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- 🎙️ New Ep. Julian Weisser | The Solo Flippening: How 1-in-3 Startups Broke the Co-Founder Myth
🎙️ New Ep. Julian Weisser | The Solo Flippening: How 1-in-3 Startups Broke the Co-Founder Myth
👉 Apply to the Solo Founders Program today. A three-month, in-person residency for 6 ambitious solo founders. Next cohort starts Jan. 23, 2026: solofounders.com/program
Hey There,
The script has been the same for decades: find a co-founder
Investors demanded it.
Accelerators screened for it.
The narrative became so entrenched that founders started pairing up out of obligation, not alignment.
Julian Weisser, founder of SOLO and ODF, has a name for this phenomenon: co-founders of convenience
And he's proving they're not just unnecessary-they're often the reason companies fail.
This week, Julian released 'The State of Solo Founding' report: "Today, solo founding is considered odd. Soon it will be the default. This report features exclusive Carta data alongside commentary from solo founders who have raised over $250M and the investors who backed them."
The comprehensive report tracks solo founder rates across thousands of startups, the headline finding is historic: for the first time, over one-third of new startups are solo-founded (That's 36% in 2025, up from under 25% in 2019)
🎙️ Watch the newest episode of START here
I hope you find this educational content valuable and can apply it in your business. Until next week - keep experimenting, keep scaling, keep building.
David J Phillips
Founder & CEO at Fondo