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'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?

[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?

[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/...).

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 ;)

[toddmorey]

No. Sure, being a single founder challenges everything about you. Likewise, being a cofounder challenges everything about that relationship. I think it's better to 'settle' for finding success outside of YC, etc. than to settle on a cofounder, especially without history. I think being a cofounder tests a relationship and your compatibility even more than marriage at times. Don't do it just to check a box on someone else's list.

Plus, confounding a company together is hard, being a single founder is harder, but I think bringing a second founder in later is the hardest maneuver of them all.

You will resent the decisions he makes concerning your baby without your history in the project. He will resent the lack of immediate trust and freedom.

I don't say this to discourage having a cofounder that you think is a perfect fit. That would be my #1 choice of course. But being a single founder is worlds preferable to having a cofounder setup that goes sour.

[X4]

I agree, I'm a very compatible person, but there is nobody I know that is similarly skilled and interested in starting up an idea. I have a lot of long-time business contacts (from freelancing) who sometimes have very great ideas and even data to back-up the potential success of it, when they know a competitor for example. They want me to do it all the software-architecture, coding and sometimes even the design, but cannot invest themselves into it, except for connecting us to the potential customers they know. I once had a co-founder who at least did the business part of thing (man he was really good at it), but he stopped when it started to become fruitful, due to severe illness of his mother. Well and we never made things on paper, which concerned me, but not him.

I've one friend who I could do co-found with, but he wants to move to another country and work for an infosec company and won't have any spare time then, nor has the risk-taking ability that's required. Well, because otherwise he'd stay from start to finish of the product and not hunt down his the career-path as fast as possible.

[asenna]

> 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?

This is very true. It is really difficult to find someone with all those qualities and also be as passionate as you are on that idea or gets the true vision. I feel it would be best to not rush into getting a co-founder for VCs / incubators' sake but to just keep a door open for when you do find someone. Till then, do not stop or doubt.

[PeterisP]

Would you want to invest in someone who will wait indefinitely to find the ideal teammate while [s]he actually needs to hire sub-optimal people in order to grow the company?

It's okay to postpone starting a startup, but if you want to say that you're started and get funded, then you have to show that you won't even consider a possibility of postponing growth for reasons you can avoid.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[Cardeck1]

Why are we acting as single founders are single forever?It's like, once you enter YC as a single founder you cannot hire anyone else to aid you in your startup, being forever alone.

We both know quality developers would LOVE working for a YC startup and it should be no problem hiring someone as a co-founder IF you know how to pick. Now, of course, that co-founder was not born in the same hospital as you and you might not have that super SyFy connection as super old time buddies but will that lead to a startup failure?No,I don't think so.

In fact I am willing to bet that even a non-technical single founder (ye, we don't like them) with no experience what-so-ever, can handle YC application process. How? Raw/natural talent, cleverness, cunningness etc. Qualities hard to measure and observe, no doubt, but most valuable. If you can get a founder like that, there should be no problems in the future. Going "by the paper" is not always the best choice.

EDIT: And in all honesty the YC Application form is cleverly made to target a specific group of people, eliminating a huge amount of talent and in some points minimizing innovation.

[hunvreus]

I understand that empirically it seems that having a co-founder decreases your chances of failure. Others have already done a great job at explaining why.

I'd be interested however in understanding how, empirically, single founders with a couple talented contractors/employees compare to the potentially more risky duo founder relationship. Or is this simply not the kind of team YC would get behind?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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)

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

Javier

[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.

[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.

[PeterisP]

In order to give any return and be useful to investors, you'll need to scale your company. Scaling from 3 people to, say, 30 is a non-trivial task that isn't always done well - and I'd feel that getting from 1 person to 30 is harder and carries more risk. Being a single founder instead of a team also is correlated (not always, but sometimes) with being the type of person who can't form a team easily - which would be a drawback for any such startup.

[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.

[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..

[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.

[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.

[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.