Single Founder
One person building four products. Limited bandwidth, high context-switching cost.
Impact
Can’t parallelise across products. Can’t be in sales calls while shipping code. Support burden scales with users while development capacity doesn’t. No coverage for illness or vacation.
Why This Is Hard
Hiring too early burns runway. Hiring wrong burns more. Solo founder companies have higher failure rates. Investor bias against single founders makes fundraising harder.
Mitigation Strategies
- Sequential focus - Ship one product at a time rather than all in parallel
- Shared infrastructure - Build capabilities that serve multiple products
- AI assistance - Use AI tools to get more done per hour
- Design partners over users - Fewer, deeper relationships require less support bandwidth