Do I Need a Co-founder?

Strictly speaking? No. We have seen a decent number of companies come through the Kitchener-Waterloo startup ecosystem as sole founders. A large percentage of those (and a higher proportion than multi-founder companies) are still 1-person companies when they exit the program.
So as a whole, it is totally fine to start a 1-person company if you are OK to start from a place that has, based on our data, shown a pattern of lower growth.

My own theories here are that having an additional people on the team lead you to have discussions verbally, which steps up the formality and the logic levels. *When working by yourself, I find that I (as a detail-oriented, Take the Time to Do It Right type of person) almost always apply that style of thinking & decision-making — even when it could be detrimental and a Done Is Better Than Perfect mentality could yield much better results. — Having enough similarities that you have common ground, but still cover for each others’ blind spots & aren’t in an echo chamber.

But what about all those companies with sole founders who we always hear about?

Pull on the threads of those stories, and in many cases these people had co-founders at the start who opted to step away (Kik), or early contributors who had other job offers or commitments (Pebble). Famous examples are often over-inflated. Zuckerberg had 4 co-founders at the start of Facebook, Jobs had Wozniak, Gates had Paul Allen, Musk had Tom Mueller join him for SpaceX (and wasn’t the founding CEO or CTO of Tesla). *He was the largest investor in both cases, which meant that he had a disproportionate level of contribution.

OK, you’ve sorta-convinced me. Maybe. How do I find these people?

For folks coming directly from school into a company, we see a lot of people who met each other as classmates. Sometimes they met as members of a club or common-interest group. As grad students they tend to meet as part of the same lab.

But talking about my idea is hard & I’m worried that I’ll get laughed at, or not taken seriously.

As someone who deals with huge amounts of perfectionism & anxiety, I know this feeling very well. The shitty news? This is part-and-parcel with starting a company. Especially as CEO. Once you’ve talked to some friends/classmates/other humans about your idea and persuaded them that it’s a good idea, next step is to go talk to customers, and persuade them that it’s a good idea. Then to investors (in many cases), then to more customers and/or more potential employees, then probably circling back to investors. As CEO, you are essentially putting your master plan out there for the world to see, presenting it as if it’s far more rigorous & robust than you really feel it is, and convincing people (who have lots of intelligence, money or clout) to get on-board. This is a job that is not for everyone. If you’re feeling aversion or anxiety at the first step of talking to co-contributors, unfortunately this is only the beginning of that process.