Start-ups: Vai-Thee-Fuss?. Are co-founders essential to a venture’s success?

At a meet on start-ups a few years ago, a lady asked me, “How many co-founders are needed [for a venture] to succeed?” It’s an interesting question because there is no formula correlating the number of founders to success.

Single-founder start-ups can be very successful. Look no further than Amazon and Ebay. On the other hand, several influential start-up brands in recent years, including Facebook, Uber, Tesla, Instagram, and Airbnb, have co-founders. There’s also a school of thought that more than two or three co-founders can prove sub-optimal, but don’t forget that Infosys has done very well with six co-founders.

Co-founders must ensure they have complementary skills, bring unique strengths to the table, and bounce ideas off each other candidly. But the most important factor is the way they think about life and success. Do the co-founders have different levels of ethics and morality? Is one of them willing to cut corners to get ahead while others aren’t so inclined? Do they think very differently about material success? I am not sure co-founders debate these things and, more often than not, such differences later manifest as operational disagreements and lead to splits.

No discussion on founders is complete without asking “why do we not have enough women founders in India?” A survey suggests 18 per cent of start-ups in India have at least one woman co-founder. In the US, the score is around 30 per cent. There is no difference in passion, skill or competence between women and men founders, so I suspect the disparity is largely due to lack of adequate capital support. Most large funds have historically been uncomfortable backing women founders and we are now seeing the lag effect. It is good to see several funds these days that back only women founders. What will accelerate this trend further are examples of women-founded start-ups doing well. Here are some examples.

Shradha Sharma (single founder) has built a successful online media brand, YourStory, out of Bengaluru; Shreya Prakash, Rashmi Rammohan and Deepa Swamy from Mumbai have co-founded an impactful start-up, Flexibees; Ashwini Asokan has built an impressive artificial intelligence company, MAD Street DEN, headquartered in Chennai, with her husband, Anand Chandrasekaran, as co-founder. Three different cities, different industries, and different co-founding mixes.

Also read

There are no failed founders, only failed ventures

The missing link in the Indian start-up ecosystem

Four questions any start-up must answer honestly

All of which goes to prove my point that the number of founders and their gender do not significantly impact the success of a start-up.

(The writer is a serial entrepreneur and best-selling author of the book ‘Failing to Succeed’; tweets @vaitheek)

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