[ { "i": 0, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "We've done 12 episodes, not including the one where David from Fondo interviewed me about solo founders. And what I wanted to do is actually just go through and talk about some of the" }, { "i": 1, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "things that have been covered so far because we've covered just a lot of ground with a lot of different types of solo founders and an investor. And I thought it would be great for us to just" }, { "i": 2, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "actually look at some of the things that, you know, might have been buried inside of each episode and actually maybe pull on them a little bit and also kind of draw lines between conversations" }, { "i": 3, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "that we've had. So, without further ado, let's just jump straight into it. The first clip that we're going to look at is from Ben. And Ben is the founder of Pulsia. Pulsia just announced a pretty" }, { "i": 4, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "incredible raise, uh, $30 million at a $250 million valuation. The company has not been around for very long, but it has rocketed to $10 million in annualized revenue. And he's also what I" }, { "i": 5, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "describe as true solo, someone who has literally no human teammates. He's just working with him and AI. And he of course works with some contractors as well, but it's literally just him" }, { "i": 6, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "full-time as the only full-time human." }, { "i": 7, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "So, let's go to this clip, uh, that Ben has here." }, { "i": 8, "speaker": "Speaker 2", "text": ">> Essentially, I think in 2026, if if you have a new company and you don't make it 80% autonomous, meaning 80% of the operations and engineering and marketing, like day-to-day, is not done" }, { "i": 9, "speaker": "Speaker 2", "text": "by AI, you will be cooked because if it's a good idea, someone else will apply that and they will beat you because they'll go faster, cheaper." }, { "i": 10, "speaker": "Speaker 2", "text": "Um, but like what is the 20%? Right? The 20% is taste, creativity, uh, direction, uh, sort of like just like guiding the AI to towards something that's meaningful to other humans." }, { "i": 11, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> This is really interesting because what Ben is saying when he says taste and guiding the AI, it really is judgment." }, { "i": 12, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Right? What what humans can do really well and what creative people can do really well is have judgment, have opinions. And what Ben is doing with Pulsia, even though he has so many AI" }, { "i": 13, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "agents helping him build the company and helping other people build their companies using Pulsia, is he is applying his own opinions, his own judgment, his own taste, and then directing the agents in" }, { "i": 14, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "that direction. If someone else were to have the exact same scaffolding for building a company as Ben does, they would still end up with a very different company because the input of what he as" }, { "i": 15, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "the solo founder, the true only person on the team, means that ultimately the result of the input is a very different type of output. And we are seeing so much that is possible from one" }, { "i": 16, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "individual, not just as solo founders, but individual teammates at a company, what they're able to do using the tools now that are available to them. And the creative use of these tools and the" }, { "i": 17, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "creative inputs into these tools drive really creative outputs." }, { "i": 18, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "He has this really incredible perspective around automating, you know, 80% of what you do at a company and then saving, you know, the 20% for the the human sort of in the loop, human" }, { "i": 19, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "judgment, human opinion, human taste." }, { "i": 20, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And I think it's a really good model." }, { "i": 21, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Obviously, it's it's somewhat used in a in a spicy way and it's sort of like a a Pareto principle approach there, right?" }, { "i": 22, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And and the 80/20 rule. But at the same time, I think there's something really to be said for it and I think we are moving to that world. I think the other thing I would say is that" }, { "i": 23, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "while he's talking about 80 and 20, um, we're also able to really amplify both what the 80% is and what the 20% is because the amount that we're able to accomplish, um, because of the tools" }, { "i": 24, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "that we have right now is really significant. So, it's pretty exciting to see. I think that this actually transitions really nicely into the next clip, uh, which is a conversation with" }, { "i": 25, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Paul, uh, who is the founder of Browserbase. And he talks a lot about this idea of solo and judgment and taste and also sort of authorship and voice." }, { "i": 26, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "So, we should talk a little bit more about this, but first let's roll the clip." }, { "i": 27, "speaker": "Speaker 3", "text": ">> All in all, I think it just requires a degree of very high self-awareness to build a culture as a solo founder, um, but it's also really beautiful because it's so direct. It's you to the company." }, { "i": 28, "speaker": "Speaker 3", "text": "There's only one layer of alignment." }, { "i": 29, "speaker": "Speaker 3", "text": "When you have co-founders, uh, you have to be aligned to your co-founder and then the co-founder and you need to be aligned to the company. That's much more complex and a little bit more muddled." }, { "i": 30, "speaker": "Speaker 3", "text": "You don't know which person is feeling insecure, therefore the company's feeling insecure about a feature. I know if I'm feeling insecure about something, the company will pick that up and I'll" }, { "i": 31, "speaker": "Speaker 3", "text": "see that in some, you know, way that we're investing or some hedge that someone's doing. Um, I can't hide my emotions, uh, and the company picks on the on that vibe. So, I think it's really beautiful. I think" }, { "i": 32, "speaker": "Speaker 3", "text": "it actually allows you to build stronger cultures when you have a solo founder because the clarity is there. The clarity alignment is there all the time, every single day." }, { "i": 33, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> I think there's something really special about what Paul's saying and, you know, Eugenia, who, uh, is the founder of Lobby and Rapport, you also use the word beautiful, um, to describe sort of the aspect of building" }, { "i": 34, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "a company as a solo founder. And I don't really think you hear the word beautiful, uh, thrown around, uh, in any way other than sort of talking about aesthetics typically when it comes to" }, { "i": 35, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "startups. Oh, it's a beautiful design." }, { "i": 36, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Uh, but I think that the way that people describe sort of the design of a solo founded company, uh, they use the word beautiful and I think that there is something true, uh, about that. And part" }, { "i": 37, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "of the beauty is in the simplicity. The idea that when you're a solo founder, you are sort of the one sort of voice that the team has to look to as sort of like the the main the main voice. When" }, { "i": 38, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "you have co-founders, especially early on, there could be a lot of ambiguity around who actually makes the call. Um in some ways, you know, having multiple co-founders in in you know, a positive" }, { "i": 39, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "situation could mean that you know, people are really pushing each other uh on their decisions and things like that." }, { "i": 40, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "But in the in in the less positive scenario, um it just creates a lot of ambiguity around who to trust, uh who actually makes the decision, and it it it actually makes it quite difficult," }, { "i": 41, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "especially for early team members to actually know what to do." }, { "i": 42, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "So, I think Paul has some really good points about how clarity is something that is much more in control when it's just coming from one person as a solo founder. I think that, you know, that" }, { "i": 43, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "probably transitions us pretty nicely to looking at what Charles Hudson, who is the only so far uh investor that we've had on the Solo Founders uh podcast, uh has to say about solo founding versus" }, { "i": 44, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "co-founding and the the benefits around solo founding and maybe some of the potential drawbacks around having a co-founder." }, { "i": 45, "speaker": "Speaker 4", "text": ">> I've told a lot of people my preference in life is two really deeply connected tightly coupled co-founders who have a lot of trust and previous experience." }, { "i": 46, "speaker": "Speaker 4", "text": "Even those teams can break up and blow up." }, { "i": 47, "speaker": "Speaker 4", "text": ">> Sure." }, { "i": 48, "speaker": "Speaker 4", "text": ">> But I think maybe that's the Platonic ideal. The second best thing, and the third isn't even close, is a really talented solo founder." }, { "i": 49, "speaker": "Speaker 4", "text": "I would take a really talented solo founder over a mismatched team." }, { "i": 50, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> So, I think there's something really fascinating which is happening more and more, which is that at one time, there was the belief that you needed to have a co-founder in order to even start a company, let alone" }, { "i": 51, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "potentially be successful with one." }, { "i": 52, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And the reason that we started Solo Founders is because we really rejected that. We rejected the idea that you needed to have a co-founder in order to be successful, and especially that you" }, { "i": 53, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "need to have a co-founder in order to even get started." }, { "i": 54, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "The thing that Charles touches on, which I still believe is very true, even though we are all about solo founders, is that if for some reason you happen to have the absolutely perfect co-founder" }, { "i": 55, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "for you, it makes a lot of sense to strongly consider working with that person." }, { "i": 56, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "But, here's the reality. Most people do not have that. What they actually have is they have somebody who they feel like they need to bring on in order to maybe convince investors that they're" }, { "i": 57, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "backable, or because they feel like it's going to be lonely to be a solo founder." }, { "i": 58, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "All these different reasons that aren't actually about having a great, like, perfect co-founder match, but are because you feel like there is some need to actually have a co-founder outside of" }, { "i": 59, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "the fact that this person is the absolute ideal co-founder match for you." }, { "i": 60, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "If we eliminate that belief that you need to have the absolute perfect co-founder, as Charles said, it's way, way, way better to have a solo founder than two co-founders who were really" }, { "i": 61, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "only co-founding out of convenience." }, { "i": 62, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And if you look at the reason that companies fail, it's because of co-founders typically, right? In the early days." }, { "i": 63, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "About two-thirds of companies fail because of co-founders. So, you really want to make sure that if you have a co-founder, it's for the right reasons." }, { "i": 64, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And if you don't have a co-founder, don't fret. Actually, feel good about it. Know that you're making the intelligent decision and make sure that you go out there, you get the support" }, { "i": 65, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "system. That's why we built the Solo Founder's program in the first place, by the way, is this idea of solo together, so that I could work with the solo founders and they could work with each" }, { "i": 66, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "other. But, get a support system in place and work really, really hard to make sure that you are doing things for the right reasons, not just because you think that's what investors want to see." }, { "i": 67, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Um co-founders are very often because you think that's what investors want to see or because you think that is sort of the normal way of doing things. The reality is don't do it unless you know" }, { "i": 68, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "it's a great, great fit." }, { "i": 69, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "I want to go to the next part of this, which is part of our conversation with Eugenia. And the reason I want to go to this next clip is because I think it fits really nicely in to the flow that" }, { "i": 70, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "we have, which is we were just talking about how Charles was saying that it's much better to be solo than have a co-founder of convenience. Well, at the same time, the reason that solo" }, { "i": 71, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "founders, in my opinion, are so compelling is because they are always building from something very personal to them or very often building from something very personal to them. And if" }, { "i": 72, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "you have co-founders, it's very unlikely that all of the co-founders will have the same level of connection to the problem. So, why don't we go to the clip from Eugenia, founder of Wabi and" }, { "i": 73, "speaker": "Speaker 5", "text": "Replika." }, { "i": 74, "speaker": "Speaker 5", "text": ">> Oh, for me it's completely a personal story. Like, for me it's just the most personal thing um that can't exist, but as we know, what's most personal is the most universal, so that resonated with so" }, { "i": 75, "speaker": "Speaker 5", "text": "many people. But, really, I grew up like a pretty lonely kid. I was an only child. My parents were extremely young, so they were kind of off doing their own thing um very early on in my life. So, I" }, { "i": 76, "speaker": "Speaker 5", "text": "just remember myself writing like bad poetry and skateboarding and smoking joints and just kind of you know, figuring out on my own and it felt really lonely all my life." }, { "i": 77, "speaker": "Speaker 5", "text": "So, when I found some of these friends that you know, these relationships with me, they kind of we started with my friends in my 20s that kind of became my fam they kind of became my family. And" }, { "i": 78, "speaker": "Speaker 5", "text": "so, um those relationships were really transformational for me. And so, when I lost kind of one of them, um and everything kind of fell apart from there, that's where I felt like I I want to" }, { "i": 79, "speaker": "Speaker 5", "text": "recreate that. I want to recreate that friendship that allowed me to feel a little bit less alone. I want to create it for other people cuz I know what it feels like." }, { "i": 80, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Something that she said there that really resonates with me is this idea that the personal is actually the universal. And I like to say that startups in their best form are very" }, { "i": 81, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "often uh a type of art, similar to an album or a painting or a book or a film." }, { "i": 82, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And often the best books, at least the the best fiction or the best songs, um they have some aspect of storytelling that tells a story of an individual. It tells a personal story. Now, it might" }, { "i": 83, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "not be the personal story of the director, but it's a personal story of a character. And that personal story um resonates with people who don't actually have that personal story because the" }, { "i": 84, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "personal, as Eugenia's saying, is is universal. So, this idea that you can have some personal experience that then lends itself to building a really beautiful uh an important business uh" }, { "i": 85, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "makes a lot of sense to me." }, { "i": 86, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And I think that it's very easy for you to go from the idea of having a personal experience that informs an idea that you're working on and then go to convincing mode, trying to convince" }, { "i": 87, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "co-founders to join you or trying to convince investors to back you. But the reality is, if you actually just go from that personal experience and make something and then go to the people who" }, { "i": 88, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "would actually use it instead of trying to go and convince investors or potential co-founders or potential hires, uh you start with the people who are actually going to use it, that means" }, { "i": 89, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "that you have the opportunity to create that resonance. And once you have that resonance, well then it makes it a lot easier to, you know, get investors on board, make hires, that sort of thing" }, { "i": 90, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "because they have seen how the personal went to the universal. And if you're a solo founder, unless you absolutely need funding, it's much better to get started by getting out there and getting to the" }, { "i": 91, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "people where you can take that personal experience and create that thing that has more universal resonance. Now, I want to go to the next one, which I think is actually a really good again. I" }, { "i": 92, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "think the curation here that Ari has done with some of these clips is really great. He's now pulled a clip here from from Daniel. Um and Daniel has a really interesting perspective on how to think" }, { "i": 93, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "about the mission that you're working on. And I think that this is a really good one because, you know, not every company needs to have this sort of life or death mission, but I think it can" }, { "i": 94, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "certainly help. It can help you stay motivated and it could also help motivate the team and and make just people really excited about what you're working on. So, let's let's see what" }, { "i": 95, "speaker": "Speaker 6", "text": "this clip is." }, { "i": 96, "speaker": "Speaker 6", "text": ">> There's a lot of studies about the impact of marginal officers on the homicide rate." }, { "i": 97, "speaker": "Speaker 6", "text": "And with how effective our software is at saving report writing time, the math shakes out that basically every 115 officers on our platform, one life gets saved per year." }, { "i": 98, "speaker": "Speaker 6", "text": "I can fire someone who's not measuring up. Like if this software is 10% worse and we got, you know, 1,100 people on the platform, then you just killed someone." }, { "i": 99, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> I think there's something really important for some people to have this sense that their work not only matters from a business perspective, but happens to matter for something outside of that. And it's" }, { "i": 100, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "really really motivating to know that your work is going to be saving lives, or your work is going to be helping people with chronic illnesses, right? If you can do things that actually have" }, { "i": 101, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "that connection, or just help people run their small business, right? If you can do something where you actually feel some level of connection and responsibility for the people that" }, { "i": 102, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "you're serving, it's extremely motivating. It also is extremely clarifying, as Daniel said, because now if somebody is not performing, they're actually actively harming people in the real world. That example that he" }, { "i": 103, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "gave of if people are underperforming at his company causes people to die out in the real world, it's a good reason to let that person go and to build a great team. And I think that that is" }, { "i": 104, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "extremely, he calls it aligning, and I think it is, right? Because ultimately that means that you have this opportunity to create something that other people will look at and they'll" }, { "i": 105, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "say, \"You know what?" }, { "i": 106, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "I am going to be very serious at this company, because I understand that the consequences of not being serious or not working hard enough are really really severe.\" So, it's a really great way to" }, { "i": 107, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "think about things, and I think it's a good perspective when you're thinking about the types of things that you want to solve, and also the the different ways that you may or may not be feeling" }, { "i": 108, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "motivation. You know, some people don't need that to be motivated, but for some people it really helps them." }, { "i": 109, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "I want to go to um maybe one or two more clips." }, { "i": 110, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And let's let's maybe go um talking with Yasser. Yasser just announced uh something pretty remarkable. He announced 10 million ARR. He is a um he is a solo founder who bootstrapped uh" }, { "i": 111, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "his company. And that is really remarkable because you see a lot of these people that are called solopreneurs, and they might, you know, make million dollars a year. Some of them have lots" }, { "i": 112, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "of different sort of small projects that kind of add up to pretty substantial revenue and substantial profits all the time. But Yasser is one of the few people who's not only bootstrapped," }, { "i": 113, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "but he's also bootstrapped to a point where he has a really like sizable team and a really sizable business. A business that by anybody's standards would be considered a venture scale" }, { "i": 114, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "business. Yet, he built it starting out in a college dorm room in Canada into a $10 million annual recurring revenue business. So, let's hear what Yasser has to say about all of this. He's I think he's a really" }, { "i": 115, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "good example of following a different type of path even though the actual sort of outcome here of building a venture scale business without the venture is still something that's, you know, very" }, { "i": 116, "speaker": "Speaker 7", "text": "achievable at least in his case." }, { "i": 117, "speaker": "Speaker 7", "text": ">> Yeah, I think the case for solo founding is that it's very hard to lose, I think. Like I think that the companies go out of business or like startups they they crash because I think the biggest reason" }, { "i": 118, "speaker": "Speaker 7", "text": "is co-founder breakup. Because if you don't have breakup, you can just like pivot or you can just you know, like try to raise more money or you can just like there's a lot of other" }, { "i": 119, "speaker": "Speaker 7", "text": "options, but co-founder breakup when it happens, then I'm like you have to that's it. Like the company's not going to work out." }, { "i": 120, "speaker": "Speaker 7", "text": "Um in in most cases. I think I I I mentioned this before. I think having an amazing founder is better than having no co-founders, but having a slightly like below average co-founder is much" }, { "i": 121, "speaker": "Speaker 7", "text": "much worse than being solo." }, { "i": 122, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> I think this is, you know, just goes back to what Charles Hudson was talking about, but instead of it being the investor perspective, it's the the founder perspective, which is, yes, like" }, { "i": 123, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "if you have this amazing co-founder, then yeah, it's it's really worth considering, but it is so much worse to have a co-founder of convenience. And you can accomplish so much as a solo" }, { "i": 124, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "founder. You can hire amazing people once you do need to scale and add humans um because I think that a lot of businesses still do need actual human teammates. Sorry, Ben uh from Pulsia. I" }, { "i": 125, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "know that uh I know that you were trying to build true solo. Uh by the way, Yasser, I describe him as building free solo, meaning he uh he has no venture funding, but at the same time he's" }, { "i": 126, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "building a venture scale business. I think this is a great time to wrap for now. This is a new format that we're experimenting with. You know, we typically do these, you know, long-form" }, { "i": 127, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "sit-down conversations with amazing solo founders. Uh we're going to continue to do that, uh but I thought it would be good for us to actually have more commentary. Instead of just letting the" }, { "i": 128, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "conversations go by, actually sit back and reflect on some of the pieces there." }, { "i": 129, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "So, I'd love to hear what you think about this. Uh if you can give us some comments, uh if you can give us reviews, uh anything you could do to let us know how this is going. And also just tell" }, { "i": 130, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "people about this, right? And again, if you're actually looking at you're starting a company uh or you already are starting a company, you should check out the Solo Founders Program. Uh all of" }, { "i": 131, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "this stuff is over at solofounders.com." }, { "i": 132, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "All right, talk to you soon, everybody." }, { "i": 133, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Take care." } ]