There's a lot of pressure on startup founders to find a co-founder. This pressure often comes from VCs who have strong-held beliefs that businesses with two founders are more successful than those with solo founders.

If you ask the Hustle Fund team, it's totally fine to start a business without a co-founder.

In fact, bringing on the wrong co-founder can have disastrous effects on your business, your team, and your mental health.

Think about this: if your business is successful, you'll probably be working on it for a decade or more. That's longer than some marriages! So if you have a co-founder, it needs to be someone you trust. Someone you like. Someone with a complimentary skillset.

If you try to force a co-founder relationship with wrong person just because a VC told you to do so, you'll probably end up with a lot of co-founder drama.

Here's a different approach: hire employees who have complimentary skill sets. Build a relationship with them that's based on trust. Over time, you may identify one of those employees as a potential co-founder.

Eventually, you may decide to retroactively name them a co-founder. 

Keep in mind... not only does this person need to hit all the checkboxes listed above, but they also need to be as passionate about serving your customers and about solving this problem as you are. Otherwise they probably won't want to spend 10+ years building the company.

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