Forget What They Told You About Building Startup Teams. Look at Data Instead

Contrary to popular belief, historical data suggests that larger founding teams have better chances to build successful startups.

One of the most widespread rules of thumb in the venture industry is about the number of startup founders. It implies that an optimal number of founders is 2 or 3, startups with a solo founder are OK-ish, startups with 5 or more founders are rotten. Is this belief based on a solid foundation? It’s not. CrunchBase data indicates the opposite: the more founders a startup has, the better its chances are to raise money and have an exit.

CrunchBase contains information about 39,465 companies with two founders, 12.5% of them raised over $10 Mln. At the same time, there are 4,877 companies with 4 founders, 20.3% of which raised over $10 Mln. The chart below demonstrates an overall trend: “more founders” means “better chances to raise money”, but large founding teams are rare.

Note: This article is based on CrunchBase data, retrieved on September 10, 2019. As CrunchBase gets frequent updates, you will see slightly different numbers when you follow the links above.