I believe it. Oddly enough, it's lonely even when there are a couple of you. This is one of the main reasons we do YC in batches. The startups all become one another's friends, because they're all in the same situation.
I think it's well worth the inconvenience of moving in order to have a large group of energetic and sympathetic peers. That's the deal with college, after all.
i've been in this situation before and in general, i agree. and there's a similar kind of suckage being the only technical guy in a startup (i've run a startup for a couple years with a non-technical guy -- smart, but not a hacker.)
in my case, i'm working on a new idea alone at the moment while i find the right cofounder. i've found that a good compromise that still allows you forward progress is to hang out with people who are in the same boat, even if you're not working on the same stuff. i worked over the summer with a couple yc guys who were also starting their own thing and it was great to have other people to bounce ideas off of and frankly to have other people who were stuck inside on friday nights or up at 3am (welcome to the startup world, kids -- often not as glamorous as you'd hope :)) when everyone else is out drinking. it didn't matter that we weren't working on the same stuff -- there was still that esprit de corps and a shoulder to tap when you're working on something cool.
i think it's just the being-in-a-room-by-yourself that sucks, especially if you have roommates on a completely different schedule. and i think it's worth waiting for the right cofounder, even if that means you have to hack the prototype or even launch a beta by yourself -- more startups implode for people reasons than anything else.
there's hope; a good friend of mine has been running his own show for a while after his cofounder left and he's doing fine (but works in an office with other entrepreneurial types), and founders at work has numerous examples of people who had to hoof it on their own for a period of time and did ok (evan williams, a bunch of others).
so if you're in this situation, just get some moral support and keep making forward progress until you find the right cofounder. good luck!
Good advice! The biggest mistake I've made in past businesses is to try to do it all alone. That's a recipe for having it fizzle out into an undead hobby project.
I constantly miss that one aspect of college: thousands of intelligent, motivated, somewhat naive, experimental people thinking about the same problems for no reason other than "because it's interesting".
YC physically creates that sort of group of peers. For those of us that choose not to make it out, YC News is fostering something similar on the web. It's not a replacement, but it's a good conversation starter. We might even see some startups from founders meeting online through YC News. Have there been any examples of this so far?
Speaking of which: extantproject at gmail dot com if anyone out there would like to throw some ideas around.
See, I wish there was a service like Y Combinator just for meeting co-founders. It is hard for people who are in non-tech areas (or at least, non-startup-friendly areas) or middle-tier public universities to meet people to start companies with.
Personally, I have been trying to get picked up by a startup so I have an excuse and a means to move to a better area. How would others here recommend meeting people?
I think it's well worth the inconvenience of moving in order to have a large group of energetic and sympathetic peers. That's the deal with college, after all.