A crude look at Crunchbase apparently indicates that 'one founder is best' and 'four founders is worst'. [1] Though it's not exactly a scientific assessment, the numbers do paint a rough picture.
Applied (and was interviewed) to YC with 3 co-founders. It was a total disaster. If I ever do it again I will be a solo founder and I'll hire those I need.
Sure. TLDR People have different motivations. You don't need to "find a co-founder" in order to check some box in your application process. If you do feel the need to apply with a team, don't split the equity evenly and define a very clear leader. Also, Plan on most of your team just giving up if you are rejected (despite what they say today). I applied with friends who who I knew for a year AND had worked with on a few apps. I was surprised when they quit after we were rejected.
Your biggest problem is finding a product market fit and defining a customer. If you can do this you can certainly hire all the help you need.
SO was complaining that I never text her while at work. Wrote a twilio app to pull random sentimental quotes from rumi and others, fit it into a personalised looking message spelling mistakes included )"thinking of you" etc.), and send it to her at random times of the day from my number. Weird thing is when I mentioned it was automated, she didn't believe me, so we kept it going till she broke up with me eventually.
It would be more profitable to automate both ends of the relationship, so the humans won't even have to look at their phones while sweet nothings are pinging between servers in your data center/ scalable cloud.
Where is the data on this?
The only public exit / ipo yc has had to date was a solo founder.