One Third of All Startups

Author

Kieran Ryan
December 30, 2025

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I think of solo founding as an art form — it's a new thing. The people who are doing it are going to inspire a lot of others.

Jimmy Douglas, solo founder of Plug

Solo founders now start 36.3% of all new companies — more than one in three. This is the first time this has happened in over 50 years of startups.

The story isn’t simply, “AI makes people more productive.” What’s really happening is a convergence: AI is letting one person build, ship, and sell in parallel; solo-led wins are changing investor behavior; and founders are optimizing for more authorship and creative control. In the full post, we unpack why this shift is accelerating — with perspectives from solo founders and the top investors who backed them — and explore patterns like why the Bay Area shows the biggest gap between solo- and multi-founder companies.

Reminder: Applications are now open for the 3rd cohort of the Solo Founders Program.