You can run your business alone and you can be successful. There is no reason why this can't happen. Just from VC's point of view it's disadvantage.
Why? Say you created successful online web service. Alone. Than, accidentally (ex. caterpillar behind the next corner) something fatal happen to you. Who will care about running business. Do you think that by ex. PG has appetite to search for new business owner and maintainer? It's not possible to simply jump in the running train if you know nothing about business internals and by Murphy's law one day after your death application stops working due some old, forgotten bugs. Take any Y sponsored site and ask PG what he knows about its source code. This is IMHO the only reason why VC's encourage you to find a co-founder. I'm running my sites alone and still have not a feeling of burn-out :) If you don't have enough skills to implement your idea, employ someone, if you don't have enough time to work on business, employ someone.
Now think about it. If your online business idea is something what cure your customers' pain, you don't need VC's capital to be sucessful. We are living in age of blogs and other wonderful viral marketing tools. Cheap hardware and hosting. Everything what you need is courage, kind community and forget arrogance.
I don't want to say that have a co-founder is bad thing. I just want to say that this must have reason and that reason should not be the VC's opinion.
BTW: find a dependable co-founder is like find a needle in hay stack :)
Creating a successful startup is like finding a needle in a hay stack. So why are you trying? Because you know it's not an independent random event. Perhaps you have the same level of control over your fate in finding a partner? Think about it as another problem to be hacked at.
I don't know... I think the statistics are pretty favorable to having a co-founder. This isn't just something PG invented. People have been saying this for years.
BTW, I'm saying this as someone who is going it alone, even though it makes things riskier.
"I think the statistics are pretty favorable to having a co-founder"
It's all in the details. Let's say we have the same success rate for single founder and multiple founders ventures. There are many more multiple founders startups for at least two reasons: (1) it takes some guts to go alone and (2) VC/angels won't fund solo undertakings. Since the multiple founders pool is bigger, there are more successfull startups of this kind. Here you've got your misleading statistics.
Well, I would submit that it takes "guts" to go it alone, because you know that it's harder that way and that you're more likely to fail. How's that for a circular argument?:-)
Like the silly age debate, I guess it all comes down to this: do what you can with what you have. I certainly think that there is some 'cargo cult co-founder searching' going on around here, meaning that you shouldn't just grab a warm body because PG said so, but you should already know that person by the time you're ready to go. And if there isn't a someone, well, tough, do your best in any case... that's where I'm at.
Why? Say you created successful online web service. Alone. Than, accidentally (ex. caterpillar behind the next corner) something fatal happen to you. Who will care about running business. Do you think that by ex. PG has appetite to search for new business owner and maintainer? It's not possible to simply jump in the running train if you know nothing about business internals and by Murphy's law one day after your death application stops working due some old, forgotten bugs. Take any Y sponsored site and ask PG what he knows about its source code. This is IMHO the only reason why VC's encourage you to find a co-founder. I'm running my sites alone and still have not a feeling of burn-out :) If you don't have enough skills to implement your idea, employ someone, if you don't have enough time to work on business, employ someone.
Now think about it. If your online business idea is something what cure your customers' pain, you don't need VC's capital to be sucessful. We are living in age of blogs and other wonderful viral marketing tools. Cheap hardware and hosting. Everything what you need is courage, kind community and forget arrogance.
I don't want to say that have a co-founder is bad thing. I just want to say that this must have reason and that reason should not be the VC's opinion.
BTW: find a dependable co-founder is like find a needle in hay stack :)