I think the biggest trouble for startup is the power struggle between co-founders. Have seen a startup fail before due to this. That’s why I run a one man show – employees, not co-founders.

A one man show with one CEO and only employees is not a safe company. When all your C-suite and VPs are employees, they may realize one day they can get rid of mister CEO and found together their own company, and leave CEO alone and naked. It can happen really quickly with talented people. Having founders at key positions limits dramatically this risk.

Working with people is generally difficult, regardless of how much absolute power your peers have.

I’ve seen a heavily funded startup depend almost entirely on use of absolute power. They’ve burned through millions of dollars in funding to build a product because of it. Rather than develop relationships and understand, they fire.

This is a story of my life.

I actually disagree with most of the comments here. I have tried to create and work in teams, just because some of the best-known folks in the industry such as Paul Graham have said that you should have cofounders. However, my experience shows that they don’t necessarily need to be cofounders.

The important aspect is to work in a team. Each person in the team needs to bring a lot of value to the table. Additionally, they need to be interested in making the company successful. Each team member gets motivated in a very different way, and we need to do whatever it takes to motivate them. From my experience, working with developers in India, they get motivated by cash payments. So, you can hire the best talent if you’re willing to pay the most cash. Needless to say, this does not work in Silicon Valley. In Silicon Valley, people like to get CEO/CTO titles, which is irrelevant and has no correlation in the value they bring to the company.

So, you need to work in a team, however, the title of the team members to matter. They need to as far as they are bringing a lot of value to the table, I think it’s all okay. The title of the race team members does not really matter.

I have seen the best organizations been created by one single person, but they allow additional people to contribute to the company. In fact, I think the best work can be done by one single person alone in silence.

Co-founders fighting is definitely a problem, but so is a control freak one man show which has lost touch with reality.

Plus it really helps to have someone not on the same bio-rhythm as you – it means they hopefully will be feeling up when you’re having a bad day/week/month and will cheer you up, and vice versa