How to Raise as a Solo Founder: What Investors Look For

Solo founder fundraising is harder but very doable. Carta's December 2025 Solo Founders Report found solo-led companies were 30 percent of startups founded in 2024 yet received 14.7 percent of priced-round cash. Investors mostly worry about bandwidth, blind spots and key-person risk. Founders who address those directly, with a real team around them, tend to get a fairer hearing.

Definition: Solo founder fundraising is raising outside capital for a company with one founder, which usually means answering one extra question every investor carries into the room: who else is building this with you?

That question isn't a trap. It's a proxy.

Investors can't see the future, so they look for signals. A co-founder is one of the easiest signals to read: somebody talented looked at this idea up close and bet their career on it. Without that signal, you need others. This guide covers what the data shows, where investors genuinely disagree, and a step-by-step way to build the case. If you're still deciding whether to look for a partner at all, our guide on how to find a co-founder covers that decision.

What the data says about solo founder fundraising

Solo founding is growing fast. Getting funded as one is still harder.

More solo founders than ever. Carta's Solo Founders Report (December 2025) shows the share of new startups on its platform with a solo founder rose from 23.7 percent in 2019 to 36.3 percent in the first half of 2025. Carta's Founder Ownership Report 2026 (March 2026) puts the figure at about 36 percent of startups founded on Carta in 2025, up from 31 percent in 2024. Stripe's Atlas team reported in May 2026 that solo founders accounted for 63 percent of the C corporations formed through Atlas so far in the second quarter of 2026, an all-time high for that service.

A smaller share of the money. The same Carta report found solo-led companies were 30 percent of 2024 startups but took 14.7 percent of the cash raised in priced equity rounds that year. Carta's pre-seed funding guide gives a related cut: solo founders were 35 percent of companies incorporated in 2024 and 17 percent of companies that closed a venture round. And per the Founder Ownership Report, two-founder teams were the most common shape among startups that closed rounds on Carta in 2025, at 36 percent.

Note that the three Carta figures for 2024 (30, 31 and 35 percent) don't match. They come from different reports and likely different definitions and cutoffs, so treat them as a range rather than one number.

Older outcome data leans toward teams. First Round Capital's 10 Year Project (2015), which looked at its own portfolio, found teams with more than one founder outperformed solo founders by 163 percent and that solo founders' seed valuations were 25 percent lower. First Round was candid that the analysis was directional and not statistically rigorous. Stripe's 2026 data points the same way at the very top: by month 24, top-decile multifounder Atlas startups generated 53 percent more revenue than top-decile solo founders.

Our read of all this: the gap is real, and it describes averages. Your job is to make sure an investor isn't pricing you as the average.

Do VCs fund solo founders? What investors say

Yes, and some say so in writing. The more useful question is what they need to see first.

Y Combinator. YC's public FAQ answers the question head on: "We regularly accept solo founders." The same answer adds that YC still believes you're more likely to succeed with a co-founder, and it points solo applicants to YC's free Co-Founder Matching platform. So the door is open, with a stated preference.

Paul Graham. In "The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups" (October 2006), Graham ranked having a single founder first. His reasoning had three parts: it can suggest the founder couldn't persuade friends to join, it removes the colleague who talks you out of bad calls, and the low points can be so low that "few could bear them alone." It is twenty years old, and it still shapes how many seed investors think.

a16z speedrun. A June 2026 guest essay on a16z speedrun's newsletter, by Evan Armstrong, made the case for and against founding solo. It cites a16z general partner Andrew Chen framing a co-founder as a signal rather than a requirement: recruiting someone good is one early proof that the effort is serious. That framing is useful, because a signal can be supplied in other ways.

Where investors disagree about solo founders

This is a live debate, not a settled one.

The case that teams win. Graham's 2006 essay, First Round's portfolio data and YC's stated preference all point toward teams. The mechanism is intuitive: more hands, more skills, someone to argue with, and less risk that one person's burnout ends the company.

The case that solo can work as well or better. Jason Greenberg and Ethan Mollick's working paper "Sole Survivors" (SSRN, 2018) studied crowdfunded companies and found ventures started by solo founders survived longer than team-founded ones and generated more revenue than founder pairs. Stripe's 2026 data adds a twist: at the 99th percentile, bootstrapped solo founders came within 5 percent of bootstrapped multifounder startups on two-year revenue. And the a16z speedrun essay argues that AI tools shrink the skills gap that once made a co-founder necessary.

Both camps are looking at different samples. Venture-backed portfolios, crowdfunded products and Atlas incorporations are not the same population. In our view, the honest summary is that team structure matters less than what the structure is standing in for: skill coverage, judgment and resilience.

The four concerns behind investor hesitation

When an investor hesitates on a solo founder, it usually traces back to one of four worries. Naming them lets you answer each one with evidence.

Bandwidth. One person is building, selling, hiring and fundraising. The worry is that something important quietly stops while you raise.
Blind spots. Without a peer who can push back, bad decisions can travel further before anyone catches them.
Key-person risk. If you get sick, burn out or leave, there's no one to carry the company. That is the risk investors underwrite most directly.
Recruiting signal. If you can't attract a partner, can you attract the first ten employees? This is Andrew Chen's point in practical form.

Notice that none of these says "solo founders are worse." Each one is a question with an answer.

How to raise as a solo founder, step by step

Here's one way to build the case. It works best if you start a few months before you raise.

Decide whether you're solo by choice or by default. If a co-founder search is still open, say so plainly. If you've chosen to stay solo, have a short, specific reason ready, such as deep domain expertise plus a hiring plan for the missing skill.
Put a team around you before the raise. That can mean a first engineer or seller with meaningful equity, two or three advisors with real time commitments, and contractors who already ship work. Our guide to a startup advisory board covers how to recruit advisors who do more than lend a name.
Show proof of recruiting. A strong early hire who left a good job to join you answers the recruiting-signal worry better than any slide. Our guide to hiring your first employee walks through that search.
Reduce key-person risk on paper. Standard founder vesting, documented IP assignment, shared admin access to systems and a written operating cadence all help. Many solo founders accept vesting on their own shares at a priced round; our explainer on founder vesting and the 83(b) election covers how that works.
Bring traction that a team would be proud of. Progress per person is your strongest argument. If one founder got to paying customers, the bandwidth worry starts to look less like a risk and more like a strength.
Target investors who back solo founders. Look at portfolio pages and announcements for companies with one founder at your stage. Accelerators and angels often move first; our guide on who to pitch first compares those routes.
Run a tight process. Raising alone eats calendar time. A short, batched window protects the business from stalling while you pitch.

Step 6 is where most of the list-building time goes. You can do it by hand from portfolio pages and Form D filings, as our guide on how to find investors for your startup explains. If you'd rather start from a ranked list, the investor matching in 1752 Fundraising matches angels and VC firms to your deck, stage, sector and check size, with a confidence score on each match, so you can spend your limited hours on the investors most likely to engage.

How to answer "who else is building this?" in a pitch

The question will come up. Plan the answer like you'd plan a demo.

A good answer is short, specific and forward-looking. Here's a template to adapt:

"I'm the sole founder. I spent [X years] in [domain], which is why I could build [what you built] alone. [Name] joined in [month] as our first [role] from [company], and owns a meaningful equity stake. [Advisor] spends [time] a month on [specific area]. The next two hires are [role] and [role], funded by this round, and I've already met [number] candidates for the first one."

What makes that work: it names people, it shows recruiting already happened, and it turns the gap into a hiring plan the round pays for.

Your team slide should carry the same story. One column for you, one for the people already working with you (even part-time), and one for the open roles the money funds. Our guide to pitch deck structure covers where that slide sits in the deck.

Worked example: a late co-founder vs. a key first hire

Solo founders often ask whether to bring in a late co-founder or hire a senior first employee. The equity math is a big part of that choice. The numbers below are illustrative and simplified.

A founder holds 10,000,000 shares with a 1,000,000-share option pool. Then the company raises $1M on a post-money SAFE at a $10M cap (10 percent), followed by a seed round that sells 20 percent with no pool top-up.

Path	Founder after SAFE	Founder after seed	Second person after seed
Key hire: 165,000-share grant (1.5 percent)	About 81.8 percent	About 65.5 percent	About 1.1 percent
Late co-founder: 1,250,000 new shares (about 10.2 percent)	About 73.5 percent	About 58.8 percent	About 7.3 percent

The co-founder path costs the founder about 6.7 points by seed. It buys a second person with real ownership, which can ease all four investor worries at once. The key-hire path keeps more equity but leaves you as the only founder on the slide.

Neither is right in general. In our view, the question is whether the person would be a true co-owner of the outcome. If yes, the equity is often well spent. Our guide on how to split equity between co-founders covers how to size a late co-founder's stake.

"But wouldn't it be easier to just find a co-founder first?"

Sometimes, yes. A great co-founder answers every concern above in one move, and it is a fair reason to pause a raise if a strong candidate is close.

But.

A co-founder picked under fundraising pressure can be the most expensive hire you ever make. A split partnership after a seed round tends to cost far more than a slower raise as a solo founder. In our view, it is worth searching seriously, and it is not worth settling. Investors back solo founders with strong teams around them. A co-founder breakup is usually harder to recover from.

Common mistakes solo founders make when raising

Hiding it. Listing a part-time contractor as a "co-founder" tends to unravel in diligence and damages trust.
Getting defensive. Treating the question as bias wastes the chance to answer the worry underneath it.
Pitching alone, building alone, hiring alone. A raise with no one else visible on the team tends to amplify every concern.
Skipping vesting and documentation. Key-person risk is easier to accept when the paperwork is clean.
Raising too long. A drawn-out process stalls the product, which then becomes the next objection.

Where we land on solo founder fundraising

Solo founders get funded. The data says it's harder on average, and the investors who back them say what they want to see: proof you can recruit, a plan for the missing skills, and a company that won't stop if you do.

So don't argue with the question. Answer it with people, paperwork and progress.

It's our view, not a rule, and the right structure depends on your skills, your market and who is available to join you.

If you're a first-time founder still working toward an MVP, 1752vc's Ignite is a 12-week startup academy, live and remote with self-paced work, built for founders at that stage. For a solo founder, a structured cohort can supply some of the sparring a co-founder would.

The bottom line

Investors aren't really asking how many founders you have. They're asking how much of the company depends on one person.

A co-founder is one answer.

A team you already recruited is another.

Key takeaways

Carta's December 2025 report shows solo founders were 30 percent of 2024 startups but received 14.7 percent of priced-round cash, so the funding gap is real on average.
YC's FAQ states that it regularly accepts solo founders while still recommending a co-founder, and Paul Graham's 2006 essay ranked a single founder as the top startup mistake.
Research disagrees: First Round's 2015 portfolio data favored teams, while Greenberg and Mollick's 2018 paper found solo ventures survived longer in a crowdfunded sample.
Investor hesitation usually traces to bandwidth, blind spots, key-person risk and the recruiting signal, and each can be answered with evidence.
Recruiting a strong first hire, adding committed advisors, documenting vesting and showing traction per person tend to make a solo founder's case much stronger.

Frequently asked questions

Do VCs invest in solo founders?

Yes, many do, though it is harder on average. Carta's December 2025 Solo Founders Report found solo-led companies were 30 percent of startups founded in 2024 but received 14.7 percent of cash raised in priced equity rounds. Investors tend to look harder at bandwidth, key-person risk and whether the founder can recruit strong people.

Does Y Combinator accept solo founders?

Yes. YC's public FAQ states that it regularly accepts solo founders, while adding that YC believes founders are more likely to succeed with a co-founder. It points solo applicants to YC Co-Founder Matching, a free platform for meeting potential co-founders. Applying solo is allowed; a strong application usually shows how you cover the skills a co-founder would bring.

How should a solo founder answer the co-founder question in a pitch?

Answer briefly and with specifics. Explain why your background let you get this far alone, name the people already working with you, and show the hires the round will fund. Investors are usually testing whether you can recruit and whether the company depends on one person, so evidence on those two points tends to land better than an argument.

Should a solo founder add a co-founder just to raise money?

Usually not. A co-founder chosen under fundraising pressure can create a split that costs far more than a slower raise. If a strong partner is close, it can be worth pausing. Otherwise, many solo founders do better by recruiting a strong first hire with meaningful equity and adding committed advisors.

Are there more solo founders now because of AI?

The share is rising, and AI is one common explanation. Carta's data shows solo-founded startups grew from 23.7 percent of new companies in 2019 to 36.3 percent in the first half of 2025, and Stripe reported solo founders formed 63 percent of Atlas C corporations in Q2 2026. Whether AI tools close the performance gap with teams is still debated.

Sources

Disclaimer: This guide is for general education only and is not legal, tax or investment advice. Laws, market data and program terms change, so it may not reflect the latest developments or fit your situation. Treat it as a starting point, not a source of truth, and talk to a qualified lawyer, accountant or financial adviser before you make decisions.