Venture capitalists often view solo founders as riskier bets. But new data from London accelerator and fund Unrest suggests this view might not be accurate.
Unrest surveyed 165 early-stage UK founders, ranging from pre-seed to Series A, and shared the full dataset with Tech Funding News. Of those surveyed, 61 founders (37%) started companies alone, while 104 (63%) had at least one co-founder. Among solo founders, 56% were women, 44% were men, and 41% identified as Black, Asian, mixed, Middle Eastern, Latino, or another minority ethnic background.
The biggest sector groups were healthtech and medtech (25%), climate and sustainability (15%), and AI and machine learning (8%). Other sectors included consumer, deep tech, SaaS, food and beverage, e-commerce, edtech, wellness, and fintech.
The gap in capital efficiency
Solo founders reached £100,000 or more in annual recurring revenue, short for ARR, more often than teams with co-founders: 18% compared to 12%. According to Orr Vinegold, partner at Unrest, this ARR gap is a sign that a larger sample is needed to see whether it holds true in the wider market.
On average, solo founders asked for £960,000 in funding, while teams with co-founders asked for £1.38 million. Teams were also twice as likely to seek £2 million or more. Because founders chose funding ranges, Vinegold notes the median ask as £250,000 to £500,000 for solo founders and £500,000 to £1 million for teams.
That efficiency also means solo founders have less room for mistakes. About 46% of solo founders started fundraising with less than six months of runway, compared to 34% of teams. 21% had under three months left, almost double the 11% for teams.
Both groups generated revenue at similar rates, 53% for solo founders and 52% for teams, which makes the difference in reaching meaningful ARR with less money even more notable.
These results match what’s happening at the company level. Solo founder Steve Basher grew SolveAI from pre-seed to a $50 million raise and a 12-person team, all without a co-founder. Phoebe Gormley also secured the UK’s largest pre-seed round for a solo female founder at healthtech startup Jude. As AI tools make it easier to run lean teams, the idea that bigger founding teams are always safer is being questioned.
The challenges of building a company alone
The Unrest data shows that solo founders face more personal challenges.
About 52% said their mental health suffered, compared to 36% of those with co-founders. 21% took on personal debt, more than twice the rate among teams; 38% hid serious financial pressure from family, co-founders, or their team; while 25% avoided telling people close to them how serious things were. These numbers are lower for co-founded teams.
This trend shows up in other areas too. Solo founders were more likely to work very long hours because of financial pressure (35% vs 22%), have strained relationships or friendships (50% vs 40%), and report trouble sleeping (56% vs 48%).
Also, 35% of solo founders reported that their confidence or self-worth dropped, compared with 27% of team founders. Around 33% said starting a company affected their ability to buy a home, compared to 24% of co-founded teams.
Where solo founders are common and where they aren’t
As per Vinegold, founders build alone for various reasons, and it is rarely their first choice.
“For many repeat founders, it is a deliberate decision after being burned by a previous co-founder relationship. Others simply have not found the right person, and co-founder matching is still heavily dependent on personal, university and professional networks,” he said
Vinegold added that this dynamic can disadvantage women, immigrants, and founders outside established networks, who may have fewer opportunities to meet a compatible co-founder before starting a company.
Solo founding was most common in food and beverage (75%), SaaS (70%), and wellness (67%), typically asset-light, consumer-facing categories where founders can build leadership teams without co-founders. It was least common in deep tech (8%), fintech (20%), and climate and sustainability (21%), where regulatory complexity and capital needs encourage team-based founding. Sectors with fewer than five respondents were excluded from the ranking.
This scarcity is also seen among investors. When Rick Hao, former Speedinvest deep tech lead, started his own $50 million solo fund earlier this year, TFN reported that solo general partners are still rare in deep tech because the sector relies on teams for technical review.
Looking at business models, 43% of consumer-facing companies were started by solo founders, compared to 29% of B2B companies. This shows that solo founding is more common where products can be tested quickly and cheaply, and less common where deep technical or scientific knowledge is needed.
For now, the data leaves investors with an awkward question. Solo founders in this sample raised less, started with thinner runway, and still hit meaningful revenue more often than teams did. If that pattern holds beyond 165 founders, treating a co-founder as a proxy for lower risk looks less like due diligence and more like a habit nobody has bothered to check.
