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I think all this solo-founder talk is missing a key thing that even Ryan Carson acknowledges in his post. You can't do it alone forever. I think this may be pa

I think all this solo-founder talk is missing a key thing that even Ryan Carson acknowledges in his post. You can't do it alone forever. I think this may be part of the investment bias. The same reasons why you will eventually need to promote people to very high positions in the company, could be the reasoning behind starting with people in those positions, or having them in place by the time you go for funding and essentially making them founders at that point. Keep in mind, I'm a solo founder.

liquimoon 14y ago
That's what I mean. I hired a designer and an intern to work on my startup. I am not working alone. But then I don't have a cofounder. And this is being discriminated in the investor world. Why is that? Is it because it's harder to control from an investor's point of view? I actually think it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Like 001sky mentioned. The conventional wisdom is that you should have a cofounder in order to be successful. And it's really hard to break this once it's THE conventional wisdom. So single founders don't get investment, so they are less successful. Then it shows in the data...
- pedalpete 14y ago
  I don't read the data like that. What's missing in that data is how many solo founders there are compared to non-solo. I think you are assuming that their are an equal number of solo-founder companies as multi-founder companies, but I don't believe that is true. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that 80+% of companies that are looking for funding are multi-founder. If that is the case, then the odds of getting funded as a solo-founder are equal to the odds of a multi-founder company. However, we also need to consider how we qualify those companies which are likely to get funding or ready. Many solo-founder companies are not ready, but by the time they are ready, will possibly have added a co-founder. Either way, the advice I think should be just to keep doing what you're doing. If YOU think you need a co-founder to be active in the company, you get one, if not, you don't. Investment shouldn't come as a result of that decision, unless investors are thinking that you can't do it without a co-founder, and they might be right.

liquimoon 14y ago

That's what I mean. I hired a designer and an intern to work on my startup. I am not working alone. But then I don't have a cofounder. And this is being discriminated in the investor world. Why is that? Is it because it's harder to control from an investor's point of view? I actually think it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Like 001sky mentioned. The conventional wisdom is that you should have a cofounder in order to be successful. And it's really hard to break this once it's THE conventional wisdom. So single founders don't get investment, so they are less successful. Then it shows in the data...

pedalpete 14y ago
I don't read the data like that. What's missing in that data is how many solo founders there are compared to non-solo. I think you are assuming that their are an equal number of solo-founder companies as multi-founder companies, but I don't believe that is true. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that 80+% of companies that are looking for funding are multi-founder. If that is the case, then the odds of getting funded as a solo-founder are equal to the odds of a multi-founder company. However, we also need to consider how we qualify those companies which are likely to get funding or ready. Many solo-founder companies are not ready, but by the time they are ready, will possibly have added a co-founder. Either way, the advice I think should be just to keep doing what you're doing. If YOU think you need a co-founder to be active in the company, you get one, if not, you don't. Investment shouldn't come as a result of that decision, unless investors are thinking that you can't do it without a co-founder, and they might be right.