[ganeshkrishnan]

> YCombinator has a near-blanket policy of only accepting co-founder teams (ie- no solo founders), because the data shows that solo founders rarely succeed. The emotional burden is just too high.

But YC application FAQ states that this is not true. Although practically speaking from speaking to other startups, I have noticed that only startups with co-founders made it to the final round. This is just based off my experience and talking to other startups

[gkoberger]

In my batch, there were definitely a bunch of solo founders. However, they (almost) all had something special about them: a strong existing team, a strong background, or a strong previous startup success.

[corry]

IMO the bar should be much higher for solo founders. If you have 2 people, then it's twice as many resources to check all the various boxes you need (sales, design, technical, etc) - otherwise the solo person has to credibly be an amazing all-rounder (which is rare).

That's the core dynamic IMO... then add on the emotional burden part to that and it makes even more sense.

But then again a bad cofounder fit could actually lead to MORE emotional burden too... so obviously it all comes down to specifics.

[ztratar]

Very, very few solo founders get into YC. I heard somewhere each batch of companies has about 2 solo founder companies total.