I'm consistently baffled by this co-founder obsession also.

The oldest advice in the book used to be "Don't do business with friends."

For some values of co-founder this could mean new friends.

Friends without deep references are a dangerous lot!

And you can't google character or find it on FB. Or anywhere where someone is their own biographer, meaning the entire internet for 99.999% of all humans. But you sure as heck can dig, suggest partying out with their college years buddies, and see for yourself. Be serious about this. Be unafraid of loosing endless friends and potential friends because you have to make hurtful analyses of them. But smile and admit your fallibility whilst doing so. Funnily it's often as not those i character assasinate who call me.

I've always had issues with this age old "don't work with friends" advice, because i worked many years with very close friends, but i realize there were some very exceptional circumstances.

My suspicious mind says that if a investor wants multiple co-founders, he's hedging or planning divide and rule, or hoping the options pool rotation will balance in his favor because inevitably once the founder sample increases, so does the chance of departures. Listen to who advocates the advice and what's their position.

On some projects however i have invited in people i knew well and who were friends (not the above) and it's been beyond disasterous. Fail is too complimentary. Something has to happen before it can fail.

My guess, just a take on this, is that if you have a buddy who is used to seeing you take an active role, take a lead in discussing circumstances and problems, they actually end up identifying you as that kind of person, that that's your identity, role, raison d'etre. So they step back, because that's how they perceive you. Thus, you get dumped with the work. Society does divide itself into specialisms. Yours just happens to be doing shit, theirs observing or finding tangential ways to benefit from reflected glory.

Those guys talk bloody great game by the way.

If you talk great game, the problem is you're pre-selecting those who want to be sold something. You're selling them, they are therefore choosing your offer, they are passive. You are freaking selling them. So they think you benefit just by their saying "yes". Unless they give you cash when they say yes, be more careful how you pitch your plans.

The other crtical aspect of inviting friends to found anything, is i believe the invitation gets accepted as part of a gift exchange, a social re-inforcement. The exact opposite of what business is about at almost any stage.

I should qualify who my friends were, they were friends of family and friends i'd made through accidental contacts. Profound social and intellectual differences made sure we never got too comfortable. If you have a competant friend who is nothing like you at all, that might just be the kind of friend you can work with.

As for single founders, what ever happened to finding a benevolent (not financially) mentor? Don't people speak across generations any more? I mean, everyone ought to know someone old enough to be able to offer a metric assload of perspective & humor in the face of any adversity you're experiencing. Don't be sniffy about thinking of someone as a mentor - manager. Yup, i said manager. Pay them a cut, like you were acting talent. But only for the period. Then if that went well you've a good chance they'll invest capital. (bootstrap scenario only there though).

I have a suspicion that a lot of scale - out ideas pivot on something so narrow that a single coder can attack it. If the pivot is intellectually or academically deep, i doubt a team will solve it. How many Fields' prizes go to teams?