This one is probably related to the well known property of human short term memory which states that we can remember about 7 plus or minus one things. This is the reason that phone numbers are seven digits for example.
This article could be a chapter in the book How to Lie with Statistics.
It is clearly a biased sample, listing only "successful" companies but not the much larger set of unsuccessful ones. The "exception" of Excite thrown in with 6 founders, IMO makes the author's intentions (conscious or unconscious) clear since one would expect some argument about whether Excite was really a success in the end.
Then there is the question of what constitutes a founder. This isn't always so easy to define. How many people founded IBM?
Despite Thomas Watson being listed as the "founder" of IBM, it is hard to even answer this question since IBM was formed out of the merger of three companies before it was even called IBM. (http://www.answers.com/topic/history-of-ibm)
Several responders pointed out correctly that the number of potential communications channels rises as the number of founders increases. And while that's clearly true, it is also true that more founders means more mouths to feed early in the company's development. And to run any business you need to learn to manage communication amongst your team.
Finally, one has to be careful not to confuse correlation with causation. Just because Microsoft was founded by two people, doesn't mean that was the primary reason for their success. It might also have had something to do with who the two people were after all. ;)
Thanks for the information and links. My background is in video and image processing, well originally multiple target tracking, sensor management, and sensor fusion, but now I work in biometrics and video analytics. Understood about processing the information into a graph.
Your point about Google raises one of the obvious questions about this company... if Google is doing leading edge research in this field it seems unlikely they need to buy a "video search destination" site employing lesser technologies, that is unless it gets really really big (i.e. YouTube). They might be interested in some deep technology, but my impression from the reading I've done and the links you've posted is that Blinkx is using standard well known techniques to achieve their results.
FWIW: I was applying Markov modeling to areas such as mission planning and modeling integrated air defense networks back almost twenty years ago now. We didn't call them HMMs, but there were some very similar ideas employed.
The first question I'd have is how fast they can parse video. The second is how much it costs to do it.
It seems you would have to be able to do recognition much faster than real-time for a realistic web video search capability (see for example http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=599600) and you would certainly need a lot of hardware to do this at scale for millions of video clips.
See also: http://www.newmediamusings.com/blog/2005/09/blinkx_a_citize.html
Many NDAs require the disclosing party to describe, list, or specify the confidential items disclosed. But often I find when very early stage inventors ask people to sign NDAs they often fail to specify what is disclosed even though their agreements require it. If you ever have to enforce an NDA, trying to argue that the entire conversation was confidential is much harder than simply producing the list of disclosures.
Also, I've never asked an investor to sign an NDA. Asking someone to sign an NDA indicates a lack of trust. IMO if you don't trust the people you are talking to you probably shouldn't be talking to them at all.
Recently I've been asked to sign NDAs as part of employment interviews. This seems to have almost become standard practice now. I don't really think this is a great idea, and I often won't take an interview that requires an NDA. But sometimes if I am certain that I won't be developing my own ideas in the field I'll sign one. Inevitably I find that these employment related NDAs are the most frivolous, silly, and irrelevant ones I sign. YMMV.
In my experience the acquiring company will require an NDA since as a public company they would not want early acquisition discussions disclosed. I've only done one such transaction but I understand this requirement is typical.
The company to be acquired also wants to have an NDA in this case since in the event that the acquisition does not proceed you don't want your negotiating position revealed to other potential acquirers before you have chance to even negotiate with them.
I think this advice is somewhat misguided. I'm currently on my seventh start up. I started two previously myself with my own money, but my current employer is VC and angel backed. (I am the chief scientist) Relying only on your own resources such as credit card debt or a second mortgage on your home can be a very risky proposition.
Not just because you might lose your investment, but because by using your own money you are creating a situation of immense pressure. The risk of losing your home might lead one to make some bad decisions regarding the business. You have o be very careful here.
My second self funded company eventually did take about $100,000 in angel money. But we started with only $50,000 of the two founders own money and we operated the business for four years with no other investment. We eventually sold it to a public software company for $2 million dollars. This might seem like a pretty decent investment, but at the time (mid 90s) it failed to attract the buzz that seems to feed VC investments.
It also depends on how much capital you really need. Typically entrepreneurs underestimate this, but of course it is also possible to fool yourself the other way. You have to be very realistic about this to make the right decisions. My current venture requires us to installhardware in our customers' facilities, so it is somewhat capital intensive. Only someone who was very wealthy could self fund such an enterprise.
In the end VC money spends the same as any other money, so deciding where you get your funds should be a business decision similar to deciding who to hire or what product to develop. You should interview your investors as they interview you. But few entrepreneurs do this. They act desperate, and this often becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
On another note, in my experience, entrepreneurs shouldn't expect most VCs to deliver anything more than money. Of course they all tell you about the benefits of their strategic connections and so on, but in my experience it is very rare that these bear fruit. One exception would be a venture fund targeting the specific industry you are developing your product for. These funds often do have real valuable connections to bring to bear and can help in ways that vanilla VCs can't.
I think this advice is somewhat misguided. I'm currently on my seventh start up. I started two previously myself with my own money, but my current employer is VC and angel backed. (I am the chief scientist) Relying only on your own resources such as credit card debt or a second mortgage on your home can be a very risky proposition.
Not just because you might lose your investment, but because by using your own money you are creating a situation of immense pressure. The risk of losing your home might lead one to make some bad decisions regarding the business. You have o be very careful here.
My second self funded company eventually did take about $100,000 in angel money. But we started with only $50,000 of the two founders own money and we operated the business for four years with no other investment. We eventually sold it to a public software company for $2 million dollars. This might seem like a pretty decent investment, but at the time (mid 90s) it failed to attract the buzz that seems to feed VC investments.
It also depends on how much capital you really need. Typically entrepreneurs underestimate this, but of course it is also possible to fool yourself the other way. You have to be very realistic about this to make the right decisions. My current venture requires us to installhardware in our customers' facilities, so it is somewhat capital intensive. Only someone who was very wealthy could self fund such an enterprise.
In the end VC money spends the same as any other money, so deciding where you get your funds should be a business decision similar to deciding who to hire or what product to develop. You should interview your investors as they interview you. But few entrepreneurs do this. They act desperate, and this often becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
On another note, in my experience, entrepreneurs shouldn't expect most VCs to deliver anything more than money. Of course they all tell you about the benefits of their strategic connections and so on, but in my experience it is very rare that these bear fruit. One exception would be a venture fund targeting the specific industry you are developing your product for. These funds often do have real valuable connections to bring to bear and can help in ways that vanilla VCs can't.