
Ask PG: Any new thoughts on single founders + YC? - guynamedloren
I know YC has always been reluctant to accept single founders, but now that a decent number have come through over the years, I&#x27;m wondering if this still stands?  A handful of single founders are accepted with each batch - any new data points here?  Can they succeed alone, or do you still push for finding cofounders?
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akbar501
I'll answer this based on my experiences:

0\. Having a team where everyone is committed is ideal. It's very difficult to
run a company by yourself (beyond a very small operation). Finding a co-
founder should not be driven by YC, VCs, etc. A co-founder is about the
success of your company. Is it absolutely necessary, no. Does having a good
partner greatly increase your chances of success, yes.

1\. Should you settle for a sub-optimal co-founder? No. Starting a company
with someone is a long-term commitment. It's like marriage in so many ways, so
you should take your time and find the right match to grow your business. On
the other hand, don't set your standards so high that you're stuck doing
everything on your own forever. Basically, know what characteristics you need
in your co-founder so that the company's success is maximized.

Also, put in effort to find the right co-founder. Get out there, talk to
people, let people know you're in the market. And don't be afraid to date
before marriage. There are many ways to start working together. You can start
with a consulting arrangement, then grow to co-founder after verifying that
everyone can really work well together.

2\. Should you share equity with someone who joins late? The work you put in
before finding a co-founder or getting an investment is not highly relevant.
First, think of this as if you're the 2nd co-founder. Would you be ok taking a
smaller stake for the next 2, 4, 10 years just because the other person did a
few months work before you joined?

Building a company is about the future. That's what everyone is rewarded for.
If a late joining co-founder helps grow the startup from a pre-revenue company
into a company with millions in monthly revenue then they do deserve to be
richly rewarded for their contribution.

3\. Think past YC, past funding. Make decisions that will optimize the value
and growth of your company. YC is a 3 month program. You'll be done with it
before you know it. Funding is an event. When it's done it's done. Imagine
you're now done with YC and you've been funded. What type of co-founder do you
need to grow your idea into a large company?

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r0h1n
Let's say you don't have an _ideal_ co-founder - one who complements your
skills and whom you trust implicitly and deeply (like how it's described in
this nice Venturehacks piece - [http://venturehacks.wpengine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/...](http://venturehacks.wpengine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/How-to-pick-a-co-founder-Mini.pdf)).

Does it then make sense to bring on board a sub-optimal co-founder, one whose
skill sets may be similar to yours, and who may not share that close a
friendship or history with you, and whom you cannot blindly trust?

~~~
Jd
This has been a long standing problem of my own. I think finding a true co-
founder if you don't already have someone immediately present in your pool is
extraordinarily difficult. The sub-optimal thing is especially difficult if
you've already started (I'm 8 months in myself), and then it doesn't make
sense to divide equity equally any more either, so you effectively end up with
a "first employee" rather than a true co-founder.

I don't have an obvious solution to this problem. Looks like pushing forward
alone (w/ a few odd employees) is the most likely option.

Also, it's not immediately clear to me that I would have been better off with
a co-founder. There are so many value and design decisions to make early on
that need to be established, and being able to make those fairly quickly and
push forward with the bulk of the effort (first development, now sales) I
think was a good position to be in.

That said, it is considerably easier to get in a funk as a single founder
working longer hours than anyone else, constantly pushing forward without any
discernible support. Having a girlfriend helped me with part of this for
awhile -- although I had somewhat minimized working hours because of her, I
also avoided any major "slump" periods.

Also, tracking all progress (lines of code written, tickets closed, commits,
user adoption) has been great since I have weekly metrics that I'm always
seeking to achieve. I think that's been the best way to keep me focused, and
also to direct my focus at the most important goal at any given moment.

Also I still have lots of equity to give away -- if anyone reading this wants
any, please let me know ;)

~~~
davidw
I have a suspicion that with the rise of YC, at least for a time, there were
people searching for a cargo cult co founder. Not someone who meets all the
requirements you describe, but a co-founder for the sake of having one because
PG said so.

~~~
Jd
This is a bit true for me. I expended a lot of effort looking for a co-
founder, even though it was not obviously true that a co-founder would help me
with the particular project I was in. To a certain extent, it was Mark
Suster's insistence that a co-founder is not necessary and you can just "go it
alone" if you have the cojones/stamina that made me say f' it, I'm just going
to do it on my own.

Actually, the breaking point was when the "co-founder" I found told me on the
day after I arrived in Berlin to work on the project full time that he
wouldn't be able to join in. In this case, he had a totally legit reason (his
wife was in the hospital with cancer), but it was probably the case that
aligning things as far as a "co-founder" was never necessary from the
beginning. Either way, it was a bit catastrophic mentally for me for a couple
weeks, toying with merging with a different startup in the same space instead
of going full stop ahead on my own. Even now loneliness sometimes takes its
toll.

Thankfully, in the end I spent a lot more time on product than worrying about
finding a new co-founder, and we have a pretty d __* good product now and 30%
growth across our KPIs for the last two months. Not really a lot of cash in
the bank account, but hell, this is Europe and investors like to sit on their
money instead of invest it.

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snoonan
I believe it comes down to personality and maturity.

My own experience is with solo success and a few projects with co-founders
dying in early prototyping stage.

In short, some of the things people benefit from externally from a co-founder,
I learned to internalize.

I have needed to consciously increase my introspection, know when to trust my
instincts and when not to and be 100% self-motivating all the time, even when
I am feeling low. I don't think 24 year old me could have done this. I don't
think I would know when I was wrong or recognize want vs. need fast enough to
prevent serious failures from happening. 36 year old me is very good at it.
The maturity, willingness to question my choices in a positive manner and self
discipline I gained in that time has made it possible for me.

edit: I also think it has allowed me to be a better bootstrapper and avoid the
need to seek out seed money. 36 year old me is comfortable with both knowing
what should be done, doing it. For example, YC would be worthwhile for me, but
I would never change a thing about my plans just to get in.

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agibsonccc
As a single founder who has tried applying to YC before (not everyone is Drew
:P ) I think it comes down to already having traction.

Your chances are way better if you're already making money. I won't say that's
a surefire way of getting in, but if you can prove that you can make money by
already being profitable, I think you might have a decent shot.

There's a reason there is a bit of selection bias towards multiple founders.
It's just more feasible.

In the end YC wants to fund people who will have a good likelihood of
succeeding.

That being said, I think if you're a single founder in that position, applying
for the experience of going through YC rather than the need is a great idea.

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pg
Yes, we still have a higher bar for single founders, because it will be harder
for them.

~~~
wildermuthn
Is there any data to suggest that single founders who overcome the increased
difficulty also have greater success than their peers? Or is it like running
with rocks in your shoes — unnecessarily painful?

~~~
seiji
It's like being a paper tape Turing machine. Technically, you can do anything
in the world. In reality, you're limited by how efficiently you, as an
individual, can run back and forth writing zeros and ones.

Being a single founder isn't like building up a muscle that'll make you
bigger, faster, stronger—there are world-level parallelism problems you can't
accomplish alone (work _and_ fundraise, work _and_ promote, sleep _and_ work).

Perhaps a better title is "single bootstrap'r." All you _really_ need is to
build something other people find interesting to get attention to attract
validation to pull in other people who share your vision (who, since they are
starting right after you, become defacto founders).

The single founder problem is more "Will you accept someone who is capable but
hasn't found any smart friends yet?" and less "I can build a $50 million
company all by myself. Just give me $100k. Please?"

~~~
X4
>> The single founder problem is more "Will you accept someone who is capable
but hasn't found any smart friends yet?" and less "I can build a $50 million
company all by myself. Just give me $100k. Please?"

Exactly!!

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solve
Is the 20% failure that rate that YC attributes directly to fights between
cofounders actually much higher than it should be? Is this simply because YC
is forcing people to match up to cross the eligibility threshold?

I'm not sure they even have the information needed to determine this, given
the massive incentive they've given people to misrepresent the closeness among
their team members.

~~~
api
"Is the 20% failure that rate that YC attributes directly to fights between
cofounders actually much higher than it should be? Is this simply because YC
is forcing people to match up to cross the eligibility threshold?"

I wouldn't be surprised if this puts a forcing function in place that yields a
lot of sub-optimal partnerships. If you had a super-trendy hot night club with
a height requirement, you'd find a lot of lifts in peoples' shoes.

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domid
I think a large part of identifying a successful leader in a company is to see
if he/she has the potential to lead. A leader should be able to excite others
around an idea and convince them to follow and devote their time and energy.
This is difficult to do early on, specifically if there is no money involved.
In not being able to find a co-founder you are basically saying, you can't or
you don't want one/need one. If you can't, that might be identified as a
negative trait. If you don't want one or feel you don't need one, I would
encourage you to reconsider. There is nothing like having someone beside you,
you can fully trust, and talk openly with about your problems and
frustrations.

Working on a startup is something like swimming in an ocean with a one
mattress that's loosing air. You need to swim to an island which is far far
away, and although the mattress might have enough air to help you rest from
time to time, there is a big chance everything might go wrong. Sure you can do
it alone if you try hard enough, but there is a bigger risk of you getting
there to late or not getting there at all. With 2 or more co-founders, you
have someone beside you can trust, and that might allow you to rest, or plan
out a strategy so you all get to you destination sooner than anyone else.
Trust me when I tell you, you aren't the only one swimming in the same
direction.

I'm sure you can find a handful of companies that had one founder and
succeeded, but the odds of them succeeding are just much much smaller and it
is a bigger risk most investors want to avoid.

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api
I can think of three reasons to not have a co-founder that are not necessarily
relevant to the strength of the venture:

(1) The venture is not in an area that's trendy right now, making it something
where people who don't share the founder's belief in the idea and vision might
be much more reluctant to take the plunge. But that doesn't mean it's a bad
vision.

(2) The founder has had trouble finding a co-founder he/she can trust, who is
compatible, and who is available for a venture. In a startup scene full of
hucksters and flakes, trust is a legitimate concern.

(3) (Not applicable to YC since YC is bay area only, but...) The founder may
be in a place with a much smaller or non-existent startup scene, like a small
town or a city/country where this stuff is rarer. In that case co-founders
might be pretty hard to come by.

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jeswin
Thanks for asking this question. Being a single founder is hard, but doable if
you are passionate about what you are building. If you aren't passionate to
the extend of being nearly blind with belief, it is impossible to do it alone.

I am guessing that YC may not care that much if you're single or not. I think
they evaluate you on your overall chances of success.

~~~
snoonan
Those are some very absolute statements. The blinding passionate belief part
is really a myth. You just need to be hard working, committed, and effective.
All obstacles can be overcome by focus and reason, not religion or belief. You
don't even have to like the work, but it does help if you're not a strongly
self-motivated person.

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javierdechile
In my case I am software engineer from abroad (english is not native for me)
and it won't be easy to get the skills I don't have like being well understood
in pitches and make business models.

So I am looking for a cofounder to improve business model and to apply to YC.
I am currently developing a chat application made for group chating and easy
switch between conversations. The app is named ChatStrum
([http://www.chatstrum.com](http://www.chatstrum.com))

If you are interested in the startup please email me to javier@chatstrum.com.
I also invite you to see a demo of the app:
[https://vimeo.com/75747076](https://vimeo.com/75747076)

Javier

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lakeeffect
I recently was talking to a small business advisor regarding combating risk
associated with something happening to the CEO. In a single founder
organization especially at early stages a broken leg or better yet broke arm
can really freeze up production. Its so important for companies to have plans
in place for the death or unavailability of a partner, ie. Life insurance
buyouts for the partners estate. With a single founder if the plan for
implementation isn't documented and/or if the technical capabilities are the
sole responsibility of the sole founder an accident could equal the death of a
company.

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tmilard
It's really odd and kind a funny to me : Investor push toward 1:good product
2:low cost-of-running-company. This I can understand.

Over the years the cost of building a start-up has gone very low, wich is a
very very good for everyone involved (founders, investors, society at large).

In the end, One solo-founder vs two-menbers-founders company egals running-
cost of the latter being half priced. To me this is a very very good number
for early adopter investors.

So yes my oppinion (as a founder) is that inveTstors for startups should run
for those solo-founders : This way, they could invest twice the number of
startups for the same amount of money.

~~~
onion2k
You're ignoring the problems - you get half the bandwidth, you get zero
bandwidth if anything goes wrong, most of the costs _aren 't_ halved - tools,
servers, services etc still cost the same. Salaries, travel, and so on are,
but those aren't very big costs at the start. Buying in marketing or
development or whatever is much more expensive than having a founder doing it
because founders are really, really cheap.

My first startup was with a co-founder. My current one is as a single founder.
Having someone else onboard is definitely better. If there was someone
compentent around who shared my vision for Pitcher.io I'd _definitely_ work
with them.

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SurfScore
The biggest issue with single founders isn't what most people think. Its not
about getting more work done, or that you can't physically output as much code
as two people. Most startups spend lots of "wasted" time going the wrong
direction anyway.

The biggest issue for solo founders is the mental toll of a startup. Startups
are hard, and you need that second mind to help you pull through the hardest
parts. When you have two people, getting through the soul-crushing lows is a
little easier because odds are both of you won't be miserable at the same
time.

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elaineo
I think we should differentiate between (i) single founders who can't find a
cofounder and (ii) single founders who don't need a cofounder.

I think case (i) would be a red flag because it means the single founder sucks
at selling herself, sucks at networking, or isn't resourceful enough to move
to a location where there are more potential candidates.

In case (ii), where the single founder doesn't need a cofounder, that founder
also probably doesn't need YC.

~~~
wuschel
Well, lets look at that from the perspective of a possible co-founder: I can
not find any founder that would resonate with my technological background,
skill set and desired professionalism.

When you live in a startup hub, matching people for startups this might be an
easier thing to accomplish, but in the in which I live right now..

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hugofirth
In my, limited, experience having a cofounder is great for checks and
balances. Sometimes you really need someone you trust to tell you you're being
an idiot.

~~~
Jd
I think you can often simulate this by having a good advisor or two. Make
decisions frequently and rapidly, but leave a door open for critique.
Presumably you need to document your decisions for this to be optimally
effective.

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moron4hire
I don't think lacking a partner should prevent you from working on a project,
but lacking the right kind of partner can prevent your project from realizing
its potential.

I'm an engineer, I could sit in my house and work for months on end making
amazing things that never see the light of day. It takes more effort than I
have on half of the days out of the year to release things into the wild[1]. I
need a co-founder that complements me in this aspect, someone who is very good
at pushing things out in front of people and getting attention for it. If I
were to pick up another technical person, we'd just do the same things I'm
already doing: making things without releasing.

I'm an artist, I can be very creative when it comes to procrastinating
important, administrative tasks, i.e. paying taxes and such. I need someone[2]
to push me, prod me, maybe even just do it for me. Another technical cofounder
isn't going to pick up that slack, they'll want to work on code.

And if I take any of these people on as partners, the only way the project
wins is if they're in it for the long haul, if they are as dedicated to it as
I am.

So there you go, a very tall order: find someone who does not share your
skills but has their own that can help you (so has an increased likelihood
that they are not in your social circles[3]), and is committed to the project
in the same way you are (this is a slog, just try people out and dump them if
they don't work, no hard feelings, just move on). As with all issues of luck,
it's about perseverance and riding the waves as they come in.

But the difficulty of finding that person/those people doesn't mean you stop
working.

[1] I pay the bills with consulting gigs, so my clients force me to release on
that stuff. Also, I'm forcing myself to learn how to build a blogging
followership, as an education in marketing.

[2] Not necessarily a cofounder, but an accountant can be expensive. So, I'm
paying an accountant for the big things and trying to get better about not
procrastinating. "Trying" means "attending coaching sessions", not "talking
about trying".

[3] So I'm forcing myself to socialize with non-technical people. I'm not
going to any more programmer meetups. I'm instead going to things like
CreativeMorning, or just chatting up the local business owners who run their
own shops. Really though, the 6-degrees-of-separation rule applies, and it's
really more like 4. The more people you get to know, in general, the more
likely you'll be connected to everyone, so there is at least a non-zero chance
you can find suitable people, if you persevere.

~~~
Cardeck1
Yes, it's true but you need discipline also. Hit me up. I'll be happy to give
you some tips about all these.

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datz
If the founder is strong enough, it should not matter IMO.

~~~
api
I would say that the bar for "strong enough" is higher for single founders.

The biggest thing is that you have to be a very, very strong self-starter. One
of the things a partnership gives you is socially constructed motivation. A
single founder has to be able to self-motivate to a degree that most human
beings cannot.

