Dave Ramsey has a famous quote: "The only ship that won't sail is a partnership" (source). I believe the context is in regards to two friends starting a business together. I recently heard this together and wondered how many succesful startups were partnerships.

I did a quick search on CrunchBase for startups that were acquired for over 1 million dollars since January 2010. The results show 12 out of 20 startups were partnerships. I cannot tell how many were friends prior to the forming of the company. This does not show me any startups went IPO either.

List of startups that were partnerships:

• Instagram
• Rapportive
• adGrok
• Mobile Theory
• Screaming Daily Deals
• Socialcam
• condaptive
• LovingEco
• seatme
• Pulse
• carbyn
• Crashlytics
• BrightNest

I would like to look back 10 years, but there is no way to filter the CrunchBase search for partnerships. I may spend some more time compiling a database. I am also curious as to the division of labor amongst the co-founders. I think partnerships have the potential for more problems when two or more of the co-founders have the same skillset.