Why being a"Cofounder" is better than being a"Founder"
When building a startup, the fact remains that most of the ideas usually mostly originate from just one person. For instance, the idea for Facebook was entirely Mark Zuckerberg’s, the idea for Airbnb was initially by Joe Gebbia. However, these men are still referred to as Cofounders of their own companies. In fact, Joe Gebbia isn’t the CEO of Airbnb. This all points to the fact that "Ideas alone aren’t enough. Everyone has ideas" but The beauty, or marketability of an idea comes ONLY from its Execution".
And when it comes to execution, team efforts are usually better than individual efforts.
Here are some of the reasons Why Being A Cofounder is Better than being a Founder.
1) The title "Cofounder" shows a bit more Humility than "Founder"
Read the following sentences:
"Hi, my name is Toheeb Ojuolape and I'm the Founder & CEO of XYZ company that does ABC...."
And
"Hi, my name is Toheeb Ojuolape and I'm the Cofounder & CEO of XYZ company that does ABC..."
which of the two sentences above makes me sound more of a narcissistic egoist? I’m guessing the first.
In entrepreneurship, humility is a virtue and is one of the things you can leverage on to connect more with your customers. Nobody likes a proud person. Being referred to as a cofounder makes you sound more down-to-earth and approachable.
In fact during the early years of building Tell! when I didn’t have any cofounders, I used to say God was the founder, while I was the cofounder…(laughs)
2) Being A Cofounder shows how well you work with teams.
"One of us may be smarter than each of us, but none of us is smarter than all of us"
- Kenneth H. Blanchard
I don’t want to sound cliche by saying something as Cliché as "Two Heads are better than one". But Two heads are INFACT better than.
And do you want to know how many heads are better than 2? Yup, 3!.
Being a cofounder is an indication of how well you work with teams and how open you are to partnerships. And these are all qualities that investors and venture capitalists seek in an entrepreneur.
It is also worthy of note that having too many cofounders can also have its demerit. The optimum number of cofounders any startup should have is 3. 5 is a bit too much. 7 or 9 is insane!
3) Having Cofounders make Scaling your Startup easy.
As an early stage startup, you would mostly need to leverage on your own personal network to get early users to know about and buy your products or use your services. The average person has a network of about 100-150. Now imagine having 2 other cofounders with average of 100-150 acquaintances as well.
That means your business gets to reach atleast 450 potential users immediately. This is the reason behind the success of some popular Startups like Piggyvest, Airbnb and even Twitter.
When you have cofounders, you don’t have to evangelise your startup alone, you have your cofounders to help do this along with you.
4) Being A Cofounder Makes Entrepreneurship less Crazy and More Fun!
Fact remains that Entrepreneurship is a very lonely "ship". Building a startup can be really boring, especially when you are doing it on your own. And this type of solitude can often lead to depression and schizophrenia for young single founders, hence the need to find someone(s) you can always have deep conversations about your startup with and sound less crazy talking to yourself about your ideas.
5) Having Cofounders Gives you the Opportunity to Focus on your Strength, and not your weaknesses.
One of the most important lessons I learnt from Adam Grant’s The Original is that for an individual to be truly exceptional, he/she needs to focus on strengths and not weaknesses, as trying to be better at things you’re not good at (your weaknesses) would only make you just like everyone else.
When I built Tell! and Xchange, I realized that my strength and passion lied in the design, coding and other technical parts of developing the Startup. However, I realized that I was not quite interested in business development, grant writing and seeking partnerships, hence the reason I recruited cofounders to join me on the journey, and that has truly made all the difference.
6) Having Cofounders makes you get alot of things done.
During the early stages of a startup, there is usually alot of work and activities especially in the area of marketing, design, seeking funds, public relations and establishing partnerships. The beauty of having cofounders is that all of these activities can be shared amongst cofounders to be performed with the highest level of commitment and satisfaction.
It is also arguable that hiring a team of experts can also provide the same results as above, and yes that is true. But in the case of having these experts as cofounders, you can be sure of getting things done easily, and ofcourse for free because as cofounders, they have the same vested interests in the startup. However hiring experts would definitely cost your startup money and according to the Cofounder of Y Combinator, Paul Graham, excessive spending and hiring too many people is one of the major reasons why Startups fail.
7) Startups with Multiple Founders are less likely to fail
According to an article by entrepreneur.com, one of the major reasons why Startups fail is a lack of focus and motivation by Startup founders to press on. Now, some of the things having cofounders does for you is to provide that constant stream of motivation, a support group and willpower to push on.
If a single founder loses focus or motivation, it could immediately lead to the death of the startup. However if one cofounder out of 2 or 3 cofounders loses motivation, the business still has a higher chance of continuity.
So next time you have that amazing business idea you wish to execute, the next question you should really ask yourself is: Is there anyone within my circle who I can partner with to get this new product off the ground?
