How common are solo founders raising in CEE, and how do they pitch?
Solo founders are common, and they ask for smaller rounds. 26% of the CEE founders who applied to BADideas in 2026 so far were building alone, up from 18% in 2025. Solo founders asked for a median of €400,000, against €520,000 for teams.
The figures
| Applicants who are solo founders | 2025 | 2026 (to date) |
|---|---|---|
| CEE, all stages | 18% | 26% |
| CEE, raising pre-seed | 22% | 33% |
| CEE, raising seed | 12% | 22% |
| CEE applicants, 2026 (to date) | Solo founder | Team |
|---|---|---|
| Round asked, median | €400,000 | €520,000 |
| Applied with no revenue | 71% | 56% |
In BADideas application data, solo founders are also less often technical: 38% have a technical background, against 74% of applicants overall.
What is changing
| Quarter | CEE applicants who are solo founders |
|---|---|
| Q2 2025 | 14% |
| Q3 2025 | 26% |
| Q4 2025 | 18% |
| Q1 2026 | 27% |
| Q2 2026 | 23% |
| Q3 2026 | 28% |
What it means for you
- Solo is not unusual. About one in four CEE applicants builds alone.
- Expect the team question. Investors will ask who builds and who sells. Name the hires the round pays for, and anyone already committed.
- Fill the technical gap visibly. Most solo founders are not technical; if you are not, show who builds the product and on what terms.
Also answers
How common are solo founders in CEE?
26% of CEE founders who applied in 2026 so far, and 33% of those raising pre-seed, against 18% and 22% in 2025.
Do solo founders raise smaller rounds?
They ask for less: a median of €400,000 against €520,000 for teams, and more of them apply with no revenue yet.
How we measured it
- Source: applications founders sent to BADideas in 2025 and 2026 to date. CEE means the company is in a Central or Eastern European country. A solo founder is an application naming one founder. This shows how solo founders pitch, not whether they get funded.
- Limits: these are founders who applied to one CEE pre-seed fund, so the sample leans towards companies that see themselves as a fit for it. A single quarter can swing, so read the change between years first. The application data cannot show investors' decisions, only what founders bring to them.
- Read: 26 September 2026. Updated every quarter.
BADideas.fund, "How common are solo founders raising in CEE, and how do they pitch?", founder application data read 26 September 2026. https://badideas.fund/answers/solo-founder-cee
Who we are
We are a pre-seed and seed fund for founders in Central and Eastern Europe. We have built and sold companies ourselves, and since 2022 we have backed more than 40.
We back founders who see something about their market that others do not see yet. They want to change how a whole industry works, start with something small, and learn fast.
Good founders rarely fail on the idea or the product. They fail on selling it. So that is where we help: operators who grew Zendesk, Square and Scale AI work on your go-to-market.
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