

Is Three Founders One Too Many? - smirksirlot
http://founderdating.com/is-three-founders-one-too-many/

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pg
Don't worry about team dynamics. Worry about founder quality.

In our experience, 3 is as good as 2 if the people are as good. It's harder to
find 3 good people than 2 though.

~~~
jmalter
Harder to find 3 good people, even harder to find 3 good people that work well
together.

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JackC
Corporate governance is kind of like, well, every other kind of government: it
has serious flaws no matter how you set it up.

If you decide three is one too many, the new pitfall you have to watch out for
is tiebreaking. Suppose there's a fundamental disagreement, like whether to
sell out or whether to fire one of the two founders and find someone new. You
think you'll always be able to talk things through and come to a consensus,
but let's say you're wrong. A naive 2-person setup simply has no way to handle
a situation like that -- it's paralyzing. So you need a way to break ties. And
now instead of a fair three-way split, you have one founder with more power
(and investment) than the other, or you have some outside party (played by
Justin Timberlake, presumably) with control over your future if they like the
other guy more than you.

So maybe two founders is one too many. Going with one founder shouldn't cause
any problems ... right?

~~~
taskstrike
If a two people team cannot hash out their problems together, it is already a
sign of trouble.

~~~
JackC
Conversely, if a two people team _can_ hash out their problems together, there
is no sign of trouble _yet_. That's probably a good time for them to address
the fundamental flaws/weaknesses/risks of a two people team, one of which I
described above.

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smalter
I have seen a lot of 3-founder teams fail due to founder breakup. It was
pointed out to me that 3-founder teams may be the most unstable because it
only takes 2 founders to agree to make a decision. Often this pattern recurs
until one person feels left out and leaves.

I think one of the biggest mistakes that startups make is not getting on the
same page from day one, and letting small differences become large ones. This
applies equally to any sized team, but may get exacerbated as your team
increases in size, and there may be a huge jump in this problem as you get to
size 3.

Then again, every team size comes with its own set of issues. I wouldn't say 1
is too few, 3 is too many, and 2 is just right. I'd take this article more as,
'the perils of a 3-person startup.'

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thesash
Obligatory reference to Betteridge's Law of Headlines[1]

    
    
        Any headline which ends in a question mark can be  
        answered by the word 'no'
    

AirBnB & Twitter each had three founders. VMWare had _five_ founders[2], and
they've done alright.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines>

[2] [http://www.quora.com/Startups/Can-a-startup-be-successful-
wi...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/Can-a-startup-be-successful-with-three-
equal-founders)

------
eli
I think it's pointless to make huge generalizations like this

Is two founders also one too many? Sometimes! At least with one founder you
actually solve the problem of founders not agreeing on a course of action
(which surely is a bigger probably two founders than an odd number like
three).

I'll concede that I'm biased, but my startup has three founders and there is
absolutely no doubt in my mind that we would be worse off with fewer people.

~~~
smirksirlot
Curious - are you following the Hacker, Hustler, Designer model?

~~~
nanijoe
Is this some kind of well known model? What are the others?

~~~
logn
In the legal world, firms align around "Finders, Minders, and Grinders".
Finders are the well-connected guys/gals who bring in business. Minders are
the intelligent ones who hash out the hard problems. And grinders get all the
routine work done at a fast pace. Maybe this applies to tech?

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jjacobson
Generally agree with this unless your team is going through an
incubator/accelerator. Those programs (and not just YC/500) are best taken
advantage of by a 3-4 person team.

~~~
jmalter
why do you think so? not sure you should optimize for a 3 month program.

~~~
jjacobson
Granted, I haven't been through an accelerator but I heard a great talk by Tim
Falls of SendGrid who does have a lot of experience through TechStars and he
covered this topic. To get full value out of an accelerator/incubator you need
to be in a position to leverage the relationships you are making AND continue
iterating and developing your product/business model. And two people isn't
enough to do that. Love to hear your thoughts.

~~~
smirksirlot
I see what he's saying. In terms of long term consideration though, would that
early burst of ability and speed be worth some of the issues that might crop
up later?

~~~
jmalter
Just don't think you should optimize your team for that 3 month process

------
talisaar
Quora Discussion:

[http://www.quora.com/Startups/What-would-the-ideal-web-
techn...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/What-would-the-ideal-web-technology-
start-up-team-be-composed-of)

The truth of the matter is there's no "one size fits all". Ask 100 founders
and you'll get 100 different personal experiences and storied of how one
structure worked for them, while other structures destroyed them.

The Hacker, Hustler, Designer model seems to hold strong with incubators,
investors etc. as it seems, at the very least, to convey the atmosphere of
being well rounded, fully capable and fast to deliver. Obviously this is not
always the case.

The nature of past relationship between the founders, plays a large role in
how well they can be expected to perform together and survive long term
stress. There's no wonder YC dedicated a question to learning the nature of
this relationship in their application form.

Some relationships make it, and others won't - the best you can do is try to
truly and honestly asses how your relationships might hold up through hard
times. Examine all aspects of it in as objective way as you can and make the
decision on a case by case basis.

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thinkspace
I would have to say this all depends on the overall objectives of the company.
If you've got a life style start up then one person is enough. If you've got
lofty goals and you're looking to grow the company, and even raise money for
that startup, then you will want more than one founder.

Finding one other person is hard enough -- trying to find three seems really
challenging. There's ways to make decisions and break tie-breakers without
having a third co-founder.

I believe that it comes down to expertise. Its very likely that you're not
going to have domain expertise in everything, so you'll have to find some
other co-founder that does. I'd think that you'd want to add more co-founders
to ensure you have the domain expertise covered.

There's a blog post on our website that discusses "Why Three Founders in
Better than Two". Might want to check that out for ideas on why it is better
to have more than two.

<http://thinkspace.com/why-three-founders-is-better-than-two/>

------
spencerfry
I wrote all the way back in November, 2009 that three co-founders was better
than two. <http://spencerfry.com/threes-company> I've since changed my
thinking that two co-founders is a lot better and that both of those two
people should be technical or design.

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loumf
Noam Wasserman from HBR studies this extensively and has real data on Startup
survival rates under various conditions (including founder size). This book
<http://www.noamwasserman.com/book/> has his results -- I don't have it, and I
don't know the results. I saw him give a talk at Business of Software 2-3
years ago -- where he presented a lot of his findings.

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thejteam
Just to let the owner of the website know, there is a typo on your front page.
Ironically, it is the word "Taltented" under "1.You Apply".

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jonny_eh
As has been said, the quality of the relationship between the founders is just
as important as their individual abilities. With two founders you have one
relationship, and it's hard to find good lasting relationships between two
quality people.

Increase the team size by one and you go from one relationship to three.

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braum
Yes. First hand experience, around year nine our 3rd member was beyond
contempt and we asked him to leave. Things run much smoother now.

~~~
jeltz
"Year nine"?

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tedrrrr
If you have a hard time picking clear titles for founders because there is a
lot of overlap there could be a problem.

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mdgrech23
simple answer, it's two to many ;)

~~~
Achshar
I am actualy a single founder and I dont regret my decision. Although I can
see why it is not considered a good idea but I really like to keep the
decision making to myself. It results in self fulfilment such that even if I
fail, I would know I did it myself and wont have someone else to blame. I
guess it's a personal preference thing. I simply can't see myself working with
a cofounder.

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its_so_on
Three founders is three too many. Businesses don't need founders. They need
owners and they need managing directors. Too many people think that becoming
the former magically makes them into the latter.

Here is a test for the next time you are founding something. If you weren't a
founder, you were just hired labor, and someone tried to give you 93% of this
company and total autonomy in exchange for running it full-time, but NO other
support of any kind and you would be completely on your own in every aspect of
running this company - would you accept this?

For most ideas, the answer is, "Hell no. I have a lot better things to be
doing with your time than running your worthless company without any support
from you, full time in exchange for 93% of it."

People somehow fail to apply the same standard to their own ideas. They accept
this bad deal just because the person who "gives" them 93% (or 100%) of the
company is one and the same person, themselves.

Let me illustrate with an example. Think of an idea for a web site that you
have.

If someoe approached you with that idea and asked you to code it, but they
would not help in any way, would you do so in exchange for nearly 100% of it?
Probably not.

But when you make YOURSELF the same proposition, you often end up saying,
"Yes. I will code this since the result is mine."

You forget that the result is not worth the work and you would not accept it
under more neutral terms.

This is simply illogical. Stop thinking like a founder, and start thinking
like a managing director.

~~~
gstar
This is so counter-intuitive that I'm having trouble understanding if this is
a logical fallacy.

