[NY_Entrepreneur]

Even if the roulette ball drops into the slot 00, the play was still a "big risk", and so was, under the circumstances, insisting on a cofounder. That is, given how much Drew had already done, a cofounder had to be mostly just downside risk. The 'mitigation' had to be minimal.

Or, Drew's left hand doesn't fight with his right hand, but cofounders can easily fight.

If a cofounder is really needed, then so be it. But a cofounder is always risky, and a single founder who has already done well starting the business has a big advantage just because his left hand won't fight with his right hand.

Now a single founder can do much more than in past years, even just five years ago.

And here's a big point: always in a startup very much want the CEO to 'understand his business'. In an IT software startup, that includes understanding the software. But software has now changed: E.g., with .NET, nearly everything needed in commercial computing, and a larger fraction of Web site construction, is already in the .NET classes. So, the work is just writing a little 'glue' code between the uses of the classes. So, the coding goes VERY quickly. But what doesn't go quickly is understanding the classes because need about 10 books each of 500-1000 pages and, even for just a Web site, about 3000 Web pages of documentation from MSDN. And, this understanding of .NET is just 'overhead' that have to pay just once per programming task solved with a .NET class actually understand well. So, to 'know his business', a CEO needs to know the relevant parts of, say, .NET. A cofounder can't help here. And once the CEO does have that .NET knowledge, there can be some serious question if a cofounder can add much. Just what the Linux world has in place of .NET I don't know, but it can't be both small and effective.

There is other evidence: Look up and down Main Street at the successful businesses that have been started there. Typically there's only one person who is the real 'founder'. Look at research: Bright ideas come first to just one person at a time. Period. Microsoft: A Bill Gates show. Apple: A Steve Jobs show. Berkshire: A Warren Buffett show. Renaissance: A James Simons show. Continue with the one man shows of Kolmogorov, von Neumann, Knuth, etc. and in music Heifetz, Rostropovich, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, etc.

It's tough enough to find a Michelangelo to paint the ceiling. Getting him a 'copainter' who would actually help would be impossible. As you add people to a team, the team regresses to the mean where you don't want to be. And, did I mention fights? Sorry 'bout that.

[mmcconnell1618]

Bill Gates had Paul Allen, Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak and Warren Buffett had Charlie Munger. You can argue that one-half of these duos produced more than the other but would they have been able to without the support of the other half?

[NY_Entrepreneur]

Allen and Woz both left early on. Allen was in a plane wreck and/or got cancer or some such? Woz was gone before Jobs was at Next, Pixar, or back at Apple. I'm sure Jobs had a mother, also, but as I wrote, and is clearly the case, Apple, that is, the currently successful company, was a one man show from Jobs. While Munger is a bright guy, my reading is as I wrote it: Berkshire is a Buffett show.

[ridruejo]

A cofounder is most critical a factor in the early stages of a business. Apple and Microsoft were already established companies to a larger degree when the cofounders left

[NY_Entrepreneur]

Sure. Still, what I said is on target: Gates, Jobs, etc. did the big, huge growth just from their own brains. There's no good reason to believe that they could not have done all of the success, including the first days, essentially alone also.

Really, for the "early stages of a business", that is JUST what Jobs faced at Next, Pixar, and back at Apple. What he and Woz did for the Apple II was nearly irrelevant except it did leave Jobs with the cash from his sale of all his Apple stock except one shart. So, we're not talking the value of a cofounder but the value of a founder with cash!

And for Gates, as MS/DOS took off, Microsoft was just awash in cash. About then, Allen left. So, the real building of Microsoft was due to Gates and cash. It's not the least bit clear that Gates ever really needed Allen as a cofounder. Similarly for Jobs and Woz.

[ridruejo]

Early stages of a business in this context is way earlier than what you are referring to. We are talking the stage that YC gets involved: usually just the founders, working out of their apartment / garage. That is not, as you argue, the same situation that jobs faced at those other ventures.

[0x12]

I think you're missing the point here. How they parted does not matter much. What matters is that without the other they would have never made it to where they got.

[NY_Entrepreneur]

Sure, Woz helped get Apple started. Then with that start, Jobs had cash that helped him at Next and Pixar and back at Apple where he worked for $1 a year. So, Jobs was really the 'founder' of the success at Next, Pixar, and the Apple we know today. Your point is just that the early success at Apple gave Jobs cash. With cash, Jobs was a wildly successful sole founder at Next, Pixar, and his return to Apple where the cash was relevant but not the early Apple or Woz.

The issue is, can a sole founder be successful? The evidence from Jobs at Next, Pixar, and Apple upon his return is, with cash, yes. So, just for the people involved, Jobs is a great example of a successful sole founder in his last three gigs.

You are bending over backwards to refuse to see this. Why don't you go on and say that the iPod was due to his mother while you are at it?

Again, yet again, so that even you might be able to get it, is Jobs, with some cash, was three times a successful sole founder. That's the issue: A sole founder, and three times he was. Even you can get that now.

[NY_Entrepreneur]

You are just flatly refusing to pay any informed attention at all to history or to read what the heck I actually wrote.

Take Gates: When Allen was still around, Microsoft was a still a small company IBM was still laughing at. Then Allen left. Gates, it was JUST Gates, went on to build Windows 3, Office, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, IE, Windows Server, SQL Server, Windows XP, and more. Gates grew his fortune from a few hundred million dollars to $50 billion or so. That growth was due to Gates. Period. And that was the significant growth that blew the doors off IBM, Sun, HP, Lotus, etc. Got it now?

For Jobs, you are really working to be brain-dead: What Woz and Jobs did with the Apple II, etc. is nearly irrelevant to what Jobs did at Next, Pixar, and after his return to Apple. Apple became for a while the most valuable company in the world due to what Jobs did, Jobs, JUST Jobs, with Woz watching from the nickel seats. Sculley? Amelio? They just helped show how bright Jobs was.

For your "would have never made it to where they got", we have no way to know that.

You are illustrating a huge point that I did make: People like to fight. Even over something really obvious, people like to fight. If you and I were cofounders, then no matter what I did and no matter what success the company was having, you'd be fighting me every way you could think of, fighting, fighting, fighting, for no good reason except you just want to be fighting. There's no way you could be effective.

[0x12]

Without Woz apple would have never happened, because he designed their first flagship product. What Woz did back then is highly relevant because it was the thing that eventually enabled Jobs to start Next and buy Pixar.

Jobs and Woz to me are the ideal example of the sum being much greater than either part.

Without Paul Allen Microsoft as we know it would not have existed because he named Microsoft Microsoft.

Your insulting tone and capitals do not make you right, they're reminiscent of people raising their voice and making things personal just because they can't win an argument.

I read a bit in your comment history and this seems to be a recurring theme for you, it is almost as if you take this single founder thing personal. The way to prove that it works is to simply succeed. As a single founder myself I've been there, I've done the multiple-founder thing too (with mixed success). There are no guarantees, to pretend either way is a shoe-in is nonsense. But statistically speaking, and looking at things from the point of view of a guy or girl considering going it alone or from the point of view of an investor that has the choice to invest in a company founded by one or more people the statistics seem to point to more being the better choice. Exceptions will always happen. But the ones that you point to are not those exceptions.

We can't know anything about pasts and futures that didn't happen, but we can safely say that things that did happen and that were likely significant were at least as significant as anything that you think would have happened otherwise. Jobs, Wozniak, Gates and Allen would probably never have said what you just said, and that alone marks them as potentially more successful. How you interact with others is an important factor in your chances for success, and being able to give credit where credit is due is another.

I agree that you and I should not be involved in any business because we'd probably fight, and you are making that point very eloquently.

[NY_Entrepreneur]

"Without Paul Allen Microsoft as we know it would not have existed because he named Microsoft Microsoft."

So he named the company? Now you are being totally silly and showing that you are determined to fight with me for just silly reasons.

You are the one being 'personal'. You just don't want the argument made that sole founders can be a good bet and just want to stay with the PG and VC herd that cofounders are crucial, say, for naming the company and cut me down for not joining your herd.

Jobs was a successful sole founder at Next, Pixar, and his return to Apple. The only role from Woz and Jobs's first time at Apple was just cash, not Woz or a 'cofounder'. You are straining to deny that Jobs was successful in his last three gigs as a sole founder.

Gates? He had to refound the company after the success of MS/DOS and make Windows, Windows Server, SQL Server, and Office all real. He did. Alone. While doing this, IBM was laughing at him. He knocked the socks off IBM, DB2, Lotus, WordPerfect, Sun, HP, and more.

Just look around you: Commonly cofounders and coleaders just suck. Big committees suck. Group decision making sucks. Take IBM, AT&T, GM, Sun, HP: In each case, the management suite and top management 'team' was awash in what was regarded as the best qualifications. Still, they all just sucked. The Navy knows better: On the bridge of a ship, there exactly one captain. Although one captain can be bad, two is usually worse.

Then you are ignoring the present for what is central at HN: IT startups, especially Web 2.0 startups. Elsewhere on this thread I've explained in good detail: A founder needs to understand his business; he needs to understand the software; the bottleneck in understanding the software is not the unique software of the company but just understanding the now huge software components available; that bottleneck can be passed by just one person at a time, essentially alone, or learning is not a spectator sport or a team sport; once a founder has passed this bottleneck, a cofounder becomes much less relevant than in the past. You can see this, if you want to.

The main issue here is sole founders or cofounders. The resolution is, net, having all the business between one pair of ears is a great advantage when it can be done, and now for a Web 2.0 startup it not only can be done but should be done. The 'team' of Michelangelo and anyone else would be nowhere nearly as good at painting the ceiling as just Michelangelo alone.

[mmcconnell1618]

No one is denying that Gates,Jobs and Buffett accomplished incredible feats. I'm just arguing that, at the beginning, each had a partner to help get things started. Woz created the Apple 1 and 2 which brought incredible financial success to Apple allowing Jobs to later start Next and purchase Pixar from Lucas. Paul Allen was instrumental Microsoft's early days including coding Microsoft Basic and making deals. Gates had the chance to then operate from a strong position to grow Microsoft and lock in that monopoly. Warren Buffett has always said that he didn't create Bershire alone and that Charlie Munger (as well as Benjamin Graham) helped immensely.

I am currently a single founder and I disagree with the idea that you must have a co-founder to be successful. I'm just arguing that if you want to use Gates,Jobs and Buffett as your examples of single founders they don't hold up well.

[NY_Entrepreneur]

"would they have been able to without the support of the other half?" The evidence overwhelmingly, yes they would have been successful. You are correct that Gates, Jobs, and Buffett are not perfect examples of successful sole founders, but the question is, can a sole founder be successful? The 'rub' in this question is, can just one guy, alone, making all the decisions alone, do well? Then the examples of Gates, Jobs, and Buffett are quite relevant because each did great things essentially alone.

For Jobs, whatever might say about Woz and Jobs's first period at Apple, later Jobs did very well alone at Next, Pixar, and back at Apple. For those last three gigs, Woz was somewhere in the nickel seats. Yes, the success with Woz gave Jobs a lot of cash that was no doubt important for him in his last three gigs. So, then we say that Jobs is an example of a three time successful sole founder with cash. So, with cash a sole founder can work.

After the success of MS/DOS and Allen leaving Microsoft, Gates really had to reinvent, 'refound' the company. It is fair to say that he was a founder again. Yes, he was a founder with cash, but he was still acting essentially alone. Again, the issue is, can a sole founder do it alone, and that is what we are addressing. With the cash from MS/DOS, Gates did it alone. It's amazing what he did because he crushed IBM, Sun, Lotus, Netscape, DB2, and more.

For Buffett, no way should we count Ben Graham! He wrote a book and was a prof of Buffett at Columbia and possibly a friend. Graham had likely hundreds of students and millions of readers, but there was just one Berkshire. So, for Berkshire I don't credit Graham.

For Munger's role, that's just a judgment call, but my reading is that Buffett didn't much need him. Partly I draw that conclusion because it appears in recent years Buffett has been making his decisions essentially just alone.

Again, the main issue is, can a sole founder really get the work done or will he go off the deep end, for fast women, slow horses, cheap booze, wacko ideas, etc.? Well, Gates, Jobs, and Buffett didn't do any of these bad things.

There's another great example: Fred Smith at FedEx. I absolutely, positively guarantee you that there I know in fine detail just what the heck I'm talking about: FedEx was due almost entirely just to Smith, not Art Bass, Roger Frock, Mike Basch, ..., or me. Yes, it's true that Smith had a fortune from Southern Greyhound.

But with a fortune, it's easy, right? Tell that to Carly Fiorina, John Akers, Gil Amelio, Pat Dunn, etc.

[herbacidal]

Check out Eisner's books on partnerships. Buffett-Munger, Gates-Allen/Ballmer/French-Gates are all in there. Would they have been successes solo? Maybe. But partnership increased the odds, and also made it a bigger success.