One-man teams that got into YC, etc., without much self-capital?

OP here. Just to clarify I'm asking for examples of one-man team that got into YC, etc, because I would like to look them up and read up their founder stories and maybe get inspired or something :)

For the record my ex co-founder and I were invited to a YC interview back in 2018. We didn't get in but we did manage to secure funding here and there. The start-up died some months ago.

Now I'm founding a new start-up alone and am extremely curious about sole founders who have managed to found a successful startup without captial. Thanks!

I can't answer your question about YC, but you mentioned that you are looking for inspiration. For that, I recommend taking a look at Indie Hackers https://www.indiehackers.com/ and Failory https://www.failory.com/ - if you haven't already done so. Oh yeah and https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ - if you aren't looking to build a megabillion startup.

I got into YC as a solo-founder in 2012. Didn’t have any connections or go to an ivy league school. I was working on an app that was growing quickly and doing $15k/month in ad revenue. The odds are stacked against you as a solo-founder so you need to show them something that tells them you can execute. It’s probably harder now, but definitely still possible. Showing them a them a graph that points up and to the right helps ;)

What are you (hypothetically) building? You may not need VC as that isn't the only path to a software business. Many do so by simply making them profitable, charging money up front. Only take VC if you have an exponential growth opportunity. I don't mean merely superlinear, as in cubic or quadratic, but actually exponential growth.

Your question seems to be searching for such an answer as the Indie Hackers forum, touted as founders (some solo, some groups) building profitable internet businesses.

Let me play devil's advocate for a second. The short answer to your question is no, it's not possible in any reasonable sense to get funding today with zero connections.

You've admitted that you have no close friends who can be cofounders (ie. you're a loner), that you have no staff, and no paying customers.

Investors see all of those as red flags. They like multiple founders for many reasons, including social proof and free labor. The only thing you have going is presumably a working app, which does give you some initial credibility. They also expect a large-enough market, over $10 billion.

If you are in the social media space you will also need whatever the minimum subscriber base is today, around 5-10 million users to get funding.

Instead of chasing VCs with a bad story, you're better off finishing the next point release and devoting your time and energy to sales and marketing. And make some friends, ffs.

If you want to read sole-founder lore, then Marcus Friend (POF), Pierre Omidyar (eBay) and patio11 (hmm) are worth reading.

I assume you are looking for motivation. This thread might provide some https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11924009.

There are many examples of successful single-person startups (forgetting a recent example of a person who ran SaaS product single-handedly for over 4 years and then expanded). However, you can only bootstrap like that. To grow bigger, eventually will have to hire people - which means money, which means either VC or customer - which means tonnes of work in building products/building relationship/shipping product etc. I guess, if startup success rate was 1% then solo-founder startup success rate must be 0.01%.

I guess a lot of times business knowledge wins and you’ll have a hard time getting into YC if you don’t have the necessarily skills to sell your startup and yourself to others.

Downvote me for saying that if you are a single founder and did not graduate Ivy League you stand very little chance

hard to say as most founders understate their credentials publicly, to make for a more satisfying rags-to-riches story