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Travis Howell, assistant professor of strategy at the The UCI Paul Merage School of Business, set out with colleagues to find an answer. Along with Chris Bingham and Bradley Hendricks of the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, Howell left no stone unturned. The results of their research are reported in the article, “Going Alone or Together? A Configurational Analysis of Solo Founding vs Co-founding,” forthcoming in Organization Science.

Lots of Opinions, Little Data

Is an entrepreneur better off going alone? “This was a question that I kept hearing from students and entrepreneurs I was consulting with regularly,” says Howell. “I tried looking online and while there are tons of discussions and Reddit threads out there with opinions, when it came to actual data there wasn’t much to go on.”

Finding the answer to this seemingly simple question proved more of a challenge than anyone expected.  “We started the project over five years ago,” says Howell, “and our paper is only being published now. It was a long process.

“We started off small, looking at data sets that were already collected. Because there wasn’t much out there, I spent a few years interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs, trying to determine what was working, what wasn’t, and why. We conducted over 120 interviews with people in incubators and accelerators—sometimes returning to talk with the same people multiple times to get the data we needed.”

Undermining Conventional Wisdom

Before starting his research, Howell was keenly aware of the conventional wisdom. “Everyone always assumes you need co-founders. This has become even more accepted in recent years, to the degree that accelerators and venture capitalists tend to have explicit policies saying they will not accept startups unless they have co-founders. Some startup gurus even say that the number one reason why startups fail is that they don’t have co-founders. So, in many cases you can’t go solo if you want to attract investors or participate in an accelerator program.”

The examples of the big unicorn startups—Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and others—back up the conventional wisdom. All of them were started by co-founders and not solo founders. But those examples may not always be the best ones to follow.

“Some research suggests that, on average, co-founders do perform better than solo founders,” says Howell. “But it doesn’t mean you always need co-founders. One of the reasons why I say this is that, when you look at startups, one of the many causes of failure is ‘co-founder drama.’ So, yes, it can be the reason you succeed, but it can also be the reason your startup fails. What’s more, there are several great examples of big companies such as Amazon, Dell and eBay, that were started by solo founders, so we know it can be done.”

Exposing the Solo-Founder Myth

Howell was surprised to discover that not all successful solo founders are strictly working alone. “Amazon [Jeff Bezos] and Dell Computer [Michael Dell] are examples of companies that many tout as successful solo-founded companies, but if we look deeper, we see that those founders benefitted greatly from co-creators—hidden figures behind the scenes that didn’t get as much of the credit, but certainly helped them start their company. These would be early employees, alliance partners, other organizations they partnered with and benefactors who helped the founder with no expectation of reciprocation.”

As Howell and his team soon discovered, these sorts of hidden benefactors were quite essential to the success of most so-called solo founders they interviewed. “One solo founder we talked with needed equipment and considered a co-founder to acquire it, but instead he found a friend whose business already had the equipment and allowed him to use it free of charge. We found several examples of these co-creators or benefactors in our research.”

Many higher-profile solo founders were also helped along the way. “Jeff Bezos, for example, may be praised as the founder of Amazon,” says Howell, “but a lot of us forget that he had parents who gave him thousands of dollars to start, and his now ex-wife was a huge contributor as well, and there were many others who helped him succeed where he could never have done so alone. So, these would be examples of co-creators to the business—but not traditional co-founders—who provide a significant amount of support to the solo founder in the startup phase.”

Never Alone

Now that the research is published, Howell is more confident about how best to answer the age-old question of whether an entrepreneur should strike out alone or find a partner. “The data shows us that no one ever really goes alone,” Howell says. “So, going solo is not really an option. You could go with co-founders, or you might find co-creators to help you along the way, but you never go alone. It just depends on who you go with.”

So, the real question seems to be, “Do you go with co-founders or do you go with co-creators?” As Howell’s research suggests, going with co-creators might be the better option. Especially if you’d like to retain the equity and control of your company without all the usual co-founder drama that typically sinks startups before they can get off the ground.

“If you truly do go alone or go with bad co-founders, there’s a very good chance your startup will fail,” says Howell. “But, if you find the right co-creators willing to help you, then your chances of success are greatly increased.”