Are We Entering the Age of the Solo Founder

Are we entering the age of the solo founder?

Spun through data from 45,000+ startups that use Carta to manage their cap tables and looked at a simple question: how many founders does each company have?

Sometimes it's a bit tricky to identify founders, so we used the following criteria:

• Must have at least 5% ownership in the company

• Must have been issued equity before any external funding

• Must be an individual

Capped the founder count at 5 for the purposes of this analysis, though there are some long-tail companies with 6, 7, or even 8 founders.

Clear pattern emerges: a larger share of startups are being created with just 1 founder.

Obviously in recent years we'd point to the advent of AI tools creating new leverage for a single, determined person to run major parts of a company alone. But the pattern pre-dates this AI boom by quite a lot.

Since we're measuring the founding team size before any funding hit the bank accounts, it could be that many solo founders incorporate and start building then bring in a cofounder after they begin seeking venture capital. More on that dynamic in a future graphic (ie what percent of VC-backed companies have solo founders).

Slightly surprised by the data here but it is heartening to think you really can just do stuff 🙏

#startups #founders #foundingteam #venturecapital

If you're interested in founders and how they build generational companies, we've got a major data drop for you coming in January. For the first time ever, we'll track founder ownership from idea stage through IPO, giving you real benchmarks for every venture stage.

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