

Ask HN:  Statistics on startups that lose a co-founder early? - SkyMarshal

Does anyone know of any statistics on the success&#x2F;failure rate of startups that lose a co-founder in the early days, say before demo day or Series A?
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jacquesm
Shake-out is pretty common. The start-ups that I'm aware of at least 1/10th or
so have lost a co-founder early on. The majority of those survive, a few die
because of it.

I could probably compile more detailed stats but it would be much more
interesting to do this on a larger and better documented body such as all the
YC start-ups.

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SkyMarshal
Thanks, much appreciated. Indeed it would be awesome if PG published
anonymized data on stuff like this, but it's probably quite valuable, almost a
trade secret.

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slykat
"Fights between founders are surprisingly common. About 20% of the startups
we've funded have had a founder leave." -Paul Graham
[http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html)

Given that the YC pool should be higher quality than average, I'd assume the
number to be significantly higher for the overall pool of startups.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Good find, thank you!

