I think we might be coming at it from the wrong angle. Fundamentally, why does the Internet enable businesses which scale (out of proportion to headcount, out of proportion to budget, out of proportion to time, etc) in ways which are difficult to imagine for businesses historically?
I think you could identify a couple of things here: Google (and the App Store and Twitter and Facebook and all the things you cool people use) is a huge force multiplier for distribution. OSS is a force multiplier for software development. Modern web frameworks are a force multiplier for software development. The whole lean startup ball-o-wax is a force multiplier for customer development. Cheap outsourcers are a force multiplier for any sort of easily described, easily checkable, repetitive work. The astounding variety -- an ecosystem of ecosystems -- of companies/APIs which you can just throw trivial time/money at and hook an enterprise-scale solution into your business is a force multiplier for, well, pretty much anything you can think of. ("Oh effity I have no accounts receivable department full of people whose only job it is to chase down folks who owe me money, get their money, and then make sure it gets to my accounts. Wait, you mean Paypal makes that irrelevant? For like a buck a transaction? And it can be integrated into a website in like an hour? Whoa!")
Heck, some of these are less multipliers and more exponentiators.
The question is -- which if any of the above are not available for you if you have one person but might be available if you have two? And the answer, I think, is none of them.
The barriers are getting further lowered all the time, too, and the things force multipliers are getting better. A great example of this -- and I swear, it will create several multi-million dollar businesses this year -- is Twilio. You can now run a telephony company from your freaking kitchen. Holy "#$&"#$"#$"# we are living in the future.
It's a great time to be single. (Not that it's a bad time to have co-founders -- I wish y'all the best, too. Make awesome stuff and have lots of success doing it.)
I don't think technology has anything to do with it though: the reasons PG and others give for having more than one person are almost all 'human' issues, which probably don't change much whether you're starting a taco stand or trying to create 'the next Microsoft/Google/Facebook/whatever'.
It seems sort of pointless to spend too much time worrying about it though; if you don't have anyone to work with, you have to either choose to go it alone or to not make an attempt. Why dither about something you can't change?
I think you could identify a couple of things here: Google (and the App Store and Twitter and Facebook and all the things you cool people use) is a huge force multiplier for distribution. OSS is a force multiplier for software development. Modern web frameworks are a force multiplier for software development. The whole lean startup ball-o-wax is a force multiplier for customer development. Cheap outsourcers are a force multiplier for any sort of easily described, easily checkable, repetitive work. The astounding variety -- an ecosystem of ecosystems -- of companies/APIs which you can just throw trivial time/money at and hook an enterprise-scale solution into your business is a force multiplier for, well, pretty much anything you can think of. ("Oh effity I have no accounts receivable department full of people whose only job it is to chase down folks who owe me money, get their money, and then make sure it gets to my accounts. Wait, you mean Paypal makes that irrelevant? For like a buck a transaction? And it can be integrated into a website in like an hour? Whoa!")
Heck, some of these are less multipliers and more exponentiators.
The question is -- which if any of the above are not available for you if you have one person but might be available if you have two? And the answer, I think, is none of them.
The barriers are getting further lowered all the time, too, and the things force multipliers are getting better. A great example of this -- and I swear, it will create several multi-million dollar businesses this year -- is Twilio. You can now run a telephony company from your freaking kitchen. Holy "#$&"#$"#$"# we are living in the future.
It's a great time to be single. (Not that it's a bad time to have co-founders -- I wish y'all the best, too. Make awesome stuff and have lots of success doing it.)