The Stigma of Solo Founders

As an indie hacker, most startup rules doesn't apply to me. I'm neither trying to appease to an accelerator, VC or any sort of funds. My goal is profit, not fund raising. I don't hear of stigma's of sole proprietorship or entrepreneur. I wonder if it's the word "founder" I think I'm going to refrain from referring myself as one. I'm just going to call myself a small business owner.

The number you quote by itself means nothing. What's the percentage of startups with a solo-founder? And most importantly, what's the failure rate of startups with solo-founders?

I see no-stigma on solo-founders. We have to remember that Y-combinator, like other accelerators, defines startups as companies with the ability to grow fast and reaching $100+ million in revenue. They have the data that supports their preference for 2+ founders.

If you want to start a side-project or a small-medium business, I would argue that listening to Y combinator and investors not only is useless, it can be counterproductive, because, while some rules are the same, most are radically different.

I read other comments talking about skills like they are the main problem. Frankly, I suppose that they never started a business, because skills are seldom the main problem. The major problems are psychological and range from simple fear of failure/rejection, lack of consistency and motivation to "founder's depression".

I have started a couple of small businesses as a solo-founder and I always encountered psychological issues. I am sure that in VC backed startups you will encounter a lot more of them, considering the fact that you have higher expectations, the absolute need to meet certain targets, the fact that most often than not you are burning cash and so on.

In those cases, having someone to share the burden is obviously an immense help. Add to this the cited "bus factor" and you can easily understand why two founders are better than one.

I don’t really believe there is a significant stigma against being a solo founder - success is success, whether you do it alone or with others.

That said I believe a team is almost always better. I have a limited set of skills that my cofounder complements excellently.

With ambition, ideas, and hard work, however, anything can be created in any manner. Nothing is really stopping you!

Just thought of this - Satoshi Nakamoto started/founded Bitcoin by himself.

He didn't do it all by himself though, as the teamwork and contribution of the Cypherpunks were instrumental to Bitcoins development and success, but he coded the original source code and wrote the whitepaper himself so maybe we can learn something from this.

You can start something on your own then team up as necessary.

Naval Ravikant tweeted about Bitcoin - calling it the most valuable Startup of the decade. $200 Billion Market Cap so it's doing pretty good.

1. I think co-founders are more attractive to investors because it reduces the bus factor, so for example if a solo founder gets hit by a bus that could be the end of that business there & then.
2. Personally I want to be a solo founder because I have enough knowledge to build out a safe starting point for my idea, and for the bits I need help with I know who to ask for help.

Hi David,

Where'd you get that data point?

For your second question. I'm a technical person who has an MBA. So it doesn't really make sense for me I have the skill sets to start something on both sides (maker/manager). If I didn't have half of the equation (say no experience with running a business or technical chops) then a cofounder makes sense. Otherwise, I can hire out specific needs I have as they come up, or offset certain aspects as I grow.

~ Bryan

I'm a solo founder ... here's the way I look at it.

1. If I could clone myself and give that guy 50% of my equity I would do it in a heartbeat.

2. I'm aware that one of the major reasons for failure is founder disagreement.

... so what I'm doing to mitigate this is:

• partner with other startup founders and having weekly meetings with them. This helps them get a pseudo co-founder and I gain one too.

• network as much as possible. Try to branch out... hopefully I find a co-founder out of this.

I have tried and failed at both :-) my personal experience:

Co-founding:

• Good dynamics can pull you out of rabbit holes, increase velocity, and lead to great ideas
• Bad dynamics can lead you into rabbit holes, stop all progress, and lead to company demise
• Generally, awesome if you love the team and the team loves each other + complement each other skillset wise; terrible if you aren't aligned, don't work well together, or don't like each other.

Solo-founding:

• Requires more self-discipline to avoid "zombie mode"
• Your weaknesses become your company's weaknesses; can't be softened by co-founder strengths

For smaller businesses, I think it’s worth considering the size/growth of the target market and the nature of the problem that you want to solve. To support two people, you need twice as much revenue. Will teaming up make you twice as efficient or more? Will you be able to go twice as fast? In that case it makes a lot of sense to bring someone onboard.

But let’s say you want to start a hot dog stand on the street corner. That could be a good one man gig, but totally unviable with two other co-founders. Only when you know that people are willing to pay premium for your hot fogs it might make sense to bring more people in to scale the operation.

What would the co-founder have to be able to do so that together you could move at more than double the speed?

The main benefit for me is having a friend to see me through tough times, to do the hard things when I couldn't.

I've let more than one business die because I didn't have someone to pick up the slack when I was going through a tough time (like a divorce).

Everyone goes through tough times - family, relationships, illness, mental health, money - and that makes us pare back a lot of things in life.

If you survive through those, then either you're uncommonly resilient, or the thing that survives made the cut (and other things didn't), or the support of others around you made up for not having a co-founder (or something else...?)

But anyway. Here's to other people!

(Note: I'm still solo... I just like flying solo, but I recognise the benefits of doing otherwise.)

What I know for sure (from experience) is it is better to be solo than have a wrong cofounder. Co-founding is such a major decision and yet many young entrepreneurs try to take this decision in haste just to look good to investors.

Having good co-founders is also amazing so I definitely recommend it but it's better if the process is very organic as opposed to just finding a co-founder for the sake of it.

I have also seen how many entrepreneurs start out solo but in the process of building the company find someone who gels very well. I am surprised that going solo vs with a co-founder is always posed as a static decision. I think it's something that can change before the cap table is significantly diluted.

1. Support and rounding out each other's shortages in skills & knowledge.

2. Non-Hyper-Growth Target, not looking for a seed round or financing, not a startup. Idk it's hard to say if I do find people that I think we can produce a lot more as a co-founding team or we are aiming to solve a big problem then I believe it is wiser to have co-founders but I doubt this is something you can decide based off data.

Again, the informed intuitive decision will probably serve you best.

What did Steve Jobs do? Start with Woz, he had the fortune to connect to Markkula (1st CEO) and Mckenna but he became the solo leader and later worked with Johnny Ive as a core decision marker. Although, Apple is an outlier case so I would only try and learn and see how my own situation plays out.

Idk why I mentioned Steve Jobs here, but I always find watching any of his videos really help with my mindset, execution, and approach regarding entrepreneurial execution.