The 3 ingredients to a successfull startup. When should you add co-founders to the mix?

"People who don't know how to sail won't be able to get the most thoroughly designed ship in the world out of the dock. On the other hand, the best crew in the world could sail a makeshift boat anywhere in the world"

--Curt Shilling, MLB Veteran and Entrepreneur

So we've been discussing in a class called Founder's Dilmena several cases of entrepreneurs who started businesses at different times in their lives. We saw examples of 3 types of individuals:

1) Humphrey Chen: who wanted to start a business right out of the MBA program and did not have much experience
2) Barry Nalls: who had 25 years of experience in several different functions of one big company
3) Curt Shilling: who was a MLB player and wanted to start a company in the gaming space without any experience (but he had lots of money and some contacts).

These 3 examples sparked a conversation with a classmate (Fabio Katayama HBS MBA '10) and we designed a framework describing what founder(s) need to have in order to be successful.

It works like this: As a new entrepreneur, one must have at least 1 of these 3 characteristics in order to bring on new hires as opposed to co-founders. I would consider these the 3 ingredients required in an entrepreneurial success recipe; the more you or your team has, the better your chances.

A) Money - having accumulated a large sum and be willing to lay it down
B) Entrepreneurial Skills - having started other businesses or knowing sales, product management, etc.
C) Domain Expertise - having worked in the industry and established a network

Now let's take a couple of cases and test them against this framework:

1) Humphrey Chen (ConneXus): Had none of the 3 himself. Therefore, picked up a co-founder who only had some tech experience. His startup did not do so well.
2) Barry Nalls (MASERGY): Had lots of skills and domain expertise. He did really well!
3) Curt Shilling (38 Studios): Had lots of money a some domain expertise (contacts) - but no enrtrepreurial skills. Was able to recruit a team, and is doing really well!
4) Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Apple): Both had none of the 3. Therefore, they had to co-found with Ron Wayne (who soon quit) and then Mike Markula (a successfull executive at intel who received equal equity stake to Jobs and Wozniak; Mike had the money and domain expertise)
5) Vivek Khuller (Smartix): Had none of the three and dissolved the company after 1 year.

Thus, for now, I will conclude that the more of these 3 RESOURCES you have as a sole founder or founding team, the higher the likelihood that you can start a business successfully. However, I'd like to end this post with something a little more inspirational, since I don't think one should only start when he or she has lots of all 3 ingredients. If you absolutely have the itch to start something, I guess sometimes you just have to go for it.

"Life is too short to work on something you don't care about"
-- Jen MacLean, 38 Studios CEO