The conventional wisdom both in research and practice is that entrepreneurs need co-founders that provide resources to new ventures. Yet, some work also suggests that co-founders can introduce conflict to new ventures, potentially creating as many problems as they solve. Surprisingly, little work examines the conditions under which solo-founding is a viable approach. In this paper, we address this gap. To answer our research question, we use two independent datasets. The first consists of all 3,000+ ventures that participated in Y Combinator's renowned accelerator program from 2005 to 2022. The second consists of approximately 61,000 U.S.-based ventures on Crunchbase founded between 2011 and 2020. We find evidence confirming that solo-founded firms are less likely to achieve a successful exit. However, we also find evidence that the solo founder disadvantage is attenuated when founders have broad and/or deep experience. Overall, our paper contributes to the literatures on founding teams and startup organizational design.
