
Number of founders - statistics - fauigerzigerk
I've done some research on how many founders successful technology companies have. Here are the numbers for 100 publicly traded companies<p><pre><code> +--------------------+-----------+
 | number of founders | frequency |
 +--------------------+-----------+
 |                  1 |        40 | 
 |                  2 |        31 | 
 |                  3 |        17 | 
 |                  4 |         6 | 
 |                  5 |         2 | 
 |                  6 |         1 | 
 |                  7 |         1 | 
 |                  8 |         1 | 
 |                 13 |         1 | 
 +--------------------+-----------+
</code></pre>
Some caveats<p>The number of sole founder companies is probably slightly exaggerated because sometimes one person is so much more prominent that the others are never mentioned. I did a little double checking though. Another important thing is that some companies were omitted because I knew only that they had several founders but I wasn't able to find out exactly how many. I suspect there are more companies with 4, 5, 6 or more founders.<p>Unfortunately without numbers about failed companies we still don't know the success ratio of each frequency group, which is what's most interesting for startup founders here. It is well possible that sole founders fail 10 times as often as 2 founder companies, or vice versa.
For anyone interested in double checking (yes I'm sure there are errors ;-) here's the full list:<p><pre><code> +-----------------------------+--------------------+
 | company                     | number of founders |
 +-----------------------------+--------------------+
 | ACS                         |                  1 | 
 | Activision                  |                  5 | 
 | Adobe                       |                  2 | 
 | Akamai                      |                  4 | 
 | Altera                      |                  3 | 
 | Amazon                      |                  1 | 
 | AMD                         |                  8 | 
 | Amphenol                    |                  1 | 
 | Analog Devices              |                  2 | 
 | Ansys                       |                  1 | 
 | Apple                       |                  3 | 
 | Applied Biosystems          |                  2 | 
 | Aspen Technology            |                  1 | 
 | Autodesk                    |                 13 | 
 | Avnet                       |                  1 | 
 | Baidu                       |                  2 | 
 | BEA                         |                  3 | 
 | Beckman Coulter             |                  1 | 
 | BMC                         |                  3 | 
 | Broadcom                    |                  2 | 
 | Brocade                     |                  4 | 
 | CA                          |                  1 | 
 | Canon                       |                  2 | 
 | Cerner                      |                  3 | 
 | Check Point Software        |                  3 | 
 | CheckFree                   |                  1 | 
 | Cisco                       |                  2 | 
 | Citrix                      |                  1 | 
 | Cognos                      |                  2 | 
 | Compuware                   |                  3 | 
 | CSC                         |                  3 | 
 | Cypress Semiconductor       |                  1 | 
 | Cytyc                       |                  1 | 
 | Dell                        |                  1 | 
 | Dolby Laboratories          |                  1 | 
 | Eaton Corp.                 |                  3 | 
 | Ebay                        |                  1 | 
 | Electronic Arts             |                  1 | 
 | EMC                         |                  2 | 
 | Fiserv                      |                  2 | 
 | Flextronics                 |                  1 | 
 | Garmin                      |                  4 | 
 | Google                      |                  2 | 
 | Harris Corp.                |                  2 | 
 | HP                          |                  2 | 
 | IBM                         |                  1 | 
 | IMS Health                  |                  2 | 
 | Informatica                 |                  2 | 
 | Infosys                     |                  7 | 
 | Intel                       |                  2 | 
 | Intuit                      |                  2 | 
 | Jabil Circuit               |                  2 | 
 | Juniper Networks            |                  3 | 
 | Konami                      |                  1 | 
 | Kyocera                     |                  1 | 
 | Lam Research                |                  1 | 
 | Logitech                    |                  3 | 
 | LSI Corporation             |                  3 | 
 | Man Tech                    |                  1 | 
 | McAfee                      |                  1 | 
 | Micron Technology           |                  2 | 
 | Microsoft                   |                  2 | 
 | Mindray                     |                  1 | 
 | Motorola                    |                  2 | 
 | NetApp                      |                  3 | 
 | Nokia                       |                  1 | 
 | Novell                      |                  4 | 
 | Nvidia                      |                  3 | 
 | Open Text                   |                  1 | 
 | Oracle                      |                  3 | 
 | Parametric Technology Corp. |                  1 | 
 | Philips                     |                  1 | 
 | Qualcomm                    |                  2 | 
 | Quest Software              |                  2 | 
 | RIM                         |                  2 | 
 | Roper Industries            |                  1 | 
 | SAIC                        |                  1 | 
 | Salesforce                  |                  1 | 
 | SanDisk                     |                  2 | 
 | SAP                         |                  5 | 
 | Satyam                      |                  1 | 
 | Seagate                     |                  2 | 
 | Siemens                     |                  1 | 
 | SRA International           |                  1 | 
 | Sun Microsystems            |                  4 | 
 | SunPower                    |                  1 | 
 | Sybase                      |                  2 | 
 | Symantec                    |                  1 | 
 | Synaptics                   |                  2 | 
 | Tellabs                     |                  6 | 
 | Thomson                     |                  1 | 
 | TI                          |                  4 | 
 | Tibco                       |                  1 | 
 | Trimble Navigation          |                  3 | 
 | VMware                      |                  2 | 
 | Waters Corp.                |                  1 | 
 | Wipro                       |                  1 | 
 | Xerox                       |                  2 | 
 | Xilinx                      |                  3 | 
 | Yahoo                       |                  2 | 
 +-----------------------------+--------------------+

</code></pre>
======
breck
What a great value add. Thanks for taking the time!

I wonder out of these founders how long each worked fulltime for the company.
Also, it would be great to know how many key early employees each had who may
have not gotten the "co-founder" title.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Yes that would be very interesting indeed. I'm sure there are many
girlfriends, wives and children who are not credited either.

~~~
breck
..and parents, neighbors, friends etc. Very good point. Startups are a huge
team effort.

~~~
downer
As far as "help" goes, yes; but that's usually on an occasional, part-time
basis.

------
vlad
This is a statistical anomaly.

The poster bases his logic on statistics, saying that many companies were
started by a single person--which may indeed be the most popular combination,
as it seems that whenever a BusinessWeek slideshow is posted here listing the
top 10 hottest startups, half are about companies with single founders. This
makes sense--the founder created a project to solve a problem, not to make
money; then, it took off--in contrast to gathering three people and "forcing"
them to create something that can be sold to a VC three months to two years
later.

Now, pg is probably right that most of the people he has ever met had a co-
founder (he should know). The problem is, even according to the list above,
FIVE of every SIX people on that list will tell you they have a co-founder.
5.00 out of every 6.11 to be exact. That does not mean those companies are
more successful. I think that reasoning is flawed. Not only is this misleading
numerically, but on top of that, it's probably misleading socially since the
single founder is always programming while teams with multiple founders are
much more likely to make outside contact with investors like pg, being that
there is more of them.

Also, if two or three people believe in the idea versus one, that does not
mean the first team has a better chance to make a better product.

However, if you are going to move to the Silicon Valley as a single founder,
and expect to get a co-founder or employee later, I'm guessing it will be
nearly impossible to get anyone on short notice, if at all. Therefore, if
you're going to start with money, you may as well bring a committed team with
you. I wouldn't be surprised if it's probably easier to get money in Silicon
Valley than to find people to join you once you've already moved there. This
is why, although YCombinator is probably better in Silicon Valley than any
other place, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that most applicants are from
outside the region. Any stats on this, pg?

------
kirubakaran
You deserve more than an up-vote. Here is a hug. Thanks!

------
pg
It would be interesting to see the breakdown for software/internet companies
founded in the last 40 years. That's the data that matters for most people
here.

~~~
shawndrost
I personally would be most interested in web companies founded in the last 10
years; I think that conditions have changed a lot recently. The Alexa top 100
would be a good-enough proxy. I pledge One Upvote to whoever hunts that data
down.

------
dfranke
Unfortunately I think the sample bias that you mentioned makes this useless as
any sort of statistical study. The one useful result I'd take from this is
"succeeding as a single founder is possible".

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Exactly. And maybe one non statistical result as well: A significant number of
very successful people _believed_ that it was possible, otherwise they
wouldn't have tried to go it alone.

~~~
greendestiny
Five times as many must have believed they needed cofounders. Either way I
still think the take home message can be that successful single founder
companies aren't an insignificant bizarro event.

------
asdf333
Salesforce is actually 4. Not 1. There is one 'charismatic' fellow, but it was
started by 4 folks.

------
robg
I would give you five upvotes if I could. There's nothing like data to inform
a disagreement. Many thanks.

------
zach
This is a great effort. Thank you.

However, I don't know if it's terribly useful to include ancient companies
like IBM, Beckman or Avnet. Although it does help show that the trendline is
going up -- Salesforce, one of the most recent, had four co-founders in 1999.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Wikipedia and the Salesforce website speak of only one founder, Marc Benioff.
Do you have more information? I had doubts in quite a few cases, especially
with the older companies. There are cases where a company existed for many
years before people other than the original founder took it to the next stage.
Xerox is one example.

~~~
zach
[http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-07-2...](http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-07-22-benioff_N.htm)

Here's a USA Today article on Salesforce. Under the second subheading they
say,

"Salesforce was born in March 1999 in cramped, adjoining apartments atop San
Francisco's picturesque Telegraph Hill. Benioff, still employed at Oracle,
lived in a condo. Fellow co-founders Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff and Frank
Dominguez set up shop next door. Computer cables ran between the apartments
through windows. 'It was the Gold Rush era for tech start-ups then,' Harris
recalls."

And if you Google on Parker Harris at least, you can find him described as a
co-founder.

By the way, SAIC is an interesting one. The main guy founded it with "a
handful of scientists" and one page describes someone as a "Vice Co-Founder"
of SAIC. "Vice co-founder!" That's harsh.

~~~
BitGeek
Right, but were they founding employees (with one clear leader) or were they
all founders who had equal say?

PG advocates consensus management, and that's the real sticky wicket.

------
eusman
The value of the companies would be interesting to know.

That said probably it depends of how big the idea is and how many people are
required to implement it, so the number of people it's really an illusion.

Relative to that, other interesting data would be to know how early before it
was obvious did they go after their idea and if that gave them time to make
mistakes and correct them. Minimizing time-to-market, that works probably in
favor of no matter how many are the founders.

Thus, as the number/quality of founders decreases so the earlier your
implementation should get or be feasible to get to the market.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
The only thing I can say about the value is that all have a market cap of more
than a billion. Most have several billion.

------
dherman76
Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the dinner.

------
mrtron
Let's make a mega list, I will make a web form (when I have time, probably not
today) that has Company | # founders | current market cap | exited (boolean)

A few I know the startup story: OpenText | 3 | 1.7 billion | F Janna Systems |
1 | 1.1 billion | T

~~~
breck
You could do a public google spreadsheet.

~~~
mrtron
That is probably the easiest route :P

------
cellis
Wow. Dude. Please post more of your intellect!

------
electric
Awesome! Thanks for posting this.

------
cellis
I must point out, however...

Facebook - 10? 20? lol

~~~
BitGeek
And are they really even called founders when you can only name one?

------
Jaggu
do u have any links/books which gives more detail about what you have typed in
this?

~~~
fauigerzigerk
No, the information comes from the companies' websites, from wikipedia,
magazine articles and so forth. I'm sure not everything is correct. Sometimes
it's very ambiguous who exactly is considered a founder and who's not. It's
only a rough picture.

------
rapind
Very cool. Thanks.

