A Two Person Partnership is Better For Internet Startups than one

[DeluxeNames]

Ok, I've been doing a lot of thinking about successful and unsuccessful internet/tech startups and I've concluded that a two person partnership is the better than one guy doing it alone.

From observing successful internet companies, it seems that two partners working together is often more successful than someone alone: Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube.com, Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google.com, Filo and Jerry Yang of Yahoo.com, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs of Apple.com, Sandy Lerner and Leonard Bosack of Cisco Systems, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard of Hewlett-Packard. (tell me if there's some obvious partnerships I've missed here.)

What are the reasons that partnerships are better? My guess is that they are more rewarding mentally because the partners have moral support, feedback and don't experience the same sense of lonelyness that a lone entrepreneur does. Also, the partners can motivate each other when one gets sluggish or down.

I think partnerhsip are great becuase my attitude is, "Half of something is better than all of nothing."

What's your take? Do you agree or disagree that patnerships are better for startups?

[tony]

i think they help as you have 2 peoples expertise on 1 project, you also get 2 people motivated to make something work and to be the best. But you have to find that person 1st which can sometie sbe harder than atually getting a site up and running.

[xPureNLx]

Very true, a partner can correct and advice the other one, so basically you have 2 "minds in one project", plús: every person has its own abilities and knowledge.

Nice subject Deluxe =)

- xPureNLx

[DeluxeNames]

i think they help as you have 2 peoples expertise on 1 project, you also get 2 people motivated to make something work and to be the best. But you have to find that person 1st which can sometie sbe harder than atually getting a site up and running.

Good point Tony and xLPure, I hadn't thought of that, the most important reason for partnerships: Complimenting/different areas of expertise. In your business, maybe one is a designer and the other is a coder.

Have any of you had good and bad experiences with partnerships?

[xPureNLx]

Yes, when the coder one mostly thinks he/she leads the project (my experience). When leading a project, you should start with some basics and very, very much communication. I've experienced many IT-related employees don't do basics and communications (no offense all ^^).

- xPureNLx