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Comment by dblacc | Hacker News Reader

The top 2 (Amazon & Ebay) where founded in almost a different internet age. It makes wonder if a solo founder could create such a large company today.

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I think it's possible. How many founders does a typical start-up have? I guess I don't see a huge difference from one to two founders. I never was a venture capital guy until recently, but I think it's pretty important to success. Having some marketing money as well as the money to hire a few guys to help out early makes a huge difference.

My night project, PaperBox (gopaperbox.com), started with just two guys doing it a combined 20 hours per week or so. Over the course of 6 months or so, we have released several updates and grown substantially. I do wonder what we could be if we could commit to it full time and have any sort of a marketing budget.

Im not a founder so my knowledge is somewhat limited, but from what I see around me most of the known or more 'successful' startups tend to have at least 2 founders. There must be some reason/correlation behind that right ?

It is certainly not as easy, but not impossible either.

its exactly the same. I bet there was someone in 1996 who was saying "yeah, you could start a tech company alone in 1985, but today... its too crowded, I bet it can't be done anymore". It can always be done.

I'll accept that point but I still don't think its the same. My thinking is that these companies pretty much grew with the internet, which played a pretty big role in their success and I just don't see the internet growing in that same fashion today.

That said, the way we use the internet today is changing which is why I don't think its exactly impossible but would question how difficult it would be in comparison to 20years ago.

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