

Three's Company (Why three co-founders is better than two.) - maxstoller
http://spencerfry.com/threes-company

======
webwright
We have three founders and it's been pretty solid. It's very hard to have a
decision impasse with 3 people. We all defer to each other's area of expertise
and in the (many) areas where were are all stupid (but still have the make a
decision), we defer to the majority (or occasionally, it's a "loudocracy"...
:-) ).

Another downside that I don't think was mentioned is that your "ramen
profitable" number goes up by about 50%.

Even with that, I think the 50% bump in (free and maniacal) manpower plus the
extra perspective is totally worth it.

I always say that it's better to optimize your CHANCE of success rather than
the magnitude of it, should it happen. Hard to argue that a good (free!) co-
founder wouldn't do that.

~~~
spencerfry
Good point about ramen profitability going up with a third partner. On the
flip side, you could say that your company is even further along when you do
in fact reach ramen profitability then.

~~~
maxklein
Absolutely. With 3 founders, you don't stop when you're making enough for 2
people to be comfortable with. You have to earn enough for at least 3 people,
and when you are at that level, it's much easier to grow.

------
char
There are so many examples of both 2-founder and 3-founder companies being
successful, but I don't see why everyone keeps trying to generalize the
argument to say that one is better than the other.

There doesn't seem to be a 'correct' number of founders (though clearly having
4+ or 1 has been known to be more difficult). You should choose your number of
founders based on what you think will give you the highest probability of
success given your situation, personality types, etc.

The title of the article should be, 'How Having 3 Founders Worked Really Well
For Us'.

~~~
dschobel
It is starting to get old seeing people extrapolate principles from anecdotes.

It's probably just our engineering instincts trying to find the patterns in
things.

Normative startup advice seems to be about as useful as normative life
advice-- not very.

~~~
fnid
Humans can rationalize anything: [http://habitatchronicles.com/2006/12/smart-
people-can-ration...](http://habitatchronicles.com/2006/12/smart-people-can-
rationalize-anything/)

You frame a problem in a context, or a time frame, or a motivation and you can
argue whatever point you want.

All predictions about the future are by definition _opinion_.

~~~
dschobel
We're talking about methodology though. Something which is very meaningful in
an engineering context but, and this is purely my opinion here, significantly
less so in the business world.

There is, for example, a best way to build a bridge. I'm not so sure there is
a best way to build a company.

~~~
btilly
If there is a single best way to build a bridge, then why do we have so many
different types of bridges being built?

There are many _different good_ ways to build bridges, with trade-offs between
them, and knowing about them lets engineers to pick the best way to build _a
particular_ bridge.

~~~
derefr
I do believe that was what the parent said. There's no best bridge (or, say,
best hash data structure), but there _is_ a best _procedure_ to create a given
one.

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pingswept
"If you and your single co-founder don't agree on something, there's no third
party to mediate. You're left in a deadlock with nowhere to turn."

One of my previous bosses made me promise to never start a company with only
two founders for exactly this reason. This was after a very painful startup
experience that ended with lawyers talking to lawyers, one founder buying out
the other, and a fair bit of acrimony. I don't know how common this is, but I
think I'll stick to the promise.

~~~
spencerfry
I went through the same thing with my last startup. It ended with lawyers on
both sides, both of us having to raise money to buy the other one out, etc. It
was not pretty. Odd numbers seem to always be better.

------
979s
This is a great article and I agree with it. However, I think a second point
can be made that odd numbers are generally better with most collaborative
groups(be it one or three founders in this case).

------
steveklabnik
I can agree with this. My startup has two thirds of the triumvirate, and we
end up having to spend money on front-end design stuff. They're top-notch and
all, but I think I'd rather pay someone who's on the team and around all day.

~~~
spencerfry
In one of my early companies, we contracted out the design and it was a
nightmare. Design is one of those things that you really want the person to be
producing every day. Our designer was actually in Ireland which was even
worse. He was also working with other clients, so we weren't the main
priority. Ugh. It's terribly even thinking back to those days.

