I am going to go out on a limb and say that a lot of what PG and the like say is far more applicable to 20-something non-entrepreneurs who fresh out of school (while still in school) want to start a company. I don't mean to diminish PG or his always-valuable advise. I am merely pointing out that a lot of these points are far more applicable to a certain class of entrepreneur.
If you take a single 18 to 25 year old "kids" with no business experience whatsoever and a life experience mostly devoid of struggle I'd be the probability of failure is absolutely huge. Entrepreneurship can test you in incredible ways. It can take you to the deepest and darkest moments of your life. And, if you are alone and are not "built" for it you will crumble.
Anyone with a good amount of business experience has a far greater probability of success if only because they've done it before and understand the game. You can hire people for the other functions that need to be performed.
I guess my point is that a co-founder is not some kind of a magic pill that will auto-magically make things better. Teaming up with someone with limited or no business experience and you hardly know is a formula for disaster. If both of you are newbies and you have some external coaching (YC) then, yes, things could be better.
I had a situation with someone who wanted to partner-up for a mobile app. I flat-out refused to partner (in the sense of company co-ownership). We put together a revenue-sharing agreement (50-50 was fine for this case). Control and all business decisions remained with me. I would eventually learn this was a great decision when this person went off the rails half-way through development.
It sounds like you have solid business experience. Don't buy into the SCV mantra of having to have a co-founder. Do it your way. Now, if you have to play on their turf then it's their rules. Outside that, there's no reason you couldn't be successful. Not one.
BTW, I don't buy YC/SCV statistics because they do not include the millions of solo-founder businesses that are launched every year. There's everything from lunch truck operators to restaurants, web design shops and tech companies. I am going to go out on a limb and say that if you looked at that data you might see that solo founders have a far greater probability of success than the SCV crowd mantra paints.
Again, if you are taking business virgins out of college to start businesses, yes, absolutely, get two, four or six of them because they are very likely to commit business seppuku if on their own. Also, VC's need insurance if they are going to make an investment. Multiple green founders is safer than one green founder.
Here's an example of what I am talking about (and it looks like no VC money):
I'll go out on another limb and say that the biggest benefit of having a cofounder isn't another set of hands to do the work, it's another mind with significant skin in the game who will challenge your thinking and point out all the flaws in your ideas - and, of course, who you trust enough to actually listen to when they point out those flaws.
No matter how much business experience you have, you will face situations in a startup where you have to make decisions with highly imperfect information. Having someone by your side who is willing to point out things you may have missed or cases where you have gone seriously off the rails can be invaluable here. After all, nobody seriously believes their ideas are wrong - it usually takes somebody painstakingly pointing it out.
I worked at a startup, early in my career, where the primary founder had cofounders, but they had low enough equity stakes to not be seriously incentivized to challenge him. This was not a wet-behind-the-ears 25-year-old; he was nearly 50, had finished an Ivy League Ph.D in 3 years, had worked as a professor and a quant on Wall Street, and had both technical chops and deep domain experience. But while I worked there, I saw him make a bunch of boneheaded technical moves, simply because there was not enough time in the day for him to both keep tabs on the market and understand the technology in enough detail to make informed technological choices. When I went to the other cofounders about this, they were like, "Well yes, I agree, but it's his company, he gets to call the shots."
He kept at it for 11 years total. He called me up a couple years after I'd quit - not just one job later, but two - to admit that he'd been wrong about the technology I'd been complaining about. By then it was too late; the tech world had passed him by.
Startups are hard. Use all the resources you have available, including the people who challenge you.
If you hire the right people, empower and listen to them they will be the source of feedback you speak about. The problem there seems to have been someone not humble enough to listen to anyone. There's nothing magical about a cofounder. Imagine two guys like your PhD.
One of the toughest things to do as an entrepreneur is to let go. It's all too easy to want to own every corner of your business and micromanage it all. And that's the easiest way to torpedo a business. Your job as a founder is to eventually surround yourself with people smarter and more tuned-in than you and hand them control of different aspects of the business. People care and fight for their beliefs when they feel responsible for something. If an entrepreneur creates an "It's my business; My decisions" atmosphere you'll get the kinds of reponses you quoted and nobody will care enough to offer constructive feedback.
Companies can be launched and taken to "flight altitude" by experienced solo founders. They generally cannot survive if said founder does not divest responsibility to build a fully functioning organization with smart and dedicated people.
If you take a single 18 to 25 year old "kids" with no business experience whatsoever and a life experience mostly devoid of struggle I'd be the probability of failure is absolutely huge. Entrepreneurship can test you in incredible ways. It can take you to the deepest and darkest moments of your life. And, if you are alone and are not "built" for it you will crumble.
Anyone with a good amount of business experience has a far greater probability of success if only because they've done it before and understand the game. You can hire people for the other functions that need to be performed.
I guess my point is that a co-founder is not some kind of a magic pill that will auto-magically make things better. Teaming up with someone with limited or no business experience and you hardly know is a formula for disaster. If both of you are newbies and you have some external coaching (YC) then, yes, things could be better.
I had a situation with someone who wanted to partner-up for a mobile app. I flat-out refused to partner (in the sense of company co-ownership). We put together a revenue-sharing agreement (50-50 was fine for this case). Control and all business decisions remained with me. I would eventually learn this was a great decision when this person went off the rails half-way through development.
It sounds like you have solid business experience. Don't buy into the SCV mantra of having to have a co-founder. Do it your way. Now, if you have to play on their turf then it's their rules. Outside that, there's no reason you couldn't be successful. Not one.
BTW, I don't buy YC/SCV statistics because they do not include the millions of solo-founder businesses that are launched every year. There's everything from lunch truck operators to restaurants, web design shops and tech companies. I am going to go out on a limb and say that if you looked at that data you might see that solo founders have a far greater probability of success than the SCV crowd mantra paints.
Again, if you are taking business virgins out of college to start businesses, yes, absolutely, get two, four or six of them because they are very likely to commit business seppuku if on their own. Also, VC's need insurance if they are going to make an investment. Multiple green founders is safer than one green founder.
Here's an example of what I am talking about (and it looks like no VC money):
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/01/24/after-her...