Support When a group of people starts a company, the founders usually serve as sources both of funding and of skills in marketing, management, and technical matters. ██ ██ ████████ ████ █ ██████ ██████████ ███ ████ ███████ ████████ ███████ ███ ██ ███████ ██ ██████████ ███████████ ███ █████████ ████████ ██████████ █████████ ███████ ██ ██████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ███████ ████ █████████ ███████ ██ ████████████
The argument concludes that a company founded by a group of people is more likely to succeed than a company founded by an individual. This is because groups of founders usually contribute funding, but also marketing, management, and technical skills. In contrast, it's unlikely that a single individual could provide enough funding and also adequate marketing, management, and technical skills.
The issue is, the argument offers no reason why non-founders couldn't make up for those areas where an individual founder falls short. If an individual founder is very skillful but has limited funds, why not just find an investor—or vice versa, with a well-off founder hiring outside talent? Because the argument doesn't give this explanation, it must assume that individual founders who rely on outside funding or skills are less likely to succeed.
Which one of the following ██ ██ ██████████ ████████ ██ ███ █████████
A new company ██ ████ ██████ ██ ███████ ██ █████ ████████ ██████ ███████████ ███████ ██ ███ ███████████ ███████ ███████ ████ ██ ████ ███████ ██████████ ████ █████ ████ ███████
(A) has two problems: it doesn't account for skills, and it doesn't put individual founders at a disadvantage. In fact, when a company is founded by an individual, that guarantees that all founding members will contribute equally. This gives an advantage to individually-founded companies.
Some founding members ██ ██████████ █████████ ███ ███████ ████ ███████ ███ ██████ ██ ██████████ ███████████ ██ █████████ ████████
(B) talks about "some founders," but doesn't say how likely founders are to have these skills, or whether these are individual or group founders. What (B) describes could be extremely rare and also doesn't differentiate between individuals and groups. Without these elements, (B) is not necessary to the argument, which talks about the general probability of success for individuals versus groups.
We can also test (B) using negation. Negating (B), we get "founding members of successful companies can never provide both funding and skills." This doesn't destroy the argument; if anything, negating (B) strengthens by eliminating the chance that individual founders can do it all.
New companies are ████ ██████ ██ ███████ ████ █████ ████████ ███ ███████ ████████ ███████ ███ ██████ ██ ██████████ ███████████ ███ █████████ █████████ ████ ██ ████ ████ ██████ ███████ ██ ██████ ████ ████████████
The argument fails to explain why individual founders can't just rely on non-founders for funding or skills, and (C) fills in that gap as a necessary assumption. If (C) was not true, and there was no difference for companies that relied on non-founders, then individual founders would have no disadvantage and the argument wouldn't make sense.
Founders of a ███ ███████ ███ ████ ██████ ███████ █████████ ███ ██████████ █████████ ████ █████████ ██████████
The issue with (D) is we don't know what skills are usually missing when individuals found a company. Individual founders are unlikely to come with all the skills and funding necessary, but it doesn't make a difference which particular skills they lack.
A new company ██ ████ ██████ ██ ███████ ██ ███ █████████ ███████ ███ ████ ███████ ██ ██████████ ███ █████████ ████ ██ ████ ████ ██████████ ██ █████████ ███████
The argument focuses on the skills offered by founders, but (E) just talks about experts. We don't know if these experts are founders or not, so (E) can't be necessary for the argument.
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