hearing that - definitely good to know people understand when to bend their own rules (more like 'guidelines we know when to break' than rules, really).

Yep, thats good to know there are people who have the wisdom to know when to bend or break their own rules.

Somehow the word 'rules' is more constraining, 'guidelines' seem more apt.

Being willing to overlook your own criteria is normally just plain inconsistent.

A foolish consistency, hobgoblin, blabla.

I am big fan of consistency (not saying I am), makes for great team members, employees and advisors.

But consistency with no regards to the outcome or circumstances, thats plain crock!

Of course. What I meant was: when a rule no longer applies, remove it and declare so publicly.

I would say that every rule has exceptions. And the degree of exceptions to each rule may vary from rule to rule. But if one were to eliminate all rules that has at least one scenario where it could be considered as an exception, this world would have no rules at all.

If one were to make a list of all scenarios where a one line rule has exceptions, one would have long documents like 'Terms and conditions' instead of easy to comprehend one line rules that would provide reasonable guidance in a majority of situations.

Thats why it is good to apply a bit of wisdom in applying a rule/advice to a scenario and see if that rule applies to that situation or not, irrespective of from whom that advice comes from and not follow them blindly.

Well, Taking all my close friends, who might be comfortable working with me - and filtering out those who are from a CS/Programming background, exhibit genuine hacker mentality, can delay gratification sufficiently by not immediately jumping into a well-paying job, and can work in a similar pace as mine - I'm left with a pretty small set. And that set didn't graduate with me, so the argument that the very fact that I don't have anyone starting a company with me does not sufficiently imply that my idea is poor or that my convincing skills are sub-par might not be perfectly valid.

I agree with most of the things that PG writes about, (who doesn't?), but I find something wrong on a fundamental level with the justification of why single founders are a bad idea.

From a single founder, I fear there are other reasons why a startup might potentially fail with a single founder:

* One might get too easily tempted to quit, and won't get easily talked out of it. * There's nobody to push you to work when you're feeling lazy. This can lead to a lot of time being wasted. * Ideas need to be bounced back and forth. They must be criticized again and again until no criticism can be made about them. There's nobody to do it with here. * If you have co-founders you always have company if you want to get some coffee, or play something outdoors :)

I'm hoping that once I launch and am able to demonstrate my abilities and ideas (or the lack of them), I might be able to find people who are willing to work. I look forward to saying "Hey, do you want to help me improve this great product which is doing quite well" instead of "Hey, do you want to drop everything in your life and hack on my neat idea".

Am in a similar boat, most of my trusted friends who have given me good advice over time and could be good co-founders are not in the IT/CS area. ( What to do, I am from Mechanical/Industrial Engineering background)

The two friends who are extremely capable in this area of IT/CS, one of whom has a high interest coming on board with my start up, both have heavy constraints with family, requirement for financial stability and visa regulations.

In this case, I would disagree with PG' statement that not having friends as co-founders is a mark of no-confidence.

Coming from an engineering perspective, finding a suitable "business-side" person is extremely harder, than the other way around, for the simple reason of track record.

How do you measure someone's ability to actualize a business? By observing the previous businesses he made, annual turnover, profit, and exit.

Someone already having any of these is extremely unlikely to be looking for a "technical co-founder" -he will be looking for employees.

Thus, everyone touting themselves as a "business guy looking for co-founder" has an extreme likelihood of unvalidated track record, and by very definition, an unqualified candidate for co-founding.

I'm very open taking suggestions on how to tackle this problem, other than taking random lottery tickets -my current solution is working alone, but it's massively sub-optimal.

Thinking about a potential partner this way is an enormous category error. Lot's of people that have made it and wasted huge amounts of time and money trying to do it again, neglecting luck and other things that gave them their fortune (not to discount the skill that went into making it).

There are far more charismatic people then there are people worth 10s of $M. Finding a person that is passionate about what you are doing is far more valuable than trying to get a mister money bags to carry you for your first foray into serious business.

By no means am I looking for "money bags to carry me"; neither would this be my "first foray into serious business".

However, you are asking me here to give up the primal discipline of meritocracy -evaluating plans, ideas, thoughts based upon demonstrated / actualized intelligence, and merit - in exchange for charisma -the ability of persuasion.

For that, I call BULLSHIT: based on my previous data points, the highest probability of root reason you're asking me this, is to make way for a hidden agenda of yours (or people like yourself). And for that, you deserve a public bozo bit.

Ask your dr about xanax at the soonest possible hour. I have no interest in collaboration with a mad man.

I think multiple founders vs. single is extremely overrated. It's a lot of work for sure, and I have to go outside my comfort zone pretty often, but I bet that's true for startups with 2 or 3 founders too.

I've read the original article, and (as with lots of YC/PG stuff) it mostly applies to a certain type of startups. Yes, you probably won't have a billion $ "exit strategy" if you start your bootstrapped small-time business as a single founder in Podunk. But I don't see a reason why every entrepreneur should aim to be the next Oracle, Google or Facebook. You can always be the equivalent to your local small time business or even Mom & Pop shop. I'm a bit disappointed with the widespread use of the "Think Big!" philosophy, especially when it's presented as the only way. (And no, I don't even think that PG sees this as the only way. I'm just noting a certain bias I often see when the word "startup" gets tossed around.)

Never even mind the US centrism of that mindset…

I think GinzaMetrics is aiming to be pretty big! YC doesn't fund companies aiming to be "Mom and Pop shops". Even the ones which seem that small when they launch* are just launching with a minimum viable product and definitely have bigger ambitions.

*I wouldn't out GinzaMetrics in this category either, it's already impressive.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a small set up if one is comfortable with that set up. But if the idea of somebody who wants to keep it small is really good, even if he wants to keep it small there may be soon competitors who are ready to copy the idea, put more money and send the small shop to kingdom come.

Sometimes, nay, I change it to every time (especially in the tech industry) size is the best defense against competition (Actually it is size and what advantages it brings along with it)

For a company with a really good idea, if it does not grow really fast enough, it soon becomes blood for the sharks, not the future shark.

Thats the beautiful thing about Google, they so quickly executed the finance aspects (book building IPO), the people aspects (freedom to experiment and generate ideas, free food) and the monetizing aspects (search based ads) of their business, to enable them to keep growing at a breath taking speed. If it hadn't and just kept growing at an attractive pace, but not a furious pace, they would have been bought of by some other tech biggie or attracted more serious competition long back.

And whats wrong with the adage "Aim for the stars and you can at least fall on the moon" (or something like that)

From my small amount of personal experience thus far I have to say that a co-founder is tremendously helpful as a sounding board, someone that lives and understands the product as much as you do debate various features and discover hard to track down bugs or architecture problems.

At different stages so far we would have been setting ourselves up for big problems down the line if not for things we caught discussion the product with each other. So you can get a lot of outside opinion and advice but it doesn't really compare to having someone who spends just as long as you wrapping their heads around exactly how it works and where we are at.

To be fair I don't have any real experience as a single founder on something of a similar scale to see both sides of the fence.

Thanks for posting it. It was morale boosting for me as I am currently a single founder. Does give me hope in spite of the heavy odds I know that are against me :) ( at least with respect to YC funding, not for the long term prospects though)

I do agree that one can't wait to build the perfect team to start a project. If one knows enough experts experts in the required domains for the project, has good working rapport with them, by all means build a team with them. But if you don't know such people, then just get on with it. You will likely meet such experts at least for your next project if not for the current project

At the same time, from experience, I would have to agree with the Big P, that he is right about the chance of success being low for single founders. (Provided it is not an absolute statements and is instead a generality, there are alwasy exceptions)

Startups require lots of decisions that can make or break a company if not done right, often done very fast. And the right decisions are mostly a result of comfort or reasonable enough grasp of different domains such as finance, technology, programming, customers/marketing, to just name a few, and applying loads of common sense on that grasp.

Its very rare to have one person who has enough of a grasp on these different domains to not just be comfortable making decsions on them quickly enough and under ennormous stress, but keep making GOOD decisions critical to the sustainance and growth of the company. Yes, one can learn them fast, but then its a matter of can one person learn them fast and deep to keep making continuously quick and reasonably good decisions while still working on the development.

Thats why teams can often be more successful. Teams can access expertise on differnt domains of differnt team members(if that was the basis of builing the said team). Even if they do not have the domain expertise, the learning can be delegated to different team members and more can be covered than one person can. And there is nothing more beautiful or capable than a highly integrated and coordinated team that can move and react together to changing circumstances and keep delivering.

But thats just one side of the team coin. Along wtih bringing strengths to a team, team members also bring their weaknesses to a team. Unless the team has a way to deal with those weaknesses or have enough rapport with each other to recognise those weaknesses and find solutions to them, the weaknesses can just outweigh the strengths causing the failure of that team.

Not to mention, what about the other dynamics, ifs and buts that a team brings in? Do they really have one unified vision that they can stick to inspite of ups and downs? Can they stick together when the vision has to be modified? And so on...

I wonder, if PG and the team at YC, have any metrics/analysis on how many of the past founder teams have failed due to bad team dynamics inspite of great ideas.

(Feeling sheepish for the long post, Couldnt' help expressing myself on this topic)

I've done both. It is better to go single than have a founder who isn't in sync. If you can find a founder who is in sync with you, that is best. But most of the startups I've seen fail, even though the blame was placed elsewhere, really boiled down to conflict between founders. No market fit? Because the founders couldn't agree to listen to the market. Etc. Etc.

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