# Design the company around the life you need, even if that means no cofounders

- Category: mindset
- Author: Mihai Negrea (https://indie.md/people/mihai-negrea/)
- Source: https://indie.md/journeys/mihai-datadriven/
- Canonical URL: https://indie.md/advice/solo-founder-by-design/

Mihai came out of a burnout at Microsoft with a hard constraint: he needed to remove obligatory human contact from his working life for a while. So he designed the company around that constraint, no cofounders, no employees, full control over every product decision. The standard advice says find a cofounder, split the load, hire early, but standard advice optimizes for growth, not for the founder staying functional. A company shaped around your actual capacity is one you can run for years; a company shaped around a template is one you abandon. Constraints like health, energy, and tolerance for people are real inputs to company design, not weaknesses to overcome. Decide what you need to stay in the game, then build the business that fits inside it.