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Lone genius or lonely fool? Exploring the viability of solo-founding in entrepreneurship
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DOI：10.1002/smj.70103.png)
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Abstract
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The conventional wisdom both in research and in practice is that entrepreneurs need co-founders, as they bring crucial resources to new ventures. Yet, this same work also suggests that co-founders introduce destructive conflict, potentially creating as many problems as they solve. Surprisingly, little work examines the counterfactual—that is, the conditions under which solo-founding is a viable approach. In this paper, we address this gap. We perform two studies; one using data from Y Combinator's renowned accelerator program, and another using large-scale data from Crunchbase. Across these studies, we find that the solo founder disadvantage is partially attenuated when the founder has either broad or deep experience, or both (i.e., “T-shaped skills”). Overall, our paper contributes to the literatures on founding teams and strategic human capital.
Keywords:
entrepreneurship
founders
founding teams
hazard models
new venture performance
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