For me and my co-founder, especially during the dark days of 1) tech not working 2) clients stopping service with us or 3)someone yelling at us over Twitter, email or phone - it is Critical to have a team and more importantly to have a partner. I don't share all of my concerns with the whole team because that could shift the mood of the company and damage our internal resolve. But I need to be able to talk about the full reality of the situation with someone and depending on who is having an up day one of us can rally the other person around to being enthused again.

Without that, I know there would be days I would be lost, and if that lingered at all I could see weeks of inactivity at exactly those points where we needed to move fast.

I whole-heartedly agree with Jessica that having a co-founder that, above all, you can trust is huge (I'm lucky that I do), but I agree with the other reply here that a single founder, in almost all situations is more trouble than any sort of cofounder disputes.

I fully agree, but the partner doesn't have to be cofounder. It could be the wife (or husband), a very good friend or anything equivalent.

From what I have read so far the main difficulties of a single founder is lacking an alternate view and help to restore drive when in doubt or exhausted.

Of course other kind of problems may show up if the business is a startup of the dropbox kind. But this is a mazzerati problem. My feeling is that more than one founders expose to much more difficult and nasty problems than a single founder will met. A single founder can find paliatives for his weakness which do exist and shouldn't be ignored.

I can see what you mean here - my wife is my life partner, and she is a fantastic balance outside the support my business partner and I provide each other. But she has other things going on - her life is more than just waiting to hear about how Perfect Audience is going and having someone as focused as you are on your work baby, but in different ways, is useful.

You're conflating two distinct ideas: optimizing for the success of an idea, and optimizing for the success of a startup. They're not the same thing, because a startup can switch ideas. In her talk Jessica mentioned OrderAhead, which went through 5 ideas before the current one.

And what do you think about concept "Do fast and fail fast" meaning in general that you should give up idea (and startup that was based on this idea) as fast as you can if you find out that idea doesn't work?

I agree with "smart pivots" idea but "fail fast" is one thing that I don't understand in "Lean startup" concept as I'm quite persistent and I understand that in general it takes several years for startup to succeed.

Failing fast means that if an idea has a fatal flaw, you want to discover it as early as possible. When you phrase it that way, it's hard to see how anyone could be against it. This is for example why I encourage startups to launch quickly.

Oh, that makes sence when talking about ideas - not startups. Thanks.

In terms of outcomes I am convinced that co-founder disputes (been there done that) are still a lesser risk to success than the banal reality of simply losing motivation as a single founder. I am a rather determined person but would I have gone through all the way with my first startup while going experiencing the roller coaster? Almost certainly not.

Another thing to consider: In a dispute you may actually be the wrong one, and even if you end up leaving when you would have been right, your remaining co-founders may lead the company to some success while you retain your vested shares and can recharge for/ start the next thing.

In fact, it's much harder to be determined if you work without co-founder (i.e. at least 1 person who supports what you're working on).

> In fact, it's much harder (...)

It's not a fact, just an opinion or anecdotal observation. And I submit it depends on the person in question. Some folks may find it easier to have a co-founder, some may find that to be more of an obstacle. Both cases have merit. Agreed it helps to have other people support you, be a cheerleader, be a listener, etc., but that doesn't have to be a cofounder. Since cofounder implies equity stake, all kinds of painful problems become possible when a newborn business venture has ownership split between multiple people, with different vision, different motivations, different life circumstances, and often (but not always) different equity stakes. In an ideal world, having co-founders/co-owners can be great. But it can also be a path to hell. Depending on the situation.

Yeah, you're right that there's no 1 law that fits everyone. Still we can say that in general it's easier to work together than alone with a note that there are some exclusions, of course.