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.
25episodes
Episodes
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Non-Technical, No Co-Founder, $100M+ Raised | John Glasgow, Campfire
5d ago01:07:48Tap to summarizeJohn 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 letterThe enterprise sales playbook from the buyer's side: champions, the $95K threshold tactic, budget cyclesSurviving two years pre-product-market fit as a solo founderFounding at 36 with kids, and why deferring life causes burnoutWhy the technical co-founder requirement is over in the AI eraGuest: 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
2w ago00:29:37Tap to summarizeCompanies 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 strategyThe 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 shipJoining early PostHog through the handbook: work trials, six-person teams, hackathonsFinding your startup idea by pulling the thread through your old customer notesAdvice for solo founders: build the thing that's an extension of youGuest: 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
3w ago01:21:58Tap to summarizePaul 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 leverageWhat Impeccable is and why AI design slop is a moving targetFree-first distribution: no ads, no outbound, only tweetsJudgment over generation: Steve Jobs as the greatest editor of all timeThe bear and bull case for solo foundingGuest: 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
4w 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
Jul 1501:04:40Tap 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
Jul 800:37:08Tap 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
Jul 101:07:50Tap 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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