The Rise of Solopreneurs

Start-ups are hard. Business is difficult to do alone. That’s why you need co-founders. That’s the common start-up advice.

By in large part it’s not wrong. Having co-founders definitely help. But It’s not always practical. I mean, how many of us have relationships with friends that we want to work with who will stick with us when we’re most vulnerable and will support us through the thick and thin? And are ready to agree with your vision of the world?

I would say very very few.

Despite that, many of us still search for them. You can see this on Y Combinator’s co-founder matching platforms where many solo founders seek their significant others on this platform. I believe it’s a bandaid fix that will eventually be peeled off. But many still go on to try.

But it works for dating - why wouldn’t it work for finding cofounders?

There’s a simple difference between your dating partners and your business partners - your (usually) aren’t time or money-pressured in your dating partners.

That said, there is an increasing appetite for entrepreneurial culture.

I mean why wouldn’t there be? The desire to feel “freedom” and the glorification of “financial independence” has led to a culture of wanting to pursue business and start-ups.

So you match these 2 trends:

• There is an increasing appetite for younger generations to be entrepreneurs

• There is a decreasing amount of relationships that are co-founder worthy (due to technology creating more isolation)

And you’re left with 1 result - more people will embrace being a solo founder/solopreneur.

So what is a solopreneur?

There are 2 distinct camps of definitions.

1 - A solopreneur is a one-man business.

2 - A solopreneur is a solo founder.

There are very few one-man businesses. In fact, you can only get to a certain scale before your one-man business ends up being a solo founder business (until AI takes over). Why?

Imagine this - you get 40,000 sales. You have 5% of customers asking for help. Your GPT Chatbot deflects 80% and leaves 20% to human. You now have to review 400 support tickets.

That’s your whole day.

So how do I define it? A solopreneur is a solo founder who is the main core of the business but has support staff that can help him (e.g. a not-as-important customer support contractor or a contractable software developer).

Now that we defined it, let’s proceed to talk about why being a solopreneur is currently so damn hard in the beginning.

In the beginning, you are faced with doubt. You will doubt yourself everyday. You will question whether you will succeed. You are building product and distributing it. It’s not easy. In fact, the reality is that the odds are against you. But that’s why you need to make sure you’re solving a real problem.

And the problem I chose to solve at Solo Unicorns Club is clear - being a solopreneur is hard. I want to make it easier for others.

But let’s break down why it is so hard?

• You will be emotionally challenged - psychologically, it will be very difficult.

• You don’t really have anyone you can bounce or check your logic with

• You will need feedback on your ideas constantly. Each day you will brim with 5-10 different ideas, you will need frameworks and support to figure out what to say no to.

• You will have hiring challenges - hiring for a VA, hiring for a designer, hiring for a developer. Each of these will be unique challenges.

• You will need to learn and grow at the same time.

And the reality? These issues will continue to plague most solopreneurs.

But I believe there is a solution - a community of solopreneurs who actively give to one another. If you are interested, we are testing this out right now. I don’t know if this is the solution. But I do know I want to solve the problem of solopreneur-ship being difficult.