This is pretty bad article because it focuses on # of funded startups, not # of attempted startups. What if 99.999% of startups attempted were attempted by solo founders? It would make you expect that the # of funded startups should also tilt towards solo founders - if all other odds were even, you'd expect 99.999% of funded startups to be solo founders, and it would not mean much.
It doesn't matter which success metric is used, the point still stands. If you only measure the ratio of solo-founder companies that are successful, you haven't measured anything at all about how likely a solo-founder company is to succeed. We need to know how many of each type failed as well.
This is not scientifically sound without the full data, you are right. But I don't think that is the point. If you had all the data and parsed it.. and it told you that as a solo founder you had a 21% chance to exit, and as a group founder you had a 23% chance to exit.. so should you do a group founding as your next project despite not knowing anyone to found with?
I don't think it works like that. Some people naturally do better solo. Some people already have a group on a hot idea. I think you should go with what is working. What the point of this story is, in my mind, is to say "look - a lot of articles say solo founders are bad. Here is some data that it isn't that bad, and perhaps solo founding is a valid way to run a business"
