"TechCrunch, FeedBurner, iStockPhoto, YouSendIt, Meebo, Vimeo and Alexaholic. These are some of the most popular websites on the Internet. "

Huh?

I'm sure anyone who has to deal with cell carriers would say it was a pain in the ass. But that pain also kills off a lot of competitors. Much of Loopt's success is traceable to the fact that they were one of the few groups, if not the only one, who were both great hackers and willing to endure endless meetings with cell carriers.

The average number of founders in successful startups doesn't mean much unless it is from a random sample of startups that have both succeeded and failed.

If you looked at a graph of the total dataset, what you'd see is that almost all startups with only one founder fail. So the reason the successful startups you list mostly have two founders may not be because two is the optimum number, but rather because two is the next smallest (and therefore most common) number after one. We can't tell without additional data.

Could provide a small counterpoint to pg's post-Kiko claim that, "The best solution for most startup founders would probably be to stay out of Google's way." (http://paulgraham.infogami.com/blog/kiko)

Interesting that where Google proves to be kind of soft is the product that actually creates all their revenue. Complacency as the market leader? Just a blip like the Google rep suggested?

MySpace's success came in spite of their technology, not because of it. There's nothing technical at MySpace worthy of emulation. A real technology startup could have done much better.