Every entrepreneur that starts a business has visions on making it big, achieving success, and making profits. However, so few actually attain success that a recent study conducted by Ron Conway’s firm, SV Angel, attempted to predict entrepreneurial success.
Mr. Conway’s firm which invests relatively small amounts in early stage companies, gathered responses from 300 founders to try to discover which start up businesses will make it. It’s not an exact science, but it seems young co-founders doing their second startup tend to produce better results than older, sole founders starting their first company.
The research showed three interesting points:
1. Repeat founders tend to achieve greater success the second time doing a startup. This makes sense, because we often learn from our mistakes (or at least we should).
2. Younger entrepreneurs (under 30) tend to have greater success than older ones. This would support the idea that risk taking is required to be a successful entrepreneur and younger business owners have a greater tolerance for risk (or have less to lose and tend to be more aggressive).
3. Co-founders have greater success than sole founders. This is probably the most significant piece of information. The results are astounding. Co-founders tend to have a success rate that is over ten times that of sole founders. This would strongly support the importance that two heads are better than one.
