Most who are running a successful (or) profitable startup know that sales is a day and night job in most industries, and that it’s completely unrealistic not to have separate cofounders for development and sales.
Sure, as a total fluke in a very specific industry, software might sell itself. Everywhere else, and especially in physical product and deep tech, someone has to fully own the sales side of the business including the really time intensive stuff like website, email marketing, conferences, merch, sales meetings and trade shows. Heck, even viable solo founder companies would probably sell a magnitude harder with a sales co-founder.
Anecdotally my company picked up a few big distributor contracts for software tools and deep tech products, stuff people want. The products are done, high quality, but they don’t sell themselves - we have to actively put effort into outreach for every sale. Think about that in the context of your own startup. Building the thing is not the end hurdle, it’s kind of like a dependency to selling the thing, which creates revenue.
I have an extensive sales background and also an entry level software developer that worked for years at a coworking office while getting my solo miniSaas off the ground.
I tried over and over to explain to other founders that they REALLY should think about sales early. I'd try to say "Ok imagine your product is done magically. It works great. Now what?"
And it was interesting to see them struggle to think of what they would actually do if it was done.
My flippant answer is ask Bill Gates about that. It seemed to work out.
But in reality, as long as you're somewhat honest in the sales process, it'll still work out better to talk to potential customers as early as possible. Maybe the dogma has changed, but doesn't YC say to talk to your early users/customers as early as possible, and if you dont have anyone like that to talk to, how are you even building this thing you have no connection to?
I think what’s not being considered here is if the barrier for entry of a product is so ridiculously low that a single individual can kick off a few agents to build it then work the sales channels, the companies buying the products can just do the same thing.
The value in buying a product or service from someone else is access to expertise, an expectation of support, and on some level the distribution of legal and financial/time risk in developing a new product. If you can do it all with some LLM then especially that risk of building a bespoke product is all but obliterated.
Anecdotally I started to see this at my last gig where bizdev folks were writing their own tools and in some cases their own little micro products (things 15-20yr ago they would have had to purchase from a third party, or get internal dev to work on). Now, I certainly don’t want to deal with that sort of technical debt, but plenty of firms don’t feel the same way (clearly given how much layoffs have been impacting everyone on the SWE side).
There seems to be a lot of people convinced that AI will progress exactly to the point where it maximally benefits their own role (current or desired) and then hits a magic wall where it somehow doesn't also entirely replace whatever value they think they are bringing to the table.
> Harvard's Noam Wasserman found that 65 percent of high-potential startups die because of conflict between people, not the product or market.
Have to call BS on this, no one argues when everything is going gangbusters. So likely the causation is the other way around.
Also everyone involved (from founders to backers) is incentivised to blame the interpersonal relationships since it protects their judgement, ego, etc.
we discovered that the share of solo founders has nearly doubled between 2018 and 2026 to 39 percent of new startups
That seems like a less interesting metric than the percentage of successful founders who go it alone. If there are just more startups because founding something alone is much easier, but you're no more likely to succeed as a solo founder, then all that's changed is the number of failing startups. That's not a great ad for starting something without a someone to share the burden.
FWIW in my experience with startups it's the relationship between founders that keeps the product on track and heading in the right direction. Founders keep each other honest (mostly) about whether something is worth building. When someone is going solo they build what they want, which goes brilliantly if they have taste and experience of their market, and horribly when they don't. And it's much more common to see the latter.
Indeed, for years, I was looking for a technical co-founder.
I virtually did not find the right profile serious enough for such a role.
I ended up learning software myself after graduating from business studies at university.
Then AI came in the middle of my self-learning journey, I started using it as a software writer. I thought I could 'vibe-code' it into anything I want.
I was wrong.
1. It made so many mistakes. 2. I needed solid understanding of software basics to be able to understand the code it is writing, to be able to architect a complex software for a startup idea I had in mind.
I went back to learning software from reliable non-AI sources. By the time I learnt so many things about software, I gave AI another try.
This time it worked.
I became an AI-assisted Founder & Systems Architect.
But it's only the beginning, AI is non-deterministic!
Why would a solo tech startup even exist after automation? Any software that can be done by one person can be done by anyone with an AI subscription a moment after launch. Why would anyone risk investing in that?
You're paying for effective token usage. You've simplified "automation" to mean "perfect automation". That's not going to happen for a long time, and likely never.
However, automation may likely become good enough that an SME can build the initial system to bootstrap the business. Not scale the business, but enough to prove that it's viable.
There are benefits to specialization, and will be for a long time even with AI. It's worth a premium to not limit all my software to what I and my agents know, and to be able to rely on other people to fix it if there's a problem.
Investment size for software plays is going to drop, and people will still invest for the same reason they do now: solving problems for people is valuable. Marginal costs dropping will bring down a lot of costs in various places, but the software itself is only part of what SaaS provides.
Whilst I would like this to be true there is simply too much real life work. Also I’m the dev in a partnership where the other guy brings all the domain knowledge and b2b customers. There’s almost no overlap of our circles of competence and neither of us could do the company individually.
Bus Factor being the biggest issue for investors (which you may not need) but is a blocker for many clients. I think it's even more important to have a co-founder or at least a key-hire on the team.
Early != right. No one gets a co-founder because they want some simple (Claude-doable) work done by them!
You get a co-worker for the expertise, knowledge, and skills that they have that you don't. An AI that has a small/simple subset of that can't replace a co-founder.
Will there be more solo founders now? Of course, there were solo founders before, and the barrier to solo is now lower. But that doesn't change the fundamental fact that it's still (even with AI) relatively rare for a single human to know everything (and how to do everything) that a successful start-up requires.
Sure, as a total fluke in a very specific industry, software might sell itself. Everywhere else, and especially in physical product and deep tech, someone has to fully own the sales side of the business including the really time intensive stuff like website, email marketing, conferences, merch, sales meetings and trade shows. Heck, even viable solo founder companies would probably sell a magnitude harder with a sales co-founder.
Anecdotally my company picked up a few big distributor contracts for software tools and deep tech products, stuff people want. The products are done, high quality, but they don’t sell themselves - we have to actively put effort into outreach for every sale. Think about that in the context of your own startup. Building the thing is not the end hurdle, it’s kind of like a dependency to selling the thing, which creates revenue.
I tried over and over to explain to other founders that they REALLY should think about sales early. I'd try to say "Ok imagine your product is done magically. It works great. Now what?"
And it was interesting to see them struggle to think of what they would actually do if it was done.
If you reach out and get customers interested, but you delivery is delayed, don't you risk burning credibility?
But in reality, as long as you're somewhat honest in the sales process, it'll still work out better to talk to potential customers as early as possible. Maybe the dogma has changed, but doesn't YC say to talk to your early users/customers as early as possible, and if you dont have anyone like that to talk to, how are you even building this thing you have no connection to?
The value in buying a product or service from someone else is access to expertise, an expectation of support, and on some level the distribution of legal and financial/time risk in developing a new product. If you can do it all with some LLM then especially that risk of building a bespoke product is all but obliterated.
Anecdotally I started to see this at my last gig where bizdev folks were writing their own tools and in some cases their own little micro products (things 15-20yr ago they would have had to purchase from a third party, or get internal dev to work on). Now, I certainly don’t want to deal with that sort of technical debt, but plenty of firms don’t feel the same way (clearly given how much layoffs have been impacting everyone on the SWE side).
It is a fascinating shared delusion.
Have to call BS on this, no one argues when everything is going gangbusters. So likely the causation is the other way around.
Also everyone involved (from founders to backers) is incentivised to blame the interpersonal relationships since it protects their judgement, ego, etc.
That seems like a less interesting metric than the percentage of successful founders who go it alone. If there are just more startups because founding something alone is much easier, but you're no more likely to succeed as a solo founder, then all that's changed is the number of failing startups. That's not a great ad for starting something without a someone to share the burden.
FWIW in my experience with startups it's the relationship between founders that keeps the product on track and heading in the right direction. Founders keep each other honest (mostly) about whether something is worth building. When someone is going solo they build what they want, which goes brilliantly if they have taste and experience of their market, and horribly when they don't. And it's much more common to see the latter.
Even WhatsApp, a self-driven hyper growth startup that mainly did development had, IIRC, 40 people when they were acquired.
Indeed, for years, I was looking for a technical co-founder.
I virtually did not find the right profile serious enough for such a role.
I ended up learning software myself after graduating from business studies at university.
Then AI came in the middle of my self-learning journey, I started using it as a software writer. I thought I could 'vibe-code' it into anything I want.
I was wrong.
1. It made so many mistakes. 2. I needed solid understanding of software basics to be able to understand the code it is writing, to be able to architect a complex software for a startup idea I had in mind.
I went back to learning software from reliable non-AI sources. By the time I learnt so many things about software, I gave AI another try.
This time it worked.
I became an AI-assisted Founder & Systems Architect.
But it's only the beginning, AI is non-deterministic!
Happy Coding!
Because that throws a server error ;)
However, automation may likely become good enough that an SME can build the initial system to bootstrap the business. Not scale the business, but enough to prove that it's viable.
Investment size for software plays is going to drop, and people will still invest for the same reason they do now: solving problems for people is valuable. Marginal costs dropping will bring down a lot of costs in various places, but the software itself is only part of what SaaS provides.
btw, if you have a chance to work with him you should! highly recommend
You get a co-worker for the expertise, knowledge, and skills that they have that you don't. An AI that has a small/simple subset of that can't replace a co-founder.
Will there be more solo founders now? Of course, there were solo founders before, and the barrier to solo is now lower. But that doesn't change the fundamental fact that it's still (even with AI) relatively rare for a single human to know everything (and how to do everything) that a successful start-up requires.