Julian Weisser is the founder and CEO of Solo Founders and a cofounder of On Deck.
I spent the last seven years helping ambitious people navigate the biggest barrier to starting successful companies: finding cofounders.
Back then, cofounders were considered an essential ingredient for starting a startup. Building and selling were each full-time jobs, and there was simply too much for one person to do. Because of this, most successful companies from Facebook to Airbnb had cofounders. That led to the idea of two (or more) cofounders in a garage or dorm room becoming a core part of Silicon Valley romanticism.
You'll notice that I wrote the prior paragraph in the past tense. That’s because things have changed. The amount of human hours required to build something useful and get it in front of customers has collapsed. With AI, it takes less time and money to get started than ever before. This is why, after automation, solo founding will be the default way to start startups.
