
Successful Solo Founders - Tunecrew
https://medium.com/@haftrm/successful-solo-founders-5c7f60ef6a0e
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got2surf
Instead of looking at "% of successful exits that had _n_ founders", it seems
more relevant to look at "% of startups with _n_ founders that had a
successful exit".

Without knowing the distribution of startups with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5+ etc founders,
it's hard to tell how much more/less likely each group is to succeed.

~~~
brianwawok
Not sure this even matters that much. What matter is YOU.

Who cares if 12% of solo founders make a successful exit, vs 14% of two
founder companies. If you are a lone wolf and want to work alone, you are
going to fail if not alone. If you are a social thinker and hate working
alone, you would be silly to form a solo startup.

~~~
sliverstorm
What if you're a lone wolf, and you discover 20% of duos successfully exit and
0.1% of solos successfully exit. Perhaps that is your come-to-jesus moment.

~~~
zackya89
but what if you cant find anyone, or you too introverted to find anyone to
work with, I'm very technical, but find it extremely difficult to speak with
them, often im asked by others to just make something for them and thats it.

~~~
sokoloff
Having a hard time convincing someone else to work with you/on your idea,
being excessively introverted, etc might be some of the underlying factors
that might lead to a 200x difference in success likelihood in the posited,
hypothetical case.

~~~
brianwawok
There have been some amazing projects by lone wolfs. Not all projects need a
team.

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lettergram
You know, I'd venture to say the vast majority of businesses are started by
one core person. One person has the idea and convinces others to follow.
That's the most important metric to look for, can they create a team, can they
convince others, etc.

Personally, I've started projects alone and with others, but by far all my
most successful businesses/projects (one of which I'm applying to YC with)
have been initialized by myself, and then I brought in others as needed.

Unfortunately, that creates some issues. For example, my most recent partner
had to step back for personal reasons. Now, the question is - does that look
bad? Now, I'm in an even weaker position because it looks like I failed to
convince them the project was worth it, or we had a falling out. Neither of
which was the case, we're still good friends, we just had different priorities
and risk / reward levels.

Now I'm again a solo founder, searching for another partner. I know I could
use one, which is why I'm doing it. There's a lot of work, and I'd move faster
with help. I feel that's the only time I'd search for a co-founder going
forward.

I kind of doubt people can bring people in just to increase fundability. They
still have to be convinced and provide value.

~~~
sliverstorm
_I 'd venture to say the vast majority of businesses are started by one core
person_

On the other hand, we as humans have a well known desire for one person to pin
everything on. A 'hero fallacy' if you will (I'm sure there's a better term).
Thousands of invested engineers didn't make the iPhone, Steve Jobs made the
iPhone. Millions of troops and five countries didn't win WWII, General Patton
did. A series of brilliant collaborating scientists building on the shoulders
of giants didn't invent nuclear fission, Albert Einstein did. Turing cracked
Enigma, nevermind the Polish cryptographers whose work he built on. Can you
even name half of The Traitorous Eight?

The list of examples where we pick one name to worship from a large enterprise
of many deeply involved individuals is very, very long.

So, maybe it's good to discount a perspective that identifies one single
person as the complete nexus of success for any particular enterprise.

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bdcravens
I always feel that when I read these articles that the author is referring to
a "single founder" as a hacker banging away at their Uber for Skateboards node
or Rails app, as then applying the success of someone like Bezos, as if he
built Amazon in a glorious one-person hackathon.

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bitL
There is this joke: how many partners should a company have? The best is to
have an odd number of partners, and 3 is too much.

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Hasknewbie
These types of article often list Jeff Bezos or Frederick Smith (Fedex) as
examples. These guys were already millionaires when they started their
company, I don't think they should be counted. There are enough solo startup
founders who started from scratch in their kitchen/bedroom/garage, if look for
them. No need to list less relevant cases IMO.

~~~
leojg
For what I know Bezos was a wall street worker, probably wealthy but no near
millionaire. He borrowed 30k from his dad to start amazon.

~~~
maxxxxx
He was a VP and from what I recall reading was making in the high six figures.

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jedberg
I see a lot of people questioning who is a solo founder or not.

To me, a cofounder is someone who has enough equity to veto your decisions if
they don't like them. Everyone else is an employee, whether compensated in
cash, equity, or thank yous.

Most of the objections I see here are, "well, they had a support group of X
and Y".

No one does it alone. The issue is whether you have ultimate authority (and
therefore responsibility) for the success or failure of the company.

I'd say everyone on the list of solo founders was personally responsible for
the success of their company.

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jliptzin
An anecdote to support this: not every business I've started myself was
successful, but all the successful businesses I've started were without
partners. On the other hand, every business I've started with one or more
partners has failed.

~~~
lordvon
Why do you think that is?

~~~
jliptzin
Stubborn partners with a lack of ideas

~~~
Invictus0
But you're the one that chose the partners: maybe that's your weakness.
Regardless, your personal anecdote is not a good metric to evaluate solo
foundership.

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sebleon
Dropbox has 2 founders [1]

[1] [https://www.dropbox.com/about](https://www.dropbox.com/about)

~~~
Danihan
Drew applied to YC (and was accepted) as a solo founder. Not sure when the co-
founder came aboard.

~~~
dna_polymerase
Well that's the problem with this kind of analysis. While there was officially
just one founder, Drew had his friend with him, Jeff Bezos his wife. Not
exactly sure if this analysis makes any sense. No one can build something like
Amazon by himself, so at one point people are hired and of course they have an
influence on decision making, so the solo part vanishes real quick.

~~~
hyperpallium
Yes, they stop being pure-solo quick, if successful, when they're already a
"started-up". Very early stage funding is at an earlier phase.

I'm curious about how successful a start-up can be, before adding anyone.
[problem: founders who _want_ to grow will do so ASAP; founders who don't,
won't publicise their niche and we won't know about it]

Does Minecraft count as a "start-up"? With a billion+ dollar exit, it should
be a "unicorn". I think Notch was solo for a very long time.

------
arikr
Buffett added Charlie Munger as a cofounder and credits Munger for a large
portion of the success.

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adventured
As others have noted, the solo founder list is filled full of people that had
immense help from other people, typically from day one.

For example: Henry Ford

He had half a dozen people building his first vehicle for him, most of them
contributing their time to help at no cost, while he directed the
implementation/vision/ideas. This is the first version of his quadricycle
vehicle [1] he built in his little shed. Ford did some early experimentation
work on his own, it wasn't very long however before he invited some extremely
talented specialists to join in helping him, just to basically see if they
could all pull it off. Ford had a high talent for gathering skilled
specialists to follow him (messianic leader, he managed to do it throughout
his career), all of which were better at specific tasks than he was (whether
blue print drafters, or metal workers). Solo founder? Ford Motor wouldn't
exist without Ford and it wouldn't have existed without the critical day-one
contributions of those particularly talented people (some of which stayed with
him for many years). When Ford built the Model T, he pulled together a very
small team of hyper talented people just like with the quadricycle, and they
did the actual work / implementation, while he played general (to take nothing
away from that role, it's at least as critical as the other roles).

Ford as a solo founder is a big stretch.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Quadricycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Quadricycle)

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nathan_f77
How hard is it to get into YC as a single founder? I'm pretty sure I could
easily find a cofounder, but I'm not sure if I actually want to. I'm also not
sure if I want to join an incubator, since bootstrapping and going at my own
pace sounds nice.

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uiri
The post mentions startups running afoul of minimum wage and overtime laws.
The linked PDF mentions that anyone who owns at least 20% of the business can
be considered an exempt executive. How exactly do startups wind up running
afoul of these laws? The minimum pay is under $25k/year, surely if the startup
is covering each founder's living expenses, then it shouldn't be too hard to
meet that especially with vesting stock.

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tlogan
If your plan to grow your company by begging for money then you need have a
co-founder: you need to convince somebody to work for free. That is first step
toward convincing VCs to give you money.

If your plan to grow your company is thru business (actually making something)
then having co-founder is not required: you can hire senior people since you
are solving real problem.

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sage76
Jeff bezos had 2 engineers working with him from the beginning. Maybe not the
same as co-founders, but having a team and support structure can help.

Aaron Patzer, on the other, was truly on his own.

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Grustaf
Regardless, it's so much more rewarding to share an experience like running a
company, just like with most things.

In the end I would guess that the experience matters much more than the exact
probability of success for most people.

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muzani
Google for example could probably work with one person, but what would happen
is that Sergey and Larry would have ended up inventing their own search engine
companies and competed strongly with one another.

It wouldn't end up even half the size if it wasn't two equally intelligent
cofounders working together. That's a huge advantage of the co-founder system:
you absorb your competitor instead of fighting them.

------
Tunecrew
rehashes a bit of this: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-
optional/](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional/)

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jmatthews
The myth of the solo founder. I would venture that every founder has a support
system that tangibly enables a business venture, whether it be family or peers
or mentors.

~~~
rl3
No, there's plenty of solo founders that have nothing of the sort.

~~~
jmatthews
plenty of solo founders with no family, no peer group, no mastermind group,
and no support system?

Could you name one for me please?

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horsecaptin
Oh, shit! Time to update all the advice I've been spewing every time someone
asks me "hey, what's a sign that my startup will fail?".

Switching from "if you don't have cofounders" to "if you have cofounders".

Done. 180 degree about face. Commence frenzy!

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Danihan
In my opinion, VCs prefer their investments to have more than one founder
because teams are generally easier to manipulate / more willing to compromise.
Solo founders, almost by definition, are going to be much more gregarious and
stubborn. That doesn't equate into investor board control, which can cause
issues down the road (see Uber)

~~~
gnicholas
> _Solo founders, almost by definition, are going to be much more gregarious
> and stubborn._

Stubborn, perhaps. Gregarious though? I think there would be many solo
founders who are not people-persons.

~~~
Danihan
You know, I've been using that word wrong, thanks. I meant cantankerous.

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mankash666
Then, there's the silicon valley religion of idol-worship. Whatever Paul
Graham, Elon Musk ... say must be true, and hence canon.

Ironic for all the AI, machine learning, data-science toting startups to go in
the exact opposite direction when it comes to canonizing obvious non-science.

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rokhayakebe
The Universe had one founder (one none depending on who you ask).

