Last week, we talked about co-founder disputes - how to handle equity splits, what to do when things go sideways, and how to protect yourself when the relationship breaks.

But there's a simpler fix not everyone considers: don't have a co-founder at all.

I know. That's heresy in most VC circles. The conventional wisdom is that solo founding is startup mistake number one. Paul Graham literally wrote that in 2006. YC has spent two decades preaching the co-founder gospel - find your technical partner, split the equity, divide and conquer the world.

I've seen this narrative play out. The data tells a more complicated story.

Ali Tamaseb studied over 1,100 US-based unicorns. One in five was built by a single founder. That’s 20%.

And when Ilya Strebulaev at Stanford ran the numbers on net exit value per co-founder across those same unicorns, solo founders came out on top. $2.1 billion in expected net exit value per founder, compared to $1.4 billion for duos. Each additional co-founder reduces that number by about 32%.

There is nuance. Solo founders are underrepresented relative to their share of the overall startup population. They're a harder path. Fewer people attempt it, and a smaller percentage of those who do make it to unicorn status compared to two or three-founder teams.

But the ones who do capture more with a higher success rate. As a solo founder, if you do win, you win more.

You don’t have to worry about an equity split or a co-founder breakup if you have no co-founder. The pie is yours.

I know what you’re probably thinking: Why haven’t there been more solo founders in the past?

The reason solo founding has always been hard is capacity. One person can only do so much. You need someone to write code while you're selling. Someone to handle operations while you're fundraising. That constraint is being dismantled by AI.

Jared Friedman at YC said: what used to take five engineers now takes one engineer with AI tools. A quarter of W25 YC startups had codebases that were 95% AI-generated. The minimum viable team is shrinking in real time.

When I look at the cost structure, it's hard to argue against solo founding. A traditional ten-person team runs $80–120K a month fully loaded. A solo founder running AI agents spends $300–500. Think about that for a second.

Carta tracked it in the numbers. Solo-founded startups went from 23.7% of new companies in 2019 to 36.3% in the first half of 2025. The market is voting.

Sam Altman has a betting pool among tech CEOs on when the first one-person billion-dollar company will appear. Dario Amodei put a timeline on it: 2026, with 70–80% confidence. The categories he named (developer tools, proprietary trading, automated customer service) all share something in common. They're software businesses where judgment and distribution are more important than headcount.

AI raised the floor on what one person can build. This means the differentiation has moved more towards taste, judgment, and who you're building for. Things you don't really need a co-founder for.

I’m not saying co-founders are wrong. Two-founder teams still show strong execution metrics. The right partner can compound what you build. In addition to the psychological support of having someone to spar with and count on. For certain businesses, such as enterprise sales, regulated industries, and physical supply chains… You probably need one.

But the blanket assumption that solo founding is a liability? That's an artifact of an older era. The tools and cost structure have changed. The data on outcomes have always been more favorable than the narrative suggested.

The 20% of unicorns built by one person never waited for permission to build.

At Redbud, we back founders who are building a lot with a little. Wherever you are, however you’re structured. We want to hear from you. Pitch us today.