The More, The Merrier: Rise of Multiple Co-founders In Startups With the mushrooming of startups, we have witnessed a new version of saying; 'Too many cooks make a lavish and rich buffet.'

By Samiksha Jain

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"Too many cooks spoil the broth' -- I am sure you must have heard this several times. But change is the name of the startup game. The concept of having more than one founder in a startup to lead is a fast emerging concept.

With the mushrooming of startups, we have witnessed a new version of this saying; "Too many cooks make a lavish and rich buffet.' There has always been a debate on the topic as to how many co-founders should a company have. Some prefer to go solo while some prefer to work in groups of two or three.

If we witness the recent trend, startups in today's time are run by multiple founders. Be it friends, cousins or family members, multiple founders come together for one common goal to increases their success rate of the business model with the acumen of three entrepreneurs put together.

"Entrepreneurial journeys, especially in the early days can be extremely difficult and lonely. And it helps a lot to have like-minded and equally passionate co-founders whom you can build the company together with. Also, a co-founding team which has complimentary skill sets and experiences are far better-rounded and has a higher likelihood of succeeding compared to a single founder," said Varun Khaitan, Co-founder, UrbanClap, an app-based service marketplace that connects customers to service professionals.

Multiple co-founders bring a diverse set of skills and expertise. When it comes to initial investment, which would be happier to invest in an idea other than the founder.

If there are multiple founders on board, then not only the bar of investment raises but also the skill set and experience of various people come on board. There are many scenarios wherein the multiple founders have played their role and helped the startup reach the peak of success.

"It's easier to find problems and reasons of not doing something but if you have equally invested founders they pull up others and find solutions to things. Having said that I recommend complimentary skills and not creating a founder team basis friendship and flatmates only. Investors also support this idea as there is fatigue, low points, and tapering after scale, where the multi-founder system can act of pushing each other for scale," said Vipin Pathak, Co-Founder, Care24, a provider of 24 hour health care services at your doorstep.

Startups like Urbanclap, Modspace.in, Peppertap, care24 are few of the many startups which are run by multiple founders. While Urbanclap, Care24 and Aasaanjobs are run by 3 founders, Modspace.in, a Gurgaon based online furniture company is run by a group of 4 serial entrepreneurs and PepperTap is run by 2 founders.

A startup is like a child to the founders. Priya Sachdev Founder of RockNShop, an elite online marketplace which brings premium to luxury shopping to the doorstep said, "It is very important to have more than one founder in a startup, especially; when both partners have same vision and passion for one common idea. When you share similar emotions for the idea and have alike dreams and visions surrounding the same, it's no longer a mere product but your child and the way one nurtures one's child, the same way you develop, you nurture, your idea or product.

On the same lines, Modspace's co-founder Jatin Paul said, "With multiple founders, there is a lot of brainstorming and views that are evaluated before executing strategies. We brainstorm together and come up with solutions for problems from different perspectives which help us to determine the best possible direction. This brings viewpoints to the table that may never have occurred to a single founder."

" As a startup begins to scale up its operations, and amount of activities conducted and burden of the work increases, multiple co-founders who have had more exposure to the market and the way in which their business model works, are able to assume ownership of several projects at once, even though it might not be their core expertise, until specialized people have been hired," said Dinesh Goel, Co-Founder & CEO, Aasaanjobs.

Samiksha Jain

Former Staff, Entrepreneur.com

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