

Ask HN: Is it practical to have many (4+) simultaneous co-founders? - daniel-levin

Some context: I am a university student with some ambitious ideas about a robotics startup. I'm asking HN about many co-founders because I feel that this forum is frequented by founders and technologists - which lends verisimilitude to the answers I'll receive.&#60;p&#62;So, here it is: I am considering starting a company with many co-founders. I have a large pool of motivated and intelligent people with whom I'd consider starting a company. Most startups that I read about have 2-3 co-founders. However, if I were to start a robotics company, there would be a very large set of responsibilities from the start (hardware engineering, branding/marketing, supply chain, operations, software, manufacturing, original science) and thus I would think these tasks should be distributed amongst 4 or more specialised founders. Obviously, this question mainly applies to companies that produce actual physical, manufactured products.&#60;p&#62;What are some of the (dis)advantages of starting a company with many cofounders? Sun Microsystems and Fairchild Semiconductor were started by 4 and 8 people respectively. Does HN have any stories or advice?
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snowfox
I have no experience on hardware startups. But my gut feeling is that they do
have additional layers of complexity relative to pure web startups. As such it
makes sense to have somewhat more co-founders than web startups.

However, the more people you add to a team, the slower it moves and the team
dynamics grows exponentially. It will reach a point after which you get
diminishing marginal gain, or even negative gain.

For a startup I believe agility is critically important. I would be worried to
add too many people from the outset because it is difficult reverse it. It's
hard to 'unfounder' a cofounder later on. My advice is to have a core team of
2-3 cofounders to see how it goes. If you really feel insufficient after a
while, bring one in one at a time. It is less risky than having too many in
the beginning and discover problems when it's too late.

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ja27
I tried to start a company with 6 co-founders once. Never again. More co-
founders increases the odds that one of them will kill the entire thing. More
co-founders increases the odds that two of them will have a fight and split.

Start with 2-3 co-founders and use other people to help get things going. They
might do it for fun, a little cash, a little stock, or just the promise of
bringing them in when it gets big.

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jefftala
Bare careful of too many cooks in the kitchen. It's tough to make quick,
strategic decisions when you have so many people with an equal say.

Ask yourself if all these key people are really founders, or just the first
employees with stock options?

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ag_47
>> Ask yourself if all these key people are really founders, or just the first
employees with stock options?

This. Pick 1-2 "key people" out of the pool, and invite others as employees.
Don't make things ambiguous, you should prepare and have everyone sign simple
contracts outlining the conditions.

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speeder
We are in five. But one has 50%+, two are investors that don't get in the way,
and the other two are tech and art.

I am the tech guy, but I am.also the most experienced in the field, so I have
some power too. But overall the structure is: CEO leads, I help. The others
keep us two checked.

Never we made we tried to.make a full blown decision by everyone.

~~~
argonaut
You are really misusing the phrase "co-founder" here. _You do not have 5 co-
founders_.

Only one of the 5 is really clearly a founder (the one with 50+%). The other
two are somewhere between "co-founders" and "founding employees". Especially
since you acknowledge that there is an inequitable division of power/decision-
making. In a situation with co-founders in the purest sense, all co-founders
would have equal power. And then you have two investors, who are _not_ co-
founders.

The two "co-founders" with less than 50% are "co-founders" in the same sense
that Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin were
"co-founders" of Facebook. They _were_ co-founders officially, but they were
obviously 2nd to Zuckerberg and had far less power than he did (and none of
them are at Facebook anymore) and were probably more like founding employees.

At most you could say you have 3 co-founders. But really the closer truth is
that you have one founder.

