The share of new companies that were started by solo founders steadily increased over the last few years. This trend accelerated in the first half of 2025, when over one-third of new companies were solo-founded. Several factors may be contributing to the rise of solo founders. First, AI has expanded what individuals can accomplish in a finite amount of time, making it more feasible for a single founder to both build and sell. Second, the success of solo-led companies, such as Polymarket, Vercel, and Wander, has helped validate the model among investors and may also be inspiring more entrepreneurs to follow a similar path.

Solo- and multi-founder companies have broadly similar sector distribution. For both groups, the top three sectors — SaaS, Consumer Products and Services, and Healthtech — make up roughly two-thirds of total startups on Carta. Solo-founded companies are slightly more represented in Consumer Products and Services (17.0% vs. 12.0%). This may reflect a different orientation toward risk and motivation. Some solo founders seem more willing to pursue passion-driven or non-consensus ideas, whereas co-founder teams may be more likely to gravitate toward sectors that align with investor consensus and perceived fundability. This dynamic is underscored by Carta data showing consumer startups raised their lowest quarterly totals since 2019 in Q1 2025. Meanwhile, solo-founded companies are less represented in Pharmaceuticals and Biotech (5.3% vs. 8.6%), where deep technical expertise, often at the PhD level, typically needs to be paired with operational or commercial experience. Overall, the clustering of solo- and multi-founder companies suggests that solo founding is a viable path in a wide range of sectors.

Solo- and multi-founder companies tend to cluster in the same major startup hubs, but the Bay Area shows the widest gap between them. This gap likely reflects a mix of factors: the Bay Area has the deepest pool of potential co-founders and a stronger cultural belief that you’re “supposed” to have co-founders, which naturally leads to more multi-founder teams forming there.

When looking across all individual founders — not companies — women represent a slightly larger share of solo founders than of multi-founder teams. There are many hypotheses about why women are less represented in the startup ecosystem overall, and we won’t venture an answer here. What we do see in our community is that the women who do take the leap to found are outliers. Many come from non-traditional tech backgrounds — scientists, healthcare operators, real-estate professionals — where “starting a startup” is not the default career path. When they decide to build, it usually feels less like a career move and more like a calling to solve a specific problem. They get going before they have perfect funding or the ideal co-founder, and they are prepared to do the unglamorous work themselves until others catch up to their conviction.

Solo-founded companies raise billions every year, though their totals remain below those of companies with co-founders. Cash raised is a lagging indicator. While the share of solo-founded companies is rising, it takes time for newer cohorts to reach later funding stages that meaningfully move these aggregates. The timing and direction of swings track market cycles almost identically for both groups: peaking in 2021, moderating in 2022–2023, and partially rebounding in 2024.

The share of cash raised by solo-founder companies has trended up over the past several years. This increase aligns with solo-founder companies making up a slightly larger share of total companies — 23.7% in 2019 versus 30.5% in 2024. This trend may also reflect more solo-founded companies progressing into later funding stages, where round sizes are larger and therefore have a greater influence on total cash raised amounts.

Solo-founded companies were less likely to raise a pre-seed round (SAFE or convertible note) within their first year compared with companies with co-founders. Several factors could explain this gap. Some solo founders may wait longer to raise, using that extra time to build usage, revenue, or product traction before fundraising. It’s also possible that timing differences play a role: as the next chart shows, solo founders often raise their first priced round sooner, which means some may skip the pre-seed stage entirely. The share of companies raising within one year has increased for both solo- and multi-founder companies over time. This could reflect how AI startups are raising sooner than traditional SaaS companies, reaching revenue milestones and investor readiness earlier.

Solo-founded companies raised their first priced equity round sooner than companies with co-founders in every cohort year from 2018–2024. This pattern likely aligns with the previous finding that solo founders are less likely to raise a pre-seed round in their first year. Without that early injection of capital, solo founders may move more quickly to a priced round. In contrast, multi-founder teams that raised a pre-seed round would have more runway before needing to raise again. The overall time to first priced round is increasing for both solo- and multi-founder companies.

In 2024, solo- and multi-founder companies experienced nearly identical dilution across early funding stages. Institutional investors often target similar ownership ranges by stage, and competition among funds helps keep those norms in check. Increasing founder-to-founder communication further reinforces these expectations, leaving limited room for meaningful deviation. As a result, both solo- and multi-founder companies tend to give up similar percentages at each stage, regardless of founding team structure.

In 2024, solo-founded companies’ fundraises were nearly identical to multi-founder companies at Series A, but slightly lower at the Priced Seed and Series B. At Priced Seed, investors are mostly evaluating the founding team. A mild bias against solo founders likely pulls their median valuation down, and there’s often less competitive bidding to push it up. By Series A, the focus shifts to the business and broader team, so whether there’s one founder or several has far less influence on valuation.

Across both solo- and multi-founder companies, engineering is by far the most common first hire, allowing founders to keep leading early sales while technical work moves forward. When engineering isn’t the first hire, solo-founded companies lean slightly more toward operations roles — 14.5% versus 10.7% for multi-founder companies. Anecdotally, some founders prioritize hiring a specific type of person rather than a particular role.

Solo-founded companies typically hire their first employee earlier than multi-founder companies. This makes sense, as co-founder teams start with greater built-in capacity — simply having at least one more person to share the work. Both groups, however, are waiting longer to make their first hire than they did just a few years ago.

For hires made in 2023 and 2024, median equity grants for the first five employees are tightly clustered and almost identical across solo- and multi-founder companies. This level of convergence is somewhat surprising. In theory, solo founders have more equity to work with because they’re not splitting ownership with co-founders, yet the median grant sizes to their early employees are broadly similar to multi-founder teams. One plausible explanation is that when solo founders look for guidance on equity, they often encounter frameworks built for co-founder teams that have already split the company two or three ways. Those grant sizes make sense when the founding team is heavily diluted from the start, but they don’t reflect the additional leverage solo founders have to strategically attract and incentivize early employees with larger equity grants. Most solo founders we’ve spoken with are more generous with employee equity than the median in this dataset. In those cases, the additional equity can be a decisive factor for candidates choosing between otherwise comparable opportunities. The data here shows where the median is, but it also highlights how much room solo founders have to use equity as a strategic advantage in early hiring.

Solo founders held substantially more absolute ownership than lead founders (the co-founder with the largest equity stake, typically the CEO) in multi-founder companies through early-stage rounds. The effect compounds meaningfully over time. By Series B, solo founders hold a roughly 50% larger personal stake, assuming comparable valuation and dilution levels.

Between 2019 and H1 2025, median ownership at exit was 75% greater for solo founders than lead founders (the co-founder with the largest equity stake, typically the CEO) in multi-founder companies. A few factors may help explain this gap. Solo founders hold more ownership because they don’t have to split equity early among co-founders. As a result, if their dilution patterns through fundraising mirror those of multi-founder teams, they tend to retain more ownership when exiting at comparable stages. Another possibility is that a larger share of solo-founded companies exit earlier in the startup lifecycle, before taking on the additional dilution associated with later-stage funding. For example, if solo-founded companies were to exit around a Series C stage while teams with co-founders exit closer to Series D, that timing difference would naturally contribute to the gap. /n/nIt’s worth noting that more ownership at exit only implies a better outcome when exit values are comparable, which this data does not capture. Still, the ownership gap highlights how structural differences in founding team size can come into play at exit.

Solo-founded companies took longer to exit in earlier cohorts, but have exited slightly faster than multi-founder companies more recently. Read alongside the previous chart, solo founders have been reaching exits sooner while holding a larger percentage of their company at exit. Several factors may help explain the difference. For one, decision-making is often more streamlined for solo founders when it comes to selling the company. There’s no need to align with co-founders who may have different views on timing, exit price, or post-acquisition roles. In addition, solo founders may have greater flexibility in determining what constitutes a satisfactory personal outcome, allowing them to accept acquisition offers that meet their goals sooner.