You’ve got a great idea (or what you at least think is a great idea), but you don’t have a co-founder or a full founder team to help develop that idea.  Not an uncommon problem — and something that is very important.  Researchers have found that one of the key factors identifiable to success in raising funds is the “connectedness” of your founder team — those founder teams with lots of connections tend to be more successful in raising venture capital.   That’s why you are looking — finding a co-founder matters and building a business in isolation is oftentimes much more difficult.

So, then where do start your search?  Fortunately (or unfortunately) a large number of founders will find one another through current work, social or academic circles.  This means that you may be able to identify people you already know or have met — and the trick is simply convincing them to join your team.  On the other hand, if you’ve pitched your idea to you entire social circle, finding someone you’ll work well with and trust from the outside could be a challenge.

The research of Chuck Eesley at MIT focused on founding teams to identify where founders had met one another. Eesley’s research looked into founding teams from recent graduates (less than five years following graduation) and established alumni (more than five years following graduation).

Among founding teams of recent graduates that had formed companies since 2000:

• approximately 30% of the founding teams grew out of their MIT research,
• 20% grew out of work relationships, 20% from extracurricular activities, and
• 30% from social activities.

For founding teams of established alumni that had formed companies since 2000, a larger number of founding teams grew out of work relationships. For these teams:

• less than 15% grew out of MIT research,
• 40% grew out of work relationships,
• 40% from social activities, and
• less than 5% from extracurricular activities.

As graduates advance in their careers, a greater number of founding teams will grow out of work and social relationships, while for recent graduates more startup teams will be formed based on prior research and extracurricular activity relationships.

In many cases, a founding team will grow out of personal relationships or a working relationship (for example, Paul Allen and Bill Gates of Microsoft, who became friends in high school in Seattle, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, who met as Stanford University graduate students). In those cases, you may have a self-contained team in place ready to begin efforts to develop the organization. You may desire to add additional talent to your founding team to round out the relevant talents and skills of the founders; you will need to closely evaluate the current needs you’ll have during the formation and early stage funding phases of the organization.

In other situations where you do not have a readily identified co-founder (for example, Steve Jobs convinced an initially skeptical Steve Wozniak to join him after Jobs had proposed selling a computer as a fully assembled P.C. board), you may need to begin searching your social network to find additional key members to join you.

As you begin to consider how to form a team of founders for this new business venture, you should put yourself into the seat of a potential investor. What are they going to want from a two to five person team to tackle the problem you’ve signed up to tackle? Obviously, they are not expecting you to address every area of this challenge, but what is the key talent that needs to be at the table?

Sometimes founders have likened the early experience with their co-founders to a marriage. After all, remember that when forming a team you will need to be able to work well with these individuals in an intense environment.