If you're building this alone, check one thing before you read any FAQ: does the application form have a field for a second founder. That field tells you more about the real selection bar than anything else on the page. Grants, generally, don't care how many people are behind the work. Equity accelerators, generally, do. Knowing which kind you're applying to before you write a word of the form saves you from answering a question you were never going to be judged on, and from dodging one you actually needed to address.
Grants that fund the project, not the headcount
A grant is buying a deliverable: a piece of infrastructure, a research milestone, an integration that didn't exist before. Nobody on the review panel is asking whether you have a co-founder to split equity with, because there's no equity. Six programmes in our catalogue work this way, and all six are realistic for a single applicant.
- Advanced Industries Accelerator Grants (Colorado OEDIT): varies by grant type, typically up to $250,000. This is a state programme judging the technology and the Colorado nexus, not the org chart.
- Starknet Seed Grants (Starknet Foundation): up to $25,000 in STRK, no deadline, reviewed in rounds on a rolling basis. Lowest friction entry point on this list for a solo developer with a working idea.
- ElevenLabs Grants Program (ElevenLabs): more than $5,500+ in value, rolling applications, no fixed deadline. Smaller cheque, same logic: they're funding a build, not a team.
- EIC Accelerator (European Innovation Council): grant below EUR 2.5 million for 24 months at TRL 6-8, plus an equity investment component. Short proposals can go in any time and get batched for evaluation at the first cut-off. A single founder with a mature technology at TRL 6 or above has as good a shot as a five-person team, because the evaluators are scoring the technology readiness level and the market case.
- The Graph grants program (The Graph Foundation): amount not published, paid from the community treasury against specific RFPs. There are no open RFPs right now, so the move is to watch for the next one rather than apply blind.
- SSV Network Grants Program (SSV Network): a $5M pool. Infrastructure-grade funding, allocated against technical contributions to the network, which is exactly the kind of scope a solo, technical founder can credibly propose.
Equity accelerators that are built around a cohort, not a person
These programmes take equity, run a fixed-length cohort, and pack in mentorship and services meant to be absorbed in parallel by more than one person. That's not a stated rule against solo founders, it's a design constraint: a 13 week sprint with daily mentor sessions, PR, fundraising prep and product work is a lot easier to execute as two people than as one, and the programme's own success metrics depend on your execution capacity.
- Alchemist Accelerator (Alchemist Accelerator): $25,000 stipend for roughly 5% equity, negotiable. Enterprise-focused cohort with heavy weekly structure; current application dates aren't published, so confirm status before you plan around it.
- Conector Startup Accelerator (Conector): 4-7% equity for the programme and its services. The equity band itself signals they're pricing in a team's worth of mentoring hours, not one founder's.
- gener8tor Investment Accelerator (gener8tor): $100,000 for 7.5% equity, rolling applications, dates TBD. A serious cheque that assumes you can deploy it fast; worth asking directly in your application how they weigh solo teams, since nothing on this point is published.
- PepsiCo Greenhouse Accelerator (PepsiCo): $20,000 equity-free, plus up to $100,000 for winners. Corporate accelerator with a pilot-and-scale structure; equity-free softens the team question somewhat but the pilot workload doesn't.
- Katapult Accelerator (Katapult): €150,000 to €500,000. The size of the cheque alone tells you they're underwriting a team's ability to deploy it across impact and commercial goals at once.
- Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First Latin America (Google): equity-free, with Google product credits and eligibility to apply for Cloud credits on top. No cash cheque means no equity math to justify, but the mentorship cadence is still built for a team to split and run in parallel.
How to answer the team question when there's just you
Don't invent a co-founder and don't apologise for being solo. State it as a fact in the application, then immediately answer the question the reviewer is actually asking, which is whether you can deliver. Three moves work.
- Name the people around the gaps: a contractor, an advisor, a fractional CTO or designer, even if they're not equity holders. Put their name and the specific hours per week they give you.
- Show you've already shipped alone. If you have a working product, a live integration, or a deployed contract, that's stronger evidence of execution than a two-person team with nothing built.
- Tie your hiring plan to the specific tranche you're applying for. If you're applying to gener8tor's $100,000 or PepsiCo's $100,000 for winners, say exactly which role that money hires first and why, not a vague 'we'll grow the team.'
Where you genuinely lose as a solo founder
Be honest with yourself here: there's a category of accelerator in the market that states outright, in its eligibility criteria, that it requires two or more founders, usually because the programme's thesis is built around co-founder dynamics and equity split planning as a teachable skill. None of the twelve programmes in our catalogue publish that rule. But five of them, Colorado OEDIT, Alchemist, Conector, PepsiCo Greenhouse and Katapult, have organiser pages we couldn't fully confirm for current status, which means the solo-founder answer for those five is simply unpublished. You find out by applying and asking directly, not by guessing from the FAQ.
Where to start if it's just you
Start with the rolling, no-deadline grants: Starknet Seed Grants at up to $25,000 in STRK and ElevenLabs Grants at $5,500+ both let you apply this week with no cohort commitment. If your technology is at TRL 6 or above, the EIC Accelerator's grant below EUR 2.5 million is worth the paperwork. And if you're building infrastructure specifically, check the SSV Network Grants Program's $5M pool before you touch an equity deal that assumes a team you don't have yet.