[eloff]

I'm with pg on this, starting a company with someone is a bigger commitment than getting married and without the physical chemistry to help things through tough spots. You'd be crazy to do that with someone you just met. I can't help thinking you'd actually be decreasing your odds of success versus just being a single founder. I'll stay a single founder and I feel that's the right decision for me. I can weather the highs and lows. I remain curious to see if the data will back this up more generally.

Long term this could be a good idea to meet people with similar interests, but to partner with for your next startup maybe. Not for now.

[mrep]

> starting a company with someone is a bigger commitment than getting married

How? You can leave a company you founded at any any time without any financial repercussions usually but marriages you cannot unless you get a prenup (which probably costs legal fees) and that's not even including the ring nor wedding.

[TuringNYC]

>>>> starting a company with someone is a bigger commitment than getting married

>> How? You can leave a company you founded at any any time without any financial repercussions

Absolutely not! Leaving a company has huge financial repercussions! If you have no agreement, you are either killing the company (as everyone disbands) or end up with either no ownership or end up with some uncertain amount of ownership as all the owners fight amongst themselves. If you do have a vesting agreement, you've usually lost everything if you haven't reached your 1st year cliff vest.

Either way -- you've lost a lot --

0. You've "lost" all the work you put in (often at zero or low salary). You often put in 80hr workweeks -- at that rate you could have made a boatload of money with a real job or contracting, and instead you put it all in as sweat equity and now the company owns all that unpaid effort, not you.

1. You've lost all the money you may have invested into the company

2. You've lost all the IP you came up with but may now be owned by the company

Also, I'd be worried if the startup means so little that you are willing to walk away without disappointment -- because startups go through hard times and you have to be willing to slog through the despair without quitting.

[dheera]

With marriage the initial intention is for life.

With a startup, often the intention is to make a dream succeed, and then potentially move on to bigger things, not necessarily stick with it for life.

[EGreg]

This is silly. Most startups funded by these VC types are “go big or go home” and “fail fast” types. All this stuff you said about the company failing is an what the VC pushes you to do 9 out of 10 times and move on. The money lost came from various sources including investors who take risks for a living.

How do you say that is worse than kids growing up in a broken home and many lives affected? An entrepeneur can have 5 failures and 8 successful exits. Do you want to say the institution of marriage can be like that?

[TuringNYC]

My comment was that "walking away" every time one has a founder conflict is not without financial consequences.

I didn't actually make any comments about marriages being more or less important or impactful than startups.

[EGreg]

Ah I see. I saw your comment in the context of the pg comment being debated:

“I'm with pg on this, starting a company with someone is a bigger commitment than getting married”

[navigatesol]

>You can leave a company you founded at any any time without any financial repercussions

This mentality is the exact wrong one to have, especially if you're "co-founder dating".

Unless you're two people hacking away in a dorm room with no customers, making no money (hardly a "business"), there are all kinds of obligations and financial repercussions you might have.

[em-bee]

and when you have children, then a permanent separation is impossible unless one partner gives up seeing the children ever again. you are connected for the rest of your lives

[codesushi42]

Getting married to someone you just met on a dating app would probably be a bad idea. It could still work. Arranged marriages aren't much different.

Aside from that, there's no issue using a dating app to find that special someone you should marry. Same goes for founder dating. You have to start somewhere.

In any case you should try working with your potential cofounder first. A friend isn't necessarily a good cofounder.

[eloff]

There are always exceptions. It still makes it a bad idea.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with using it to meet like minded people who you might collaborate with one day.

But let's not ignore the fact that single founders can be successful too, and one of the biggest causes of startup failure is co-founder disputes, according to YC's own data. The real question is, will it help more than it hurts? The good news is we may know in a few years with this experiment YC is running.

[codesushi42]

Successful single founders are very rare.

Agreed that the biggest cause of failure is issues between founders.

One could say then that you should only start a company when you have a cofounder, and one that is good. But in reality there's no way of knowing who will be good.

The best proxy is choosing someone you have worked with before. A coworker for instance.

Simply choosing a founder because you hang out with them is not a good idea.

Try moonlighting with your founder dating buddy before making the leap.

[tim333]

Some counter evidence:

>Entrepreneurs Are Better Off Going It Alone, Study Says Startups founded by a single person are more likely to survive and succeed than those founded by a team (wsj article on paper by Jason Greenberg)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/entrepreneurs-are-better-off-go...

[nl]

Successful single founders are very rare.

It's unclear they are remarkably more rare than other types. The data appears to show that single founders are the second most successful arrangement after pairs.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional/

[codesushi42]

Second most doesn't mean anything when you're talking about three arrangements, realistically.

I would like it to be true that solo founders have just as much chance of success. I have been unable to find a cofounder for years, and I am not biased against solo companies. People are unpredictable, and even wildly successful companies have some disheartening back stories. I've learned that from books like Idea Man (Microsoft) and Masters of Doom (id Software) where founding members got screwed by morally challenged cofounders. In the case of id, Tom Hall received nothing from id in the end, and forfeited all of his equity when he was fired. Because they decided he wasn't needed anymore, despite him being there from the beginning through the tough times.

But it stands to reason that you are better off if you can find someone who is honest and is going to work hard with you, simply because two heads are better than one. When used together at least. Emphasis on honest, I would rank trust and ethics over experience and intelligence.

If you can't find that person, and you are determined, then may as well go ahead and go it alone. You only live once. Just realize the odds are stacked even higher against you. You are only lying to yourself if you refuse to accept that truth.

And you can be a cofounder of a successful company, but still fail miserably and have it all taken away by a bad cofounder.

[eloff]

You just dismissed the data and replaced it with nothing of substance. Forget your feelings and look at the data, single founders are successful especially when you're talking about smaller companies that might not go the VC route. VCs are really only interested in companies that have a shot at being unicorns.

[nl]

Second most doesn't mean anything when you're talking about three arrangements, realistically.

Exactly. You have expressed the argument perfectly.

There seems to be little link between the number of founders and success.

The rest of your post seems to have a simple counter argument: hire people.

[felipap]

Aren't successful founders very rare, "period"?

[ransom1538]

"Getting married to someone you just met on a dating app would probably be a bad idea"

Nope. It is a great idea.

"According to a 2012 study by Statistic Brain, the global divorce rate for arranged marriages was 6 percent — a significantly low number. Compared to the 55 percent of marriages in the world that are unarranged, this low statistic shows the success rate of arranged marriages"

[flunhat]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but those numbers are extremely misleading. I can tell you from close personal observation that this low divorce rate is almost certainly because divorce is extremely taboo in the kinds of societies that have a lot of arranged marriages. The kind of culture that sees an arranged marriage as OK is also very likely one that judges divorcees harshly. See also: the Hasan Minhaj bit about the "What will people say?" attitude in South Asian cultures.

Also, the super low divorce rate should make you suspicious -- it would be more believable if it was slightly lower (like 30% or whatever), but 6%? There's clearly something else going on, and if you look closely you'll realize why.

[karthikb]

On the other hand, arranged marriages tend to take place in very conservative areas with a low tolerance for divorce (legal or social) and tend to be favored by individuals with a low tolerance for divorce (cultural). A more accurate study would perform a cohort analysis of divorce rate across regions as divorce becomes legalized and normalized.