Ole Lehmann: AI Solopreneurs, Crypto’s Unkept Promise & the Case for Building in Europe

0:28Welcome back, everyone, to the European Easy Podcast. nearing this new era of company building where we don't need to necessarily have large teams. And thus, I thought it was super exciting to dive in with Ole today and really understand your mindset. Before we start the show, a quick note. If you're building or running a fund, you know it takes the right partners. At EUVC, we only work with sponsors we truly believe should be part of your tech stack. Please do take a moment to hear about them. And if you do, reach out, mention EUVC. it's the best way you can support what we do. Thank you so much.

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2:53There's no better place to find the startups that have received significant funding from the European innovation ecosystem.

3:13Let's start acting. This show is not investment advice and the hosts of this episode may be invested in the funds and companies featured. So Ole, that was how I introduced you. Would you say I'm somewhat correct there or am I making a... No, that was a good one. Yeah. I would maybe add that I'm also a content creator and I do a lot of media as well. Yes. And I think let's get that bio completely because not necessarily everyone will know you. So let's get your journey described a little bit. Tell us about how you first started in crypto and then afterwards got into AI and content creation. Yeah, so I was always someone to follow my curiosity and to totally obsess about the thing that I was into.

4:04So I had a wild journey, starting being in a very creative kind of way of living as a music producer. got into crypto in like 2017, went completely crazy about understanding financial markets in general, then switched to AI. FTX happened, wasn't so good for me, was a little bit fed up with the industry and all the scams that happened. And funny enough, at the same time, ChatGPT came out. I think it was November 2022. So I think it was 10 days after FTX happened. So you had the complete destruction in crypto, all time low sentiment. And then ChatGPT came out. And I just played around with it. And it was like one of the few moments I had in my life when I found something.

4:45And just my mind was blown about the opportunities. And it came from a place of curiosity and trying things. And I always try to build things in a creative way, creating art, but also creating companies. And that thing, like just suddenly, I was always used to, I had to ask someone, right? If I want to build something, I had to find something out about marketing. I would need to call my friend or I would need to pay a mentor. And just having this tool that would get me to this like 70 % knowledge, it blew my mind. So this is when I started my AI solopreneur channel on X. It's kind of the golden days of AI content.

5:21And it took off pretty much immediately. It was like a little side project. It grew to like 100k followers, I think in 65 days. So it was like really rapid growth. started to build a media company around AI because the demand for education was just insane. It's still insane and still big, but yeah, I was one of the first people there to really build an education business around AI. And then slowly transitioned more to honestly just being myself more on the internet, following my curiosities with kind of an intersection of I'm really interested in financial markets, but I'm also really interested in building companies in a creative way.

6:01And kind of AI is really the glue for me because it really enables me to kind of step into all these different roles to where not only wear a green hat for being a podcaster, but maybe wear a red hat for being like my own accountant or financial analyst. And the next day I can just do ads myself. So yeah, that's like a rough overview. Tell me, Ola, just because you described the crypto journey and your love with financial markets, And then also you have the intersection into AI. There's a lot that have said that AI is maybe the problem that blockchain and crypto have been looking for. Do you agree with that?

6:40What's your own thinking there? Yeah, I totally agree with that. For me, I think I tweeted something out a couple of days ago that like now in hindsight, NFTs start to make sense to me. Also, because we have this big discussion right now with the big Ghibli trend, you know, people just using someone else's work. in chat CPT, they take this picture of me with my dog and change it into the Ghibli style. And this kind of started the discussion around like, how can we use copyright in the future when all these LLM just scrape all the data? And I think, especially now, it's so easy to create deep fakes with chat CPT.

7:17And we really need a solution to verify data. And I think like blockchains, there's like one of the very strong point of a blockchain is to use it for something like that. So I'm really bullish on the kind of infrastructure and tech that will really enhance AI. All the stuff that we've seen so far, that is like crypto and AI, like most of it's like scammy bullshit. It's like just hopping on a bandwagon, telling someone, oh, we build an agent, but all it does is like tweet shit posts on X. We have some of these go to like a billion dollar valuation. I think it's cool that people try out stuff. And I'm really trying to kind of find the a silver lining here like what parts of the tech are actually helpful on which aren't and i have a friend um they built some defy infrastructure right now so they're they're working on autonomous agents that just you know find the best apy on something they take the money that you give them through the contract and so i think i'm very bullish on stuff like that but i think we're still very early so it's to be seen like where this is headed but like the intersection of using blockchains as like a base layer for AI technology, wherever we need some kind of verification, I'm very bullish on that.

8:31Yeah. And then tell me just one second, because I know the next place where you're looking to build is actually not in crypto necessarily. How come you're not super in a rush to get in a building in crypto, given what you just described? And I can maybe add to it just for context. We had Jonathan from Inflection on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and he described, so Jonathan and Inflection used to do a lot of crypto investing and they have pulled out of it because they said there's a lot of the founders that were excited about crypto have pulled out because they found it too scammy. They found that even when they could raise big money from VCs and build something incredible the terms would often involve pump and dump schemes that they just felt like this does not make sense for me so is it a similar reflection for you it's definitely part of it like it has this really bad rap and i think too many people exploited like the terms that they could get just dumping their tokens i think founders also got rich too fast and that's the big problem like they they would raise around and like the token is kind of immediately liquid most of the time.

9:44So they would just dump their token. They would use scammy tactics. So I think it is a real problem. So there's a lot of brain drain from people who were excited about crypto that went to AI completely. And it is a real problem. I think additionally, especially in Europe, there's even more regulatory burden around crypto stuff and it's kind of still unclear in some parts of it. So I think that's kind of a bit restrictive. I do think that we are seeing a little bit of a shift, especially in the US. I saw someone like Nikita Beer, who's like a, you know, OG consumer app god. And he was recently employed by Solana as an advisor.

10:25And he was saying he's seeing a shift in opportunities for consumer apps to be built, for example, on crypto rails. I think that's very interesting. if i talk about myself personally i just think like the burden of regulations is just so heavy and like the rep is so bad like i'm not saying i will never do it but right now it just seems like it's it's too much it's not like the most interesting part for me especially in europe right now yeah and we are actually i didn't say that in the in the intro but we're also going to talk about Europe and the state of tech policy and so on, because I know you're very bullish on Europe and are trying to also do your part in this part of the world.

11:10So we will dive into that. But I want to start now, first and foremost, on this solopreneur phenomenon, because it's obviously one that matters a ton to the VC sector, as we are all investing in startups that used to have one model. And we knew that in many cases, you needed to build large companies with many, many people and a lot of money behind it. Then ever since the ChatGPT moment, there's been an increasing conversation about, well, how many people do you really need to build a company? How much money do you really need to build a consequential company? The battle rage is on. Some say it's never going to change.

11:52It's just you'll spend the money on compute. You still need to scale just as much as you've always had to. Yes, the organizations will look a bit different, maybe even completely different. But nonetheless, in the end, the people with most capital will be the ones that win. So let's not dive into that big discussion because I think it's fruitless. But I would love to ask you to help us understand the mindset of the solopreneurs, those that set out to build incredible companies, incredible products, but come at it with a mindset of, I want to do this alone, or maybe with my good buddy or with a couple of friends that I truly trust.

12:32And that is it. I'm not planning to be a manager. I'm not planning to be part of the grind. Can you enlighten us a bit on this mindset? Yeah. So for me, a big part of the shift really started when I kind of started to understand how to build distribution. And in my mind, it was always, you know, you have this idea, you get some money to build it, and maybe like someday it turns out amazing and like you'll be on this amazing journey. So you have like the glorified, you know, VC route or like, this was like the idea I had about this is how you do startup. And something that I learned was that for me, every tweet is a startup in a way.

13:13So I'm looking at it as like, I'm not starting with product market fit. I'm starting with content market fit. So I would like spread some ideas that I have. It could be about a certain topic. Let's take an example because I've just started building this built-in Euro brand. We can talk about it later. But the way that I thought about, okay, there's something here. It's not that I'm thinking, okay, what kind of startup can I build? So I don't even go there. I used to go there, but I think that's wrong. And it's like, not how you do these things these days. So what I noticed is every time when I talk about, you know, what I like about Europe or like what I'm missing as a European entrepreneur, I would get so much engagement.

13:55Also a lot of people that like hate on you, but I think that's part of something that really grows. It always grows with controversial sentiment. Well, same with AI. AI comes out, people like, oh my God, I posted about it. This is the worst thing. We shouldn't feed the evil beast. The Pandora's box has been opened. We're going to die. So there's always part of it. But I was seeing extremely high interest. And I have a lot of data about high interest means. So I'm like, okay, there's something there. So now I ship out different ideas in this space to find out what is the biggest sub-interest and where do those match with what I'm good at.

14:34So every content piece, that you can shoot into the algorithm, it potentially can reach the right crowd these days. So it's not all about following anymore. So at the start of every idea now, I'm kind of shipping mini versions of angles on a problem. Doing that, and then later on, I can go super deep into this, but I'm using a lot of steps to gather as much data from my audience. This could be they sign up to my news setter. I'm sending, tell them, send me a reply. it goes into especially this analyzed via ai so they talk to an agent i'm working on that now it's like a continuous collection of uh of data to just find out which is the right problem to tackle and i think the amazing thing with ai now is even if i have an idea for a physical product you know i was thinking about something it's a bit stupid but i was thinking about you know weighted vests are like a very big like trend right now i was like why is there like no like weighted west for a dad where you can put the kid and you you know and you go like you go like outside with your weighted vest and you you meet your like dad buddies and you go for a walk and like you get jacked at the same time so long story short i was thinking about that today you can just go to chat gpt and mock up a product and again i could use something like that i can ship it as a tweet right like i say called a tweet by the way maybe i'm old i know it's called like i'm just didn't say tweet i think everyone knows what i mean you're you're soon to become a dad my friend so yes yeah okay i okay i can use that language now so you know dad dad language so i can ship out the idea and every so like my point here is you can test things much faster and you can also mock up things much faster if you go into software you can either if you're a little bit technical i'd say you can also build prototypes very fast yourself and then you can test it or you can get someone for like a couple thousand dollars to build it for you so for me like really the key part is to understand distribution and understanding distribution used to mean you need to understand how to build an audience i don't even think that's valid anymore it's more about understanding what gets attention these days because with these interest graph algorithms now every post you do or every video you post on TikTok, it can potentially reach the whole audience if it had perfect product market fit for that content market fit for the whole market.

17:01So that means it's really essential to understand the emotional part of the market. What is the desire that someone has that he could fulfill? What are their problems to obsess about that part? But then go to market as fast as possible to validate your ideas. I'm really thinking about this like to take shots every day at the market and just see what you get back like without sitting down you know with hiring 50 people to work on something that has no demand i don't think that's the model that will survive in the future anymore maybe for some like super crazy yeah for the deep tech stuff and so on yeah because you can't do it in a different way right but so that's like excluded but in my world i think kind of the amazing unlock is that you can it's like the meme you can just do things right and you can just do things now much faster much cheaper and you can even do it without most of the risk because you can just test tell me a little bit because so you have a community of uh solopreneurs and i'm i also know that your community also encompasses people from agencies encompasses people from from large organizations as well.

18:14This approach of content market fit, do you see the average entrepreneur, so to say, leaning into it as well? And obviously here we're talking about digital products more than at least the very heavy deep tech, but let's stay in this realm. It's perfectly all right. It's a big one. But these entrepreneurs, do you see them being very active in your community as well? Do you see your toolbox, so to say, or this way of thinking about the world, do you see it applied across the startups that you're kind of encountering? No, it's definitely a trend. And it's been growing before. But I think especially like founder-led software or founder-led startups in general, it's just getting bigger and bigger.

18:57I also think that AI paid, like it's part of it. Because with all this AI-created stuff, like what I see people crave is the emotional connection. and if it's incredibly easy to spin something up because most of the tech infrastructure is easier to replicate. It's easier to basically get to results that people can use. So I think also the emotional connection to the product in terms of, okay, this is the founder. This is the way this founder runs this company. It plays a huge part. So it's also incredibly important, I think, for the VC community to understand that. That what some people, like maybe joked about oh just like the founder shit posting why does he do that it's so bad it can be bad for sure like if you don't do it right but i just see this trend getting bigger and bigger um you also see a lot more of younger entrepreneurs that do a lot of like almost like vlogging video vlogging on on youtube like daniel dellan for example in the e-commerce space grown like crazy and they build huge businesses that way so there's definitely a trend and And I wouldn't even say there's like a certain demographic.

20:09So I talk, a lot of people also ask me, right? Like they want to build up their presence online. That's not my main business. So I never wanted to be this, you know, this is how you grow on social media guru, but I've been doing it. So people come to me. There's also a lot of like, you know, CEOs asking me or like people like from big companies. And so I feel like there's almost like they also feel the urge to do so. So there's also like some pressure from the market that people kind of already start to expect it almost. Maybe just to explain the mechanic that's underlying what you're describing here, because you said it before, but believe it or not, not all VCs are on social media all the time and not thinking about building audiences all the time.

20:51You described that we now have a movement in the way algorithms work away from building an audience to having this, what did you call it? It's a more topical graph. Interest graph, yeah. Yes, the interest graph. So now everything, when you put something out, it's more level set. Whether you're a big account or a small account, it's going to be considered more or less the same. And then if it takes off, it takes off. So that means that anyone has a shuttered goal, so to say. Is this true across all platforms? or are there some that have not really picked that one up? I think it's the biggest switch that happened in the last years that a lot of people slept on.

21:38So this is really like what TikTok innovated. They didn't innovate on short-form content. They innovated on the idea that the algorithm is better at showing you content than you are in picking it, right? So it's also an AI play in a way. And the TikTok algorithm is amazing. it's scarily amazing like how well it serves your content and instagram had to did the same x did the same so i would take all the major platforms jumped on this train i think i still think like you you should have like a a barbell approach to it right so it's like the ones like the viral approach kind of you shoot your bullets some like go crazy maybe and then you have something where you capture attention long term something like a newsletter where you have like a direct line to your customers or customers, clients, friends, whatever, like to build this line of communication as well.

22:28So I think that's really key too, because that's also the downside of an interest graph is that it's not like you build an audience and you know, like, oh, every time I post, you know, 10 ,000 people will see it. So it's like, there will be some impact of a following, but it's, you know, really small comparing to what it has been before. So it's also coming with challenges. That's what I'm saying. But yeah, all in all, like the whole trend is towards interest graph and away from social graph. Am I right in saying, and I ask this because VCs, of course, are very, especially in Europe, very active on LinkedIn.

23:08Am I right in saying that LinkedIn is one of the platforms that have actually stayed quite true to the social graph? I think they also turn more into interest graph as well. it's i'm not sure like how heavy but they will do the same thing like because what platforms optimize for is time spent on platform and yeah and like number one prediction of that is kind of that algorithm because it's it's just more addictive i'm not sure like how the i would expect that parts of it is also like this yeah but a little bit less than like let's say on tiktok Now we went into a bit of social media stuff, but it is interesting and VCs are all building their own small firms and we all care a lot about being heard all the time for some reason.

23:53So for that reason, I did think it was worth pursuing a bit. I want to get back to asking you about the mindset of this new type of founder, the founder that builds on their own and builds with friends. Can you tell me a bit about and let's use you as the case person. why did you choose to build like this i think the first part really is that you have more freedom and for me it was always clear that like the bigger your company is you know the more people problems you have you can hire for that but like it comes with this like this huge chunk of problems and when i saw ai happen it became like so obvious to me that you could just leverage yourself so much better and like i'm just thinking about like how can i be maximally leveraged in every dimension right so i'm going into the media angle and this is why i talk so much about content because content like sometimes people like they don't take it seriously but it's leverage right i can use one idea and i can tell it to you or i can share it leverage and probably you maybe you still see it but like i have the leverage on the media side and when ai came out i i noticed that you know that's the leverage on the kind of company building side and the mindset for me always was to give me the possibility to be as creative as possible and to be as leveraged as possible and i and i have to be honest like i i never went into this like i don't want to work with anyone like i don't like people so that's that was never my you know my imperative i think it was more kind of being this sovereign individual like who could just do everything myself or then like hire a little bit later but like the idea of shipping as soon as possible i think that always really excited me and to to have this constant feedback mechanism of the market right and i was a trader before so and i still do some trading but like way less like if i understood one thing is like if you have a pulse on the market that's like you know that's like basically all you have to do to to find a product that works and if you're like a solo founder that uses the media angle you'll be incredibly good at spotting opportunity and building out these little things they can grow huge right it's not like what the little things but it's you can start without having this grand master plan you just start with something and you take one step and then the next can you tell me all a bit about how many so many will know peter levels Peter Levels is known for having built God knows how many companies, God knows how many small products.

26:34Some of them generate 100K in revenue. Some of them generate 700 or a million or multiple million. And then altogether, it all becomes a pretty interesting machine, even if you were to bag it as an investor. And then he also describes this process of doing multiple new business tests, so to say, on a weekly basis. is that also your approach? How many, like, can you tell me how many businesses do you iterate? Do you test on a weekly basis? Is that how you work or? So I would say like I'm changing the model a little bit. So I really focused on the last one I had. And I think it's also a little bit dangerous to be in the mindset of like, you know, you have the shiny object syndrome, right?

27:17To me, I think it only makes sense if you also have enough capacity to build things out. And there's a danger of doing 10 things, You start one thing and it makes 100K. You do the next thing, it makes 100. And both make 50, you make the next. So you just split the revenue with your time. So if it works like that, you should do it. I'm thinking a lot about testing, but I'm testing to find the thing where I'm most confident. So I'm doing the same thing right now. I started this build in Europe thing, and I'll test product angles in that space. But once I find one thing, I'll commit for it at least for some time.

27:55to build it out. And the idea I have about myself is more about like building a portfolio of bets and companies. And I can also totally see myself, if one thing grows big enough to then hire someone to run that, to do equity splits. And I think one of my core beliefs that I haven't shared before here is that I really want to build equity value as well. And I think that's kind of the problem of being a public face. Sometimes it's like that. Everything's tied to your face. But if you manage to build a company, then you bring someone in and you kind of build up these little companies. It can become like a substantial portfolio of bets.

28:36And that's really the model that I'm going for away from like, I'm not a creator. I'm like first and foremost, I'm an entrepreneur, right? And I want to build businesses. But I'm using the creator front and the building public to make the process faster and to get more opportunities. but in the end you know i want to build a portfolio but it's not like it's not maximizing companies per month something like that so i can i can also totally see myself you know like going all in with something at least for some time but i think like the mental and emotional build-up of most people like me is that we we are creative and we like to we also love the zero to one.

29:17And if you take this away and you're like, oh my God, now you're just optimizing for like 2 % growth every month for the next 10 years, I want to shoot myself. So it's kind of finding the middle way. I want to test an idea with you. It's not one that I've developed at all, but it's one that's been nagging me a little bit. I imagine there's a ton of very young people that because they're social media native and AI native, it comes very easy to them, so to say, to build in your way. I've often been thinking there must be a great model behind backing people like this that are early in their development, but you can see they understand it and then have a portfolio of these guys where they're building everything inside one entity and then they run with their curiosity, but they built multiple of these smaller businesses.

30:11Do you think there's any? I was actually thinking about something like that. Not exactly the same thing, but I was thinking about what a traditional startup accelerator looks like. And it seems very different. But I also saw, I think it was the founder of not Gumloop, but the other Gumroad. I think he put out a tweet. It's like, I want to back Vibe coders. you just give me 10 % or others back like a lot of you. And I think it's like an interesting point of time for everyone who's listening who doesn't know what a Vibe coder is. A Vibe coder is just basically someone doesn't know how to code manually, but they use stuff like Cursor.

30:51Basically, they use AI to code. So we have a new class of developers who just work like that. I think there's an opportunity of helping these people with stuff that's not purely money, part yeah so i talked to them and for example like i think it's more about building kind of a machine that for example helps them with parts of the distribution and i think a lot of people are actually very open to do like good equity splits for that i think that's a really cool way to to support people the money they need is is less so you could potentially like spread more if that's like viable for a vc i don't know but i think the demand is definitely there to get some capital but also to get the networking effect of a VC, to get introductions to the right people.

31:41It could be very interesting to do something like that, to change the check size. And you could potentially have companies grow very fast in that narrative. So I'm 100 % on board that there are some kind of play to be made here. That has this accelerator feel to it. But I think to come to the product with the right angle, Yeah, the people I talked to, they were open to it. So those were, for example, founders who just created their first app doing, you know, like 10k MRR, but it's like the first try and that's not bad, right? So there's something there, but they wouldn't go to VCs yet. So I think...

32:20No, no, and VC, the thing about VC is also we have a very specific model. If you're building something that is not going to be basically a good shot at a billion in enterprise value, it's just not fundable in most VC models. And for that reason, if you build something that caps out at 10 million or 20 million or something like that, it's not consequential enough for a VC to be able to back it with the portfolio model and the rationale and everything we've promised to our LPs and so on. So I think it's a different model, but I think there's a huge opportunity in building something specifically for that.

33:00I don't know exactly what the portfolio model would look like and the ticket sizes and offerings, but I'm just feeling like the agency that is with people that are technically minded and understand the market and trends and just want to run with it, I think the opportunity for backing them with a bit of money and assistance so that they're free to do and go all in, I think there's something incredible there. Yeah. I think for some, it's almost only like a couple of months of runway. I don't have to pay my apartment. I'm intro to some people. I think there's also a really big opportunity to build a very strong brand around that because you have this new huge class of people that are not planning to go to Y Combinator, right?