Podcast
Solo Founders
Hosted by Solo Founders · EN
The Solo Founder's Podcast features in-depth interviews with solo founders building remarkable companies. Each week, host Julian Weisser sits down with solo founders who are either operating at serious scale or doing something right now that you need to know about. From Series B and beyond to founders breaking out in real-time, these are the conversations that define what it means to build solo. New episodes every week.
22episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
What It Actually Takes To Build a Startup Solo | 6 VC-Backed Successful Solo Founders
6d ago00:21:11Tap to summarizeEveryone 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
2w ago01:04:40Tap to summarizeClaire 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 employeesBootstrapping solo with zero VC, and why the model isn't the moatThe "20-year overnight success" — earned expertise as the real advantageAuthorship over ownership: building a business that serves your lifeThe bear and bull case for solo foundingGuest: 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
3w ago00:37:08Tap to summarizeToday 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 businessMicrogrants 101: 1517's $1,000 checks, Emergent Ventures, and the Thiel Fellowship lineageThe grantee who asked for $100 less than his application, and the three viruses he went on to discover and nameWhy first-time builders never even look for co-foundersAri's path from a $500 high school grant to running the programThe funder who said "be more ambitious" and gave more than he asked forHow to apply, and the directory that routes you to the right grant programGuest: 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
4w ago01:07:50Tap to summarizeThais 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 preferenceThe real cause of "AI slop" — volume, not bad modelsHow to turn a subjective domain into something a model can learnWhy you're probably bad at "commissioning" AIBuilding a ~800-person community of tastemakersThe bear and bull case for being a solo founderGuest: 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
Jun 2400:45:31Tap to summarizeFlo 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 founderKnowing when to kill a company and how deep to cutWhy momentum, not rest, is the cure for burnoutProspecting for gold vs. operating the mine: where a founder should spend their timeThe solo founder's "brain trust": building support without a co-founderGuest: Flo Crivello — founder & CEO of Lindy.
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His Public Company Blew Up. He Came Back Solo. | Francis Davidson, Odessia
Jun 1700:59:04Tap to summarizeFrancis 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 SonderGuest: Francis Davidson — founder & CEO of Odessia and previously founder & CEO of Sonder.
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Sold a Company at 16, Raised $3M at 19 | Dhravya Shah, Supermemory
Jun 1101:12:47Tap to summarizeDhravya 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 monthsBuilding your "art" in public until it becomes a companyEscaping the inventor's dilemma: killing your own viral hitsWhy he's a solo founder, after a co-founder breakup killed an earlier companyThe honest version of AI memory: benchmark-gaming, Goodhart's Law, and evals that matterHiring "true builders" out of open source as a solo founderGuest: 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.
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I Asked 5 Massively Successful Founders Why They Went Solo
Jun 300:20:35Tap to summarizeA $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
May 2701:10:57Tap to summarizeMichael 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 itThe 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 comedyWhy "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 handoffGuest: 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
May 2000:56:33Tap to summarizeMinn 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 LighthouseServices-as-software: why "professional services don't scale" stopped being true around 2021Why "solve your own problem" isn't always right — and what to do insteadThe complicated-vs-complex problem framework for founder fit and capital structureFirst two hires were engineers, not lawyersLong-game hiring and contractor-to-full-time as a deliberate patternThe 30-question anonymous Google Form for surfacing blind spots"Twenty of them in the world" — the talent-infrastructure thesis behind LighthouseBear case and bull case for solo founding, the latter stated as lived experienceGuest: Minn Kim — founder and CEO of Lighthouse, the AI-powered immigration firm for frontier-tech companies and their hires.
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