End of the Co-Founder Era?

You might have seen that I launched the Solo Founders Podcast two months ago. We’ve gotten 1M views so far so it seems to be resonating.

Today, I publish our 8th episode and this time the roles were reversed. Instead of interviewing a solo founder, a solo founder (David from Fondo) interviewed me. It’s all about how I came to realize the co-founder era was ending and solo founding would become the default way to build companies.

We covered a lot of ground:

• Why the factory model of startups creates mediocre companies

• The logical fallacy that causes people to believe co-founded are “better” than solo-founded ones

• Why I’m investing $100k in 10 solo founders in the next 30 days via the Solo Founders Program.

• Why the median VC is a “dead” VC

• The bear and bull cases for solo founding

I think you’ll dig it.

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Watch/amplify on X

I spent the last seven years helping people find co-founders at ODF.

The results were spectacular: Over 1,000 startups started with a cumulative value beyond $10B.

I started ODF (with two co-founders!) because we believed people should be widening their search criteria for potential co-founders instead of only considering co-workers or friends. It turned out that we were right: expanding the pool of prospective co-founders led to more great companies getting started.

Then I noticed something: the biggest perceived constraint to start new companies was finding a co-founder. What if that was wrong? What if you didn’t need a co-founder to get started. Maybe you just needed to get going. If true, that would lead to many more successful companies.

This time last year I went all-in on Solo Founders. It wasn’t an impulsive decision. I had spent the last couple of years working closely with a handful of solo founders while also building ODF. That experience made me realize that solo founders might not need co-founders, but they benefited from not being alone.

Thanks again to David Philips (solo founder of Fondo) for interviewing me. Enjoy!

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