Is it true that two co-founders are more likely to succeed than a solo founder?… According to the data, the answer seems to be a resounding “yes”…
Multiple studies have found that the majority of successful startups have more than one founder.
So, this begs the question: Is there such a thing as *too many* founders?
Absolutely.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen many solo-founder companies perform extremely well. They benefit from:
- Quicker decision-making
- A single, unified vision
- Lower risk of destabilizing founder breakups
The primary benefit of two or more founders includes:
- More bandwidth in the early days with multiple highly incentivized people working on the exact same mission & vision
- Fewer skill gaps when each co-founder has a specialization
- “Founders” can be in more places at once
That said, the risk of a destabilizing founder breakup is always present within multi-founder companies. And, the more co-founders, the higher the risk.
The advice that I often give to aspiring founders is that every single “co-founder” must bring something unique and irreplaceable to the team.
Redundancies occur when one of the co-founders has a duplicate skillset or no discernible skills at all. This inevitably leads to friction down the road.
In a market downturn, co-founder shakeups happen more frequently.
Even if you and your co-founders do everything right, each person’s situation is constantly changing.
The only way that a founding team survives is by being flexible with that change, leading with trust, respect and compassion.
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