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Pierre Omidyar was a single founder when he started eBay in 1995. He brought in employee #1 (Jeffrey Skoll), in 1996, and Meg Whitman in 1998.

Jeff Bezos was a solo founder when he started Amazon in 1994. Employee #1 (Shel Kaphan) was brought on before incorporation, but says Jeff was the founder (http://www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom-empl...)

Brilliant, I was not aware of these facts.

More recently, Omar Hamoui was a solo founder of AdMob, which sold to Google for $750 million

Andrew Mason was a solo founder of Groupon, started with $1 million seed money from a former employer.

Do we all realize that Mark Z... is actually a single founder ?!

That's up for debate. Zuckerberg did early hacking on his own, but he started the company with Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes.