To build a successful startup, you don't have to get a co-founder. What you need is a team.
If you are able to get things off the ground, doing 0 to 1 all by yourself, then you don't need a co-founder. But doing 1 to N, you need a team.
I had a co-founder in my first company, and we were very unproductive, as reaching consensus took a lot of time.
Then I started my second company without a cofounder. Things get way better this time. I'm an engineer and I get to build things quickly. The only downside of founding company alone is, raising money may take longer. Investors typically discriminate sole founder. But it's not impossible. There are still investors willing to take a bet on sole founders if you are able to prove that you are capable enough.
It's more possible than ever to start a company alone, especially when you know how to write code. Think about this, which is faster: a business person learns coding, or a programmer learns business skills?
Edit: adding this --
It becomes easier to start a tech company as a sole-founder nowadays, e.g., cheaper to bootstrap, commodity of tech stack / cloud infra, tons of advices on the internet, Stripe Atlas... I suspect that when this generation of sole-founders succeed, some of them will become VCs and they'll have more empathy on sole-founders and will bet on more sole-founders like them.
A programmer who learns business skills - who already has money is the next level up to start from, though designers for awhile seemed to be getting their due share of attention/importance validated in the trifecta of design-business-engineering skills.
If you are able to get things off the ground, doing 0 to 1 all by yourself, then you don't need a co-founder. But doing 1 to N, you need a team.
I had a co-founder in my first company, and we were very unproductive, as reaching consensus took a lot of time.
Then I started my second company without a cofounder. Things get way better this time. I'm an engineer and I get to build things quickly. The only downside of founding company alone is, raising money may take longer. Investors typically discriminate sole founder. But it's not impossible. There are still investors willing to take a bet on sole founders if you are able to prove that you are capable enough.
It's more possible than ever to start a company alone, especially when you know how to write code. Think about this, which is faster: a business person learns coding, or a programmer learns business skills?
Edit: adding this --
It becomes easier to start a tech company as a sole-founder nowadays, e.g., cheaper to bootstrap, commodity of tech stack / cloud infra, tons of advices on the internet, Stripe Atlas... I suspect that when this generation of sole-founders succeed, some of them will become VCs and they'll have more empathy on sole-founders and will bet on more sole-founders like them.