Some very quick thoughts about solo founders vs team founders
Upfront disclaimer: we’ve backed lots of solo founders. And many of them have been extremely successful. The below are just some ideas to spark a discussion.
There are a lot of articles about whether or not being a solo founder is a major risk. The articles generally come down on the side of “starting a company is a brutally difficult, existentially lonely job; you need a peer to share the mental and physical load”.
I agree with this point of view. It is indeed extraordinarily difficult and lonely being a founder. It is hard to imagine not having co-founders.
However, I have an even simpler take on the matter.
All of us have met people in our school or worklife that are amazing. If you ever were assigned a project, or if you were starting a new initiative, you’d want them with you (or vice versa). There are some groups of people who– when they’re involved with something– things just work.
So, here’s a thought experiment:
If you are thinking about starting a new company, and you decided that you didn’t want any of these magical people to join you as a co-founder, that would be strange, right? Even worse, if you couldn’t convince any of them to join you, that would also be a bad sign. If you thought that they are amazing, but only wanted them as an employee, that doesn’t make a ton of sense either.
In some ways, when I think about it, there’s not really a good excuse to not have a co-founder. The ideal co-founders, based on the experiment above, are people who have worked closely together in the past, and who really know what the other can do.
Now, it’s true that when one person is ready to make the leap into start-up land, their “magical associates” might just not be ready (or, they may be great on one context, but not necessarily in a start-up context). However, I remember something that Aaref Hilaly (who is a great investor) told me when I just started my journey as a VC. He gave me a second set of eyes on a company that I really liked. He said “I get why you like this company and this founder. She’s great, and it’s an interesting business. But it’s not ‘special’”. He then talked to me about how many really really good companies I was going to see as a VC, and how the truly special companies will arise only once in a very great while.
So, maybe there are a lot of perfectly competent founders that made the leap into their company without bringing on co-founders. But I’ll bet that fewer of these are “special”.
I would love to get some thoughts from others on this.
