Solo Founders

No Co-Founder, No Degree, $41.5M to Fix AI Data Centers | Zach Laberge, Omen

Zach Laberge dropped out of high school to build his first company. His second, Omen AI, puts real-time sensors inside the fluids that keep AI data centers and industrial machines running. He's 20, has no co-founder, and has raised $41.5M. He explains why having no technical co-founder forced him to learn spectroscopy himself, and why that made him better. Topics covered: - The shutdown test: how to know when to stop, and how to wind down well - Restarting from your strengths: $3M raised in three days from the buyers who'd said no - Customer-led pivots: engines to hydraulics to AI data-center coolant - Being six months early, and the bitcoin miner who laughed - Founding teams without co-founders; resetting the team at the seed - Fundraising in a concentrated market: "the best round is when you're not raising" - Advisors: weekly 1:1s and templated equity - The bear case and the bull case for solo founding Guest: Zach Laberge — founder & CEO of Omen AI (omen.ai), real-time fluid intelligence for AI data centers and industrial machines. The advisor equity template Zach mentions: Founder Institute's FAST agreement, https://fi.co/fast

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Searching For A Co-Founder Is How You Get A Bad One | 4 VC-Backed Solo Founders

It's been a year since the Solo Founders Program kicked off. Today, the first cohort sits down to discuss building solo, together. What a year of building taught them: why retention is growth (the smile curve, and the leaky bucket nobody checks), why free users are a "free trend" and not a business, how to kill a good idea to find the better one, and what a room full of other founders actually gets you. Plus the stories they lived before going solo — including co-founding with your dad at 17. Topics covered: The prerequisite trap: why searching for a co-founder gets you a bad one Co-founder failure modes: family, close friends, and misaligned incentives Finding a co-founder by building (elevating a first hire) Retention is growth: the smile curve and the leaky bucket Hype signals vs. paying customers — the 10x question Solo, together: what a founder community functionally replaces Guests: Aldo Del Valle (new company, prev. Happypath), Chai Choudhary (Workers.io), Namanyay Goel (Giga), Dhravya Shah (Supermemory)

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Non-Technical, No Co-Founder, $100M+ Raised | John Glasgow, Campfire

John Glasgow is the anti-pattern founder: non-technical, 36 when he started, a newborn at home during Y Combinator, and solo after his co-founder left within weeks. After 15 years in corporate finance at Adobe, Fidelity, and Invoice2go, he built Campfire, the AI-native ERP fast-growing companies use to replace legacy systems. This is one of the most tactical conversations we've recorded. Topics covered: The "right to win" filter: which ideas deserve your resignation letter The enterprise sales playbook from the buyer's side: champions, the $95K threshold tactic, budget cycles Surviving two years pre-product-market fit as a solo founder Founding at 36 with kids, and why deferring life causes burnout Why the technical co-founder requirement is over in the AI era Guest: John Glasgow — founder & CEO of Campfire (campfire.ai), the AI-native ERP.

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Why PostHog's 6th Employee Went Solo | Yakko Majuri, Railcode

Companies are handing every employee AI coding tools and calling themselves AI-native — then blocking everything those employees build. Yakko Majuri, early PostHog engineer and infrastructure lead at Doublepoint through its acquisition by Oura, just launched Railcode: a secure home for internal apps and AI agents where you build with your own tools and deploy in seconds. He gives a live demo — Railcode's first on camera — and explains why most software going forward will be internal. Topics covered: The "AI-forward" illusion: giving out Claude Code isn't a strategy The one-question test: are you holding your team back? Why most software is about to go internal (and when internal tooling IS the product) The CEO who vibe codes vs. the CTO who wouldn't let him ship Joining early PostHog through the handbook: work trials, six-person teams, hackathons Finding your startup idea by pulling the thread through your old customer notes Advice for solo founders: build the thing that's an extension of you Guest: Yakko Majuri — founder of Railcode (railcode.dev), early PostHog engineer, Solo Founders Program member.

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AI Can Build Your App. It Can't Make It Good. | Paul Bakaus, Impeccable

Paul Bakaus created jQuery UI, sold a startup to Zynga, and spent nearly a decade at Google — then went solo to prove one experienced builder, amplified by AI, can do what used to take a team. His company Renaissance Geek is backed by a16z; its first product, Impeccable, stops AI coding agents from shipping design slop. Topics covered: Why his first hire was a chief of staff, not an engineer (the middle-manager trap) The era of the 40-year-old founder: intuition and craftsmanship as leverage What Impeccable is and why AI design slop is a moving target Free-first distribution: no ads, no outbound, only tweets Judgment over generation: Steve Jobs as the greatest editor of all time The bear and bull case for solo founding Guest: Paul Bakaus — solo founder & CEO of Renaissance Geek (Impeccable), creator of jQuery UI, ex-Google.

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What It Actually Takes To Build a Startup Solo | 6 VC-Backed Successful Solo Founders

Everyone thinks going solo means answering to no one. Six solo founders behind WorkOS, Fondo, Plug, Lighthouse, Hamlet, and Julius AI say the opposite: you have more bosses, not fewer, and the job is convincing all of them. Julian revisits the six moments that deserved more attention the first time around. Topics covered: - Why going solo means more convincing, not less (Rahul Sonwalkar, Julius AI) - The original-insight test: "if you don't have one, don't start" (Sunil Rajaraman, Hamlet) - The "wrong" business model behind a 16-to-429 hockey stick (Jimmy Douglas, Plug) - The $40,000 filter that picked David Phillips' company for him (Fondo) - How services scale like software now (Minn Kim, Lighthouse) - Why sales is the one job a founder should never hand off early (Michael Grinich, WorkOS) Featuring clips from Julian's conversations with all six founders. Full episodes at solofounders.com and on the Solo Founders YouTube channel.

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She Staffed Her 100k-User Startup With AI Agents | Claire Vo, ChatPRD

Claire Vo runs ChatPRD — an AI "Chief Product Officer" for over 100k product managers — as the only full-time human, bootstrapped, with zero venture capital. The twist: she operates the company with a staff of nine named AI agents she manages like real employees, one of whom emailed the studio before she arrived to coordinate arrival time. She and Julian dig into how she built it, why she runs nine scoped agents instead of one, and the honest case for and against going completely solo. Topics covered: The one-person company: running a real business with a team of AI agents "Agents are just management" — scoping AI agents like employees Bootstrapping solo with zero VC, and why the model isn't the moat The "20-year overnight success" — earned expertise as the real advantage Authorship over ownership: building a business that serves your life The bear and bull case for solo founding Guest: Claire Vo — solo founder of ChatPRD (AI for product managers); former CTO of Color Health and Chief Product and Technology Officer at LaunchDarkly; host of the How I AI podcast.

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How To Get $1,000 For Your Project, No Strings Attached | Solo Grants

Today we're launching Solo Grants: $100–$1,000 grants, 100% no strings attached, for people building technically ambitious projects solo. Julian sits down with Ari Dutilh who leads the program and is a former grantee himself, to map the wide world of microgrants and explain why the gap between a project seen through and one abandoned is usually just a few hundred dollars. Topics covered: The Solo Grants launch: $100 to $1,000, no equity, no payback, and it doesn't have to be a business Microgrants 101: 1517's $1,000 checks, Emergent Ventures, and the Thiel Fellowship lineage The grantee who asked for $100 less than his application, and the three viruses he went on to discover and name Why first-time builders never even look for co-founders Ari's path from a $500 high school grant to running the program The funder who said "be more ambitious" and gave more than he asked for How to apply, and the directory that routes you to the right grant program Guest: Ari Dutilh — running Solo Grants (formerly Merge) and producer of the Solo Founders Podcast. Apply for a Solo Grant: https://sologrants.com

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She Raised $18M Solo to Kill AI Slop | Thais Castello Branco, Taste Labs

Thais Castello Branco left the AI search company Exa, raised $18.5M, and built Taste Labs -- the "taste layer for AI" -- solo, with one mission: end AI slop. She and Julian go deep on what taste actually is (and why it isn't personalization), why everything AI makes is starting to look the same, how you turn something as subjective as "great design" into data a model can learn, and the honest case for going solo. Topics covered: Why taste is a measurable bar for quality, not just personal preference The real cause of "AI slop" — volume, not bad models How to turn a subjective domain into something a model can learn Why you're probably bad at "commissioning" AI Building a ~800-person community of tastemakers The bear and bull case for being a solo founder Guest: Thais Castello Branco, founder & CEO of Taste Labs, the "taste layer for AI" (ex-Exa).

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Going Solo Should Be the Rule, Not the Exception | Flo Crivello, Lindy

Flo Crivello raised about $50M as a solo founder, then watched the market kill the company he'd built. Instead of quitting, he cut deep, pivoted, and rebuilt alone into Lindy — one of the top AI agent startups. This is a clear-eyed playbook on knowing when to kill a company, beating burnout with momentum, and building solo without being alone. Topics covered: Raising ~$50M as a solo founder Knowing when to kill a company and how deep to cut Why momentum, not rest, is the cure for burnout Prospecting for gold vs. operating the mine: where a founder should spend their time The solo founder's "brain trust": building support without a co-founder Guest: Flo Crivello — founder & CEO of Lindy.

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His Public Company Blew Up. He Came Back Solo. | Francis Davidson, Odessia

Francis Davidson built Sonder into a multi-billion-dollar company, took it public, was pushed out as CEO, and watched it collapse. The same month he left, he started over — this time solo, building Odessia, an AI travel agent, with a founding team of seven. This is the honest version of the comeback: why he went solo when his co-founders were great, why he skipped the MVP, and why he still thinks the one-person billion-dollar company is a myth. Topics covered: - Building Sonder from a college side-hustle into a billion-dollar company, and its collapse - Why he went solo for the comeback when his co-founders were great - Skipping the MVP: how coding agents rewrote the startup playbook - Solo, not alone: building a founding team of seven with full ownership - Founder mode vs. hiring executives, the hardest lesson from Sonder Guest: Francis Davidson — founder & CEO of Odessia and previously founder & CEO of Sonder.

Sold a Company at 16, Raised $3M at 19 | Dhravya Shah, Supermemory

Dhravya Shah sold his first company at 16 and raised $3M at 19 as the solo founder of Supermemory, the open-source memory and context layer for AI agents (now past 26k GitHub stars and 1M+ SDK downloads). The twist: he never chased any of it as a business. He built in public, for free, said no to VCs for nine months, and only raised once the company's vision was undeniable. A conversation about why the fundraise is a result, not the goal. Topics covered: Why the raise is a result, not the goal — and saying no to VCs for nine months Building your "art" in public until it becomes a company Escaping the inventor's dilemma: killing your own viral hits Why he's a solo founder, after a co-founder breakup killed an earlier company The honest version of AI memory: benchmark-gaming, Goodhart's Law, and evals that matter Hiring "true builders" out of open source as a solo founder Guest: Dhravya Shah — founder and CEO of Supermemory, the memory layer for AI agents (1M+ SDK downloads); sold his first company at 16, raised $3M at 19; ASU dropout and ex-Cloudflare.

I Asked 5 Massively Successful Founders Why They Went Solo

A $300M company. 30M+ users. Tens of millions in revenue, some raised and some bootstrapped from zero. Software that saves lives. Five founders, zero co-founders. Julian connects the dots across the first six episodes of the show — Ben Cera (Polsia, $30M raised), Yasser Elsaid (Chatbase, $10M ARR bootstrapped), Paul Klein IV (Browserbase, a $300M company), Eugenia Kuyda (Replika, 30M+ users), Daniel Francis (Abel), and investor Charles Hudson (Precursor Ventures) — on why they built alone, and what they all figured out about it. The through-line: don't take a co-founder of convenience. A talented solo founder beats a mismatched team, and most co-founders get taken for the wrong reasons rather than because they're a genuine fit. Topics covered: - The "co-founder of convenience" — and why a talented solo founder beats a mismatched team - Why the human 20% (taste, judgment, direction) is the whole game - The clarity advantage: one voice, one layer of alignment - Building from the personal, because the most personal is the most universal - Mission as a forcing function — when the work clarifies every decision - True solo vs free solo: two routes to the same rejection of the co-founder default

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The Co-Founder "Blood Bond" Is a Myth | Michael Grinich, WorkOS

Michael Grinich built WorkOS solo — now a $2B company and the enterprise infrastructure behind OpenAI, Anthropic, and Replit — with no co-founder. So when he says "it's not the blood bond it was made out to be," it lands. This conversation is his case against the ride-or-die co-founder myth, the question he thinks actually matters before you start a company, and the honest bear and bull case for going it alone. Topics covered: Why co-founders aren't a blood bond — and "are you the one who holds it forever?" The founder "mental disorder," and why you only need one person who has it The bear and bull case for solo founding — from John Lennon to "the company is a mirror" How to pick the idea: a notebook, four filters, and lessons borrowed from stand-up comedy Why "pivots are the most traumatic thing you can do to a business" The case for founder-led sales — and hiring a head of sales as a partner, not a handoff Guest: Michael Grinich — solo founder and CEO of WorkOS, the infrastructure that makes startups enterprise-ready.

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Turning Services Into Software To Move Talent To America | Minn Kim, Lighthouse

Minn Kim runs Lighthouse, the AI-powered immigration firm rebuilding the visa stack for frontier-tech companies. She is solo. She isn't a lawyer. Her first two hires were engineers. The conversation with Julian covers how she got there, why "solve your own problem" isn't always the path to success, the complicated-vs-complex framework she uses to pick what to build, and her bull case for solo founding stated as a fact about her own life rather than a thesis. Topics covered: The Korean-immigrant origin and the 2022 side quest that became Lighthouse Services-as-software: why "professional services don't scale" stopped being true around 2021 Why "solve your own problem" isn't always right — and what to do instead The complicated-vs-complex problem framework for founder fit and capital structure First two hires were engineers, not lawyers Long-game hiring and contractor-to-full-time as a deliberate pattern The 30-question anonymous Google Form for surfacing blind spots "Twenty of them in the world" — the talent-infrastructure thesis behind Lighthouse Bear case and bull case for solo founding, the latter stated as lived experience Guest: Minn Kim — founder and CEO of Lighthouse, the AI-powered immigration firm for frontier-tech companies and their hires.

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Fired by His Own Co-Founder, Then Built the #1 Startup Accounting Platform | David Phillips, Fondo

David J. Phillips tried co-founders four times before he went solo. With $40,000 left in the bank after a stalled aquihire, he refounded the company alone — and built Fondo, the accounting platform now used by hundreds of YC and pre-seed startups. The conversation is part founder-confessional, part early-stage GTM playbook. Topics covered: The four co-founder breakups across four prior startups Refounding with $40K and a single investor email The lived playbook for co-founder breakups (lawyer advice, severance + stock + move on) The four-question $40K filter for picking ideas you can ship solo The Sam Parr false bottom — first customer, three months of nothing The Delaware-franchise-tax mini-product wedge that produced the first ten paying customers Bear case and bull case for solo founding "Your co-founder lives in Claude now" — the closing argument Guest: David J. Phillips — founder & CEO of Fondo, the accounting and tax platform for venture-backed startups.

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He Quit Tesla, Pivoted GTM 14 Times, Raised $20M Solo | Jimmy Douglas, Plug

The press was declaring the EV car market dead. Roughly $20B in EV investment had been cancelled. The Inflation Reduction Act had just expired. In that environment, Jimmy Douglas raised a $20M Series A from Lightspeed. Before Plug, Jimmy spent five years at Tesla running the largest US EV operation in the world. He left in 2024 to build Plug — the EV-first wholesale marketplace — then spent two years protecting a marketplace orthodoxy that was capping growth, until an investor in a fake board meeting asked the question that broke the company open. The chart bent that quarter. This is the most operator-dense episode we have recorded so far. Topics covered: The contrarian timing: how Plug raised a $20M Series A from Lightspeed in the middle of an "EV hellhole" The China thesis behind the round — why US EV adoption will be unlocked by foreign OEM pressure, not by federal incentives 14 go-to-market pivots before the one that produced a hockey stick (Jimmy counted them by asking Claude to comb his board decks) Mike Maples Jr.'s "Reality Doesn't Negotiate" — and why disproving your hypothesis beats trying to prove it The fake-board-meeting question that broke Plug open: "You still have a balance sheet. What would you build right now if you started over today?" Killing the marketplace orthodoxy: opening an LLC subsidiary, taking the wholesale dealer license test, and the 16 → 429 unique-sellers-per-quarter hockey stick that resulted The two-things-need-to-be-true market test: venture-scale size and speed-to-power-law-outcome compatible with venture capital Tesla decision-making rigor: anticipate where the Wharton MBAs will find flaws before the meeting Self-manufactured constraints — Jimmy's coined term, paraphrased from five years of watching Elon at Tesla The factory-startup co-founder rule and why Jimmy went solo Hiring high-agency people away from big companies — sandbox, mission, and "if you have to convince them, they're not the right person" What market pull actually feels like — and the moment Jimmy realized Plug had it Investor pass etiquette: "you can tell a lot about a person by the way that they pass" Bear case for solo founding — credibility, network, skill-set required to recruit force-multipliers alone Bull case for solo founding — "the agency-maximizing play is to be solo founded and self-funded" AI is changing what venture wants — "vertical SaaS is going to zero," atoms-over-bits is back, balance-sheet risk is suddenly attractive again Guest: Jimmy Douglas — Founder and CEO, Plug. Previously executive at Tesla running sales operations, delivery operations, internal fleet, internal communications, and used cars (the largest US EV operation in the world during his tenure). Plug: $6.7M seed from Floodgate, $20M Series A in 2026 led by Lightspeed with Galvanize, Autotech Ventures, Leap Forward, and Renn Global participating. $60M+ in used-EV sales facilitated since 2024 launch. Host: Julian Weisser — Founder/CEO of Solo Founders and Co-Founder/CEO of On Deck/ODF.

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The Secret $2 Trillion Market Founders Are Ignoring | Sunil Rajaraman, Hamlet

Two trillion dollars of GDP flows through local government every year. 90%+ of city council votes are pre-decided before the meeting starts. And almost no founder will touch the market. Sunil is the rare exception. He ran for city council in Orinda, California, lost, and walked away with a newsletter for residents and an obsession with how opaque local government actually is. That newsletter became Hamlet — the civic AI making local government meetings legible to residents, real estate developers, and the cities themselves. This episode is the most concrete civic-engagement segment we've recorded on the show, and incidentally a clean founder thesis on how to spot a market everyone else is ignoring. Topics covered: $2 trillion of GDP runs through local government — and almost no founder will touch it 90%+ of city council votes are pre-decided before the meeting starts Why "public comment is largely ineffective" and why the "local vocals" aren't representative Most city councils are rubber-stamp organizations Running for Orinda city council — and the $20K-minimum reality of nominally non-partisan local elections The civic-engagement on-ramp — join a commission as the lowest-friction way to start participating The newsletter-MVP-to-Hamlet arc — how a personal newsletter for residents became a civic AI company Easy-to-explain businesses and why they require context, knowledge, and subject-matter expertise (the Federer analogy) "If you don't have an original insight, just don't work on it" — Sunil's hardest founder filter "No one's going to care about this problem as much as me" — niche obsession as the only test that matters The Bold Italic acquisition, "This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley," and why you can't copy editorial voice Front-loaded advisor relationships as a substitute for the co-founder dynamic Pricing humility — "C-minus, D-plus" — and what to do about it Bear case for solo founding — resentment, no gut-check, easier to fracture The "let things simmer" leadership rule Bull case for solo founding — "consensus produces average outcomes" Guest: Sunil — Founder and CEO, Hamlet. Previously co-founder of Scripted (Crosslink, Redpoint), EIR at Foundation Capital, executive at GoodRx through its IPO. Ran for Orinda city council. Crosslink-backed twice across 15 years and 2 companies. Host: Julian Weisser — Founder/CEO of Solo Founders and Co-Founder/CEO of On Deck/ODF.

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Do You Really Need A Co-Founder? With Julian Weisser (Solo Founders)

For the first time ever, more than one in three new companies are being started solo. Five years ago that number was under 25%. This week the host becomes the guest: Julian Weisser — founder of Solo Founders, former co-founder of On Deck (where he ran 27 ODF cohorts and helped over 1,000 founders collectively raise $2B+) — sits down with David J. Phillips (CEO of Fondo, solo founder) for the full thesis behind Solo Founders. They cover the "denominator delusion" that keeps the co-founder default alive, the three types of solo founders (True Solo, Free Solo, Juiced Solo), why companies run out of hope long before they run out of money, and the bear and bull case for going it alone. Plus the news: the next Solo Founders cohort will include $100,000 per solo founder. Topics covered: Denominator delusion — why "the most successful startups have co-founders" ignores the failure rate The co-founder of convenience trap 1 in 3 companies are now solo-founded (up from under 25% five years ago) — the Carta data $100K per solo founder — the new Solo Founders Program cohort news Why Solo Founders doesn't run a Demo Day — the factory model critique True Solo / Free Solo / Juiced Solo — Julian's new three-type taxonomy with named examples Why companies run out of hope long before they run out of money "The median company is a dead company" and "the average VC is a walking-dead VC" Bear case for solo founding — the co-founder-shaped hole and playing on hard mode Bull case for solo founding — one point of failure, one point of resilience, and "the company only dies if you do" Solo alone vs solo together — the Solo Founders Program thesis in one line Startups as art and the case against "contortionism" Guest: Julian Weisser — Founder, Solo Founders. Host, Solo Founders Podcast. Formerly co-founder of On Deck. Interviewer: David J. Phillips — Co-founder and CEO, Fondo. Solo founder.

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He Quit Uber, Beat ChatGPT At Harvard, And Went Solo Building AI | Rahul Sonwalkar

Rahul Sonwalker is the solo founder and CEO of Julius AI — the natural-language data analysis platform that took six pivots (and one cease-and-desist from Microsoft for calling a product "Excel Copilot") to find. In this conversation, Rahul breaks down the "co-founder trap" that keeps most smart people stuck searching instead of building, why every great startup violates 1–2 core best practices, and why he insists on being the worst coder on his own team. Topics covered: The co-founder trap — why 8 out of 10 co-founder teams are fighting in private Solo founding by accident — second startup, friends bailing, and not going back to co-founder matching The football analogy for building momentum as a solo founder Startups as a game of outliers — why generalized advice pushes you to average The recipe for hiring as a solo founder — multipliers, not delegators Equity philosophy: less cash, more equity is a green flag Culture at 50% and 66% — why your first hire is half the culture forever Six pivots to Julius: logistics AI, Excel Copilot, Microsoft cease-and-desist, US Census demo The Julius Caesar chiseling metaphor for how companies emerge from marble Convincing as the real job — "Sam Altman can't sell you a pen but can sell you AGI" Authorship and why success has many fathers Bear case and bull case for solo founding Guest: Rahul Sonwalker — Solo Founder and CEO, Julius AI. Natural-language data analysis platform. Formerly engineer at Uber. Based in San Francisco.

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