We are planning to write a series of posts titled “Startup 101″. In this series, we will offer several tips for the budding/aspiring entrepreneurs, based on our own experiences and also from the lessons learned from various industry leaders.

In this first post, I am going to discuss the topic of partners/co-founders. Even though this is not the first tip for any budding entrepreneur, this is one of the issues you will confront in the initial stages of your startup experience. The mantra is never start alone, while doing a startup.

Let us now examine some of the issues you will face when you do startups alone. The first and foremost problem is that you will not know whether your idea is worth pursuing. You won’t have anyone to discuss the pros and cons of doing a startup with your idea. Well, it is quite possible to talk to friends and business leaders about it. But you face the risk of a smarter person taking up your idea and getting a jump start in the business. In certain cases, you can discuss with people by asking them to sign a non disclosure agreement (NDA). Even this is fraught with some risks. Also the person who signs the NDA need not approach the idea with the same spirit you have for the idea and he/she might miss out some of the positive aspects of your idea. Having cofounders will help you overcoming this difficulty. If you have one or more cofounders, you can take the first step with a better perspective than what you can do alone.

Even if you manage to start on your own, there are many practical difficulties on the way which you could easily overcome with the help of one or more cofounders. To quote Paul Graham, the startup guru, the person who tries a single person startup will find the moral weight of starting a company too hard to bear. Sometimes wearing too many hats can block your eyes on some crucial aspect of the startup dynamics. There is an added disadvantage of the need to bear the full financial burden of a startup. This becomes much more difficult to bear if you are going to bootstrap your startup.

Even if you manage to get it going without cofounders, there will be moments in your startup journey where you will feel the need for someone to share either the joys or pains that are part of your experience. There may be moments where you may want to discuss with someone before taking a crucial decision. Suppose if something goes wrong and you are depressed, you may need someone to pump you up or offer a solution from another perspective. Even though friends and family members can help you when you are down, there is not much they can do regarding the problems you face in your startup. There is also a high risk of faster burnout when you venture alone.

You could overcome a big chunk of the above mentioned issues if you start your venture along with few extra founders. You may have to share your success with them but you will also share your failures with them. Especially, the failures are easy to manage when you fail as a group than as an individual. It will help you get back into the game faster.

In this tip, we have seen the problems one might face when he/she goes alone doing a startup. In my next tip, I will talk about how one should go about finding the cofounder(s) for their startup.