Solo Pros: less communication overhead, rapid decision making, unified direction, do things your way, full ownership
Solo Cons: lack of mental support, heavy burden, all falls on you, context-switching between tasks (e.g., building v. talking to users), in tough times you must find your own support network, less manpower
Cofounder Pros: divvy up roles, combine diverse skillsets, mental support, camaraderie, make use of strengths of multiple people, investors like teams, can boost each other up in tough times, bouncing ideas off each other and brainstorming can lead to breakthroughs
Cofounder Cons: potential for disputes and conflict, compromise can worsen results, must agree and unite, easy to end up with a bad cofounder, must continue to nurture relationship
Common saying: "go fast alone, go farther together"
You can also start solo and bring on cofounders once you feel you need it.
Company #3: Did okay, sold it off as I knew it wouldn't grow.
Company #4: Co-founder. Did pretty well. Sold my interest to my two partners.
Company #6: Engineer #2 - cheated out of $2M in shares when the company was acquired.
Company #7: Co-founder/Engineer #1 - cheated out of it when it took off like a rocket after eight months and they decided they didn't need any more US engineering and could outsource software development for $8/hr on that newfangled Craigslist. Acquired a year later by BigCorp.
Company #11: Solo founder - could never get the two people I had as early employees that I was grooming for becoming partners to stop fighting each other or me. Company lasted 7 years. Didn't survive the 2008 economic downturn.
Company #13: Engineer #1/CTO - acquihired after 16 months but I was about ready to walk due to the CEO turning in to a raging arsehole the moment that big money started flowing in.
Company #14: Co-founder/CTO - got in to bed with the wrong co-founder/CEO - my mistake, should have vetted him more. I explain that we euphemistically "ran out of runway" but in reality I took his sticky fingers out of my pocket. Also, I didn't like being referred to as "you're just a programmer."
Company #15: Solo founder - did well, but was burning out and wrapped it up to concentrate on #16 at the request of my business partners.
Company #16: Did great - acquired by Big Corp against my will due to my two business partners (brought on after we were doing well) decided on a "hostile takeover" whereby we'd sell and they'd make money or they would drive the company to bankruptcy. Therapist says I have PTSD and should consider a different career or avoid co-founders/business partners in the future.
Company #20: Engineering hire #2 - so far so good. Three months in. No arseholes so far.
Company #21: ?
Consider an alternative: do you lack some expertise that you need right now?
If so, can you hire them part time to support you. It much easier to get someone to say yes without them quitting their job. You pay them in cash or equity.
If equity, it will definitely be less than cofounder shares since they understand it's not a commitment and they can quit anytime.
I call this 0.5 cofounder. Its not 1 (solo) or 2 (cofounder): somewhere in the middle.
These are the main advantages I found in go going solo (for my specific case):
- Less costs, this is critical at the beggining, paying 4 salaries with the early income is not the same than paying 1.
- Faster developing. If you combine several skills, the discussions are only in your mind (from your CTO mind to your CMO mind, passing throug your CEO mind,etc.) , you don't need to arrange meetings to talk between your different minds.
- More freedom. You can work when you want, and have days off when you want. You don't need to coordinate with anyone. Maybe with your life partner but thats anotther story :)
- You learn even more. IF you cofund you may tend to don't pay attention to the things that don't fall in your domain. When going solo you learn about everything: taxes, invoices, developemnt, design, marketing, etc.
For me the cons of going solo is that you lack expertise in other fields that a cofunder could fill.
My personal suggestion to everyone starting a startup is to identify the main pilars of the business and then find a founder for each pilar.
For example, for an online food store, the pilars would be 2: Digital (marketing and site development) and Food logistics (buy, store and sell food). Then, the founders could be: an expirienced CTO, and an expirienced Chief from food industry.
In my case, the scrum's "Planning Poker Online" app, there is only one pilar: Digital. As the app is a 100% automated SASS and the users are Digital people like me.
I hope this helps someone, :)
YC used to look for "animals" in their application. You're tapping into their primal side. It's like sports, where you just through pass the ball in front of you and your teammate can anticipate it. It's like a band where you play a beat on the drums and the guitarist just puts a riff on it.
The cons is that there's overhead. There's creative disagreement and communication. There's a lot of blind trust needed to speed things up.
Pros: you answer only to yourself.
Cons: you answer only to yourself.
When you’re flying solo you get to make all the decisions, but there’s no check and balance. Nobody to push you or keep you accountable.
On the other hand, there’s nobody to argue with and nobody to get in your way. You can build what you want.
Truthfully, I think it’s hard to gauge pros and cons because the personalities of the cofounders matter a lot. For example, Apple wouldn’t be Apple if it started with two Wozniaks or two Jobs. The specific combination of both is what brought the company to life.