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

18:11Julian Weisser:The thing I think that you're touching on there, which I think is really worth sort of double clicking on, is this idea that the factory isn't something that like somebody like grabs grabs the founder by the collar and brings them to the factory. No, the founders, like, they walk into the factory on their own. And, like, you know, sometimes it's by persuasion. You know, sometimes it's because they think that, like, well, they don't know what they're doing. So maybe you should follow the standard way of doing things. But, like, it's not, like, a thing that's, like, imposed by somebody onto the founders.

18:49Julian Weisser:Like, the founders are, like, just as culpable about this as well, right? And, like, I totally get it. Like, I empathize with founders who kind of find themselves. They look up after a year and they realize, wait, I've been building a factory startup when maybe I should have been ignoring a lot of this stuff and I shouldn't have done the things that I did, but I did them because it seemed like that's what everybody expected of me. I will say that your point about VCs is like the average VC is a terrible VC, right? Like, and that's not to say that there aren't great VCs. Quite, quite honestly, like they're incredible VCs, similar to there being incredible companies, right?

19:26Julian Weisser:But the average company is a dead company. The average VC is probably a dead VC too, right? Like they're the walking dead. VCs are able to be dead for a lot longer than startups, but not actually appear dead to the outside world. And I think that oftentimes also like the best VCs, they understand that the shape of the business is so different depending on the company, because they've been around enough great companies to know that. And I will say that, you know, from my perspective, building ODF, we've seen so many, you talked about sort of, oh, wow, so many companies have raised lots of money.

20:04Julian Weisser:So many companies in ODF have absolutely failed, like terribly, right? And I think that that's just as valuable when it comes to looking at the failures as when it comes to looking at all the incredible successes coming out of ODF, right? Because the successes, they all looked very different. The failures, they all looked very similar. and you know ultimately I think that I think that like having that large sample size is actually really helpful if you're a VC though and you're investing in only let's say 10 companies a year max you're not going to get that much of a sample size that you're actually close to so therefore you're going to be probably handing out fairly generic advice if you're a bad VC but if you're a great VC and you see what winning looks like over you know a multi-decade career then you're going to give probably much better advice and much better feedback and also understand that the businesses that you're investing in or thinking about investing in are going to look very different.

21:00David J. Phillips:Yeah. Yeah. And so you mentioned, you know, startups on average or, you know, the immediate startup dies, right? And so you've seen a lot of startups blow up as well. What are some of the, you know, the most common themes you see in these like startup implosions?

21:19Julian Weisser:Yeah. I mean, And it's funny that you ask that because I think the obvious one is co-founders, right? Co-founders are often the main reason that startups fail. There's a good argument to make that the reason that the great companies that have co-founders succeed are because of the co-founders as well. So I'm not trying to diminish and say that co-founders are bad. Like if anybody is listening to this or watching this and comes away with Julian and thinks that co-founders are bad, that's not true at all. What they need to understand if they're listening or watching is that I think that co-founders, you have to have a much higher bar for that.

21:55Julian Weisser:And I think that when you talk to lots of solo founders, it's very infrequent that you hear somebody say, oh no, fuck co-founders. Like that's a terrible, terrible idea. Like never have a co-founder. No, everybody's saying that the average company that has a co-founder is impaired because they have a co-founder. If you have a truly amazing co-founder, then that's a great thing. But the reality is you don't want to try and force it. You don't want to try and have a co-founder for the sake of having it. So that's the first thing. It's like co-founders kill companies. The second thing is companies run out of hope often way before they run out of money.

22:32Julian Weisser:And, you know, the reasons that they run out of hope are varied. Co-founders and sort of internal disputes are tough. I would say though, that it's not just that co-founders break up or have these disagreements. It's also that, um, in the best of times, co-founders kind of can lift the others up, right? They could, if one of them is struggling, the other way can help them up, but you could also have this doom loop with co-founders, right? Where, you know, uh, everybody's bummed and feeling badly. It's like, well, if everybody's feeling badly and like, you're kind of pulling each other down, that, that makes it even harder to get out of that, like that pit of sorrow.

23:09Julian Weisser:Right. Um, so ultimately, uh, I think it's like, how can you maintain hope? I think the only way you can maintain hope is by having people in your corner, um, who have context on who you are, what you care about, why you care about it. Um, the things that you want to do in the world. And then ultimately, um, you know, I think that that's like, I think that having a great co-founder is good again, but like having people who are outside of it, right. That could be a partner, you know, like a romantic partner, a relationship. It could be, um, it could be people who are other, other founders, right?

23:44Julian Weisser:Other founders. It could be somebody who's, uh, somebody who's like supporting you, um, who's, who you're really close to on your cap table or something like that. And, and ultimately I think that people who have a good amount of perspective on what you're doing, but, but are not like in there with you can be really helpful because they have just enough, um enough context to know man it's going tough right now but at the same time they don't have all the context to like wallow in it with you and they have the ability to be empathetic but also but also say hey you can do this like you can keep going you know you haven't run out of money you you are you are low in the in the tank when it comes to to hope but the reality is like you're only a few clicks away.

24:31Julian Weisser:And like, you know, you can, like, if you can get over this hill, you might be able, you might be able to really find something great. And there are some companies that I've known over the years that have struggled a lot and they've managed to, to, to make it through just because they had a little bit of people outside who believed, who said to keep going. I think that the other thing we've talked about this in the past is like some investors will, will discourage you and tell you to stop. And then others will say like, hey, like, we're supporting you. We're not supporting sort of like the company that we invested in.

25:07Julian Weisser:We're supporting like the founder that we invested in. Yeah. So I think that that's valuable as well. Yeah.

25:11David J. Phillips:And it's funny because that is really, I mean, that's the best advice a VC can give to a founder in that moment of pivoting or it's, you know, anything other than that is almost going to just be a net loss for that VC. But why do you think VCs are so quick to, some VCs are so quick to tell a company to shut down or not support them in a pivot?

25:37Julian Weisser:I think it's just, I think that VCs, the bad VCs, and again, the median VC is a bad VC. There are so many great VCs, but the bad ones, they really don't understand what it's like. Most of them have not run companies before. Like I would guess, again, I don't have any data to back this up, but I would guess that if someone was a founder of a true like startup where they made a real run of it, not to say that they were successful, but they made a real run of it and they built something and maybe it didn't work out, but they built something. I would suspect that those people, if you were just sort of isolate them out from all of the VCs who haven't actually started a company themselves, that they are probably significantly better at supporting founders at the toughest moments.

26:30Julian Weisser:Um, they might not be the best at running a fund. Like I'm not, try to say that like they're they're always the best fund managers but um but like purely isolating it out for like are they the best to help founders i think that like the average vc who was a founder is probably more likely to be able to support founders in the tough moments of course like there are so many great legendary vcs in fact who weren't founders and who are good at supporting founders but i think if you just looked at the median you would see the ones who are founders have have more likelihood of being supportive and helpful in those times on the solo founding sort of

27:06David J. Phillips:a data set that you guys put together recently with Carta. We're seeing like a huge trend in solo founding. Can you tell us a little bit about some of those trends?

27:15Julian Weisser:Yeah. I mean, look, like, so our belief is that solo founding has always been possible. You look at, you know, like eBay, you look at Amazon, Craigslist and Craigslist has the guy's name in it. That's pretty cool. Right. They're, they're, they're like a complete anomaly. I hope to have Craig Newmark on this show at some point. Absolutely fascinating story there. You look at all these great companies in the past. It was always possible. Certainly harder, but it was always possible. Now it's more possible than ever before. And you actually look at the data and you say, wow, solo founding is on the rise.

27:54Julian Weisser:For the first time ever last year, it was more than one in three companies were solo founded, which is pretty big. And if you look five years ago, it was under 25%. So you went from under one quarter to over one third. And I think it was five years. Pretty big, right? Pretty big. The real question isn't, is it on the rise? It's what's holding it back. And I think what's holding it back is less the actual possibility of being a solo founder, because again, it was always possible and less technological limitations. Like AI is already good enough. It's just this notion that, you know, you need to have a co-founder in order to be successful.

28:30Julian Weisser:And that really comes to sort of this topic that I always think about, which is denominator delusion. We think about how startups, the most successful startups have co-founders. That's what people say, right? That's a common refrain. The most successful startups have co-founders. How about the least successful startups? What do they look like? Most of the failed companies have co-founders as well. So usually people look at the numerator, the successes but they failed to look at the number of failures and they failed to look at just how many of those failures um were were not just not just companies that had co-founders but also failed because of the co-founders right so there's this sort of built up kind of uh bias or misunderstanding about solo founding it's going to go away we're we're working on that um all the founders who are out there doing it now, like if you're watching this, like I am such a, such a big fan of what you're doing.

29:30Julian Weisser:Um, I think it's just so important that you are out there spreading the word about solo founding. Um, you know, you, even if you're not talking about being a solo founder and you're a solo founder, you were doing so much good for the world because you're encouraging other people just by your actions to go and do that. So thank you. If you're watching this and you're a solo founder today, you are actually leading this future where people are actually able to do way more than maybe a society or the tech industry thought that they were capable of. And because of you, there are going to be so many more people who start companies because they're no longer having this limited belief where they think that they need to have a co-founder in order to get started.

30:14Julian Weisser:They're going to start great companies. They're going to change the world. So the solo founders who are out there doing this right now, they're doing so much good for the world, not just their own companies, but with being role models for all these other people who are gonna come in there, you know, and they're behind them. I think the other thing that you're saying is, you know, ultimately there's going to be this flippening happen where there is a default change, right, where we go from default co-founder to default solo founder. And I think that that can't come soon enough, to be quite honest.

30:44Julian Weisser:It's happening.

30:45David J. Phillips:I mean, it might be in the next five years that we'll see the flippening.

30:48Julian Weisser:I would be well surprised if it wasn't way under that.

30:51David J. Phillips:Yeah. Wow. So you help a lot of companies throughout their founding journeys from starting to, you know, scaling. How do you advise companies on when is the right time to raise a seed round?

31:06Julian Weisser:That's a good question. So, again, I think it's so dependent on the company. I think it's dependent on the person's background. The reality is, you know, if the shape of the business calls for funding because you really need funding, well, then you're going to do it sooner, right? If you can get to lots of revenue, then maybe you don't need to. So if somebody feels like they need to hire or something like that, I think the first thing to ask is, like, do you really need to hire or are you just lonely, right? Because sometimes I talk to people and they say, oh, yeah, I need to go and raise because I need to hire.

31:39Julian Weisser:I'm like, why do you need to hire? and they're like, well, that's what you do, right? You hire for your company. And then I'm like, well, maybe, right? Like at some point, presumably you will. There's actually this, I was having dinner, and we'll have to have you over for one of these dinners. We have these dinners with solo founders. And it was a really interesting group at this dinner. Two of the people that were there was, and they've both actually been on the podcast, Ben from Pulsia and Yasser from Chatbase. and I came up with this sort of naming convention, the types of solo founders. And one of the types of solo founders is what I call true solo.

32:21Julian Weisser:True solo is they have literally no human teammates. And that's Ben from Pulsia. He has all of these AI agents and all this like sophisticated orchestration happening. And he's gotten the company to like 6 million in annualized run rate. It's crazy, right?

32:37David J. Phillips:it has been awesome to follow that since he's been on your podcast right he came on your podcast when

32:41Julian Weisser:he was at like 1.5 million so that's actually funny we recorded it a couple of days before uh it was 600k by the time we published it was 1.5 million and then he then he got to like 6 billion um you know and and i i'm not actually sure where he's at now the um but the main thing is true solo no human teammates right i think that's still going to be an outlier for a while right i think that there's this whole idea of the one person billion dollar company that insane that

33:07David J. Phillips:we are today able to like that that's happening they're even talking about it yeah it's it's it's really impressive i mean i mean two years ago no way yeah right totally maybe even a year ago um but polsting is a great example of that sort of like the future is coming faster than we expect

33:24Julian Weisser:so that's the first type of uh solo founding true solo uh again the anomaly right now uh but maybe maybe more common in the future. I think so. The next is what we call free solo. And that's Yasser from chat base. It means that they have bootstrapped solo. They have teammates, but they bootstrapped. And Yasser's story is incredible because he's gotten to such a point where he is a venture scale company. He has hit venture scale metrics over three years of building this. He's at 9 million ARR, maybe even more by the time this is published. and he has this incredible story of you know just starting off with this insight and this problem space and growing the company organically but over three years to nine million ar is really significant um so that's free solo the next and the last one is what we call juiced solo um this is the people who've raised money you know they're juicing um they they would you would you would say that they're kind of like at the um you know peter teal has the uh the Olympics for people who are on all sorts of drugs or something.

34:28Julian Weisser:Um, that's kind of, that's kind of the version.

34:30David J. Phillips:And then of course you could be, you could be juiced and free, uh, you know, uh, or juiced and true, um, not juiced and free, uh, organic juice.

34:39Julian Weisser:Yeah. I mean like there's, um, there's something to be said about, like there's different ways of building companies. Um, there's a whole term of like seed strapping. Um, I think that, uh, I, I sort of am of the mindset that it really is so dependent on the type of business. Uh, I think it would have been a mistake, uh, for Yasser to have raised money at any point up until now, because now he has complete control over the future of this company. And he can decide what he wants to do. I think that very often, people don't realize that taking money is a commitment. It's a commitment to a very specific type of outcome.

35:13Julian Weisser:And depending on the fund that you're raising from, they have very different expectations about how they're going to be involved with your company going forward, right? So some people don't realize that, hey, if I raise$500K or$1 million or$2 million or$3 million from a fund that is$2 billion AUM, they don't even care right now. All they care about is potentially you're one of the companies that they put$50 million into in the future or$100 million into. Because the$2 million or$3 million isn't actually going to return their fund or even come close to it. and then you know there's there's the other funds that they only invest in one round and they're just really excited about you growing but they also have some sort of internal view of kind of how they're underwriting that investment and thinking about it so you just want to be really aware of kind of not just like when you should fundraise but who you're fundraising from and

36:03David J. Phillips:and why you're doing it yeah I mean that's such a good point um it's always uh it's always tough I think to know when you should raise but I think that those are some really good points you know why do we want to get on the hiring treadmill? You know, I think raising money oftentimes means immediately growing the team and thinking that hiring people are going to solve your problems, but that's not really the case. You still have to figure out a lot as the founder, as the founding team. So yeah, raising money can create a lot of problems sometimes for these companies. So yeah, back to solo founding.

36:40David J. Phillips:What do you think are some of the tailwinds for solo founding today?

36:44Julian Weisser:I mean, the obvious one is AI. I think that the main one though, honestly, is just like the more solo founders there are, the more it becomes normalized. And that's really why we're doing this. Solo founders is obviously like, we are a business. We want to be successful. We want to back great solo founders and work with them really closely. but at the end of the day we think of ourselves as a political organization as much as we are uh you know uh you know a business like we think it's really important to go out there and say hey this is this is like the future and it is something that a lot of people are still skeptical of but we only we not only think it's part of the future we think it is like the default for the future and if we can encourage more people to do that and bring that future forward then obviously that will be beneficial for the entire ecosystem.

37:38Julian Weisser:That will be beneficial for us as a business. But I think mostly, and the thing that I care about more than anything else, maybe I shouldn't say this because, you know, it might feel like it's, you know, like, shouldn't you think more about like the business? But I think that for me, really, like the main thing is, I think that there is something incredibly special about making things and putting things out there into the world that are truly representative of who you are, what you care about, you know, the things that you want to do. Doing, like, startups are just as much a form of art as, you know, painting or as starting a band.

38:17Julian Weisser:And the really cool thing about it is that when you build a startup, even if you have co-founders, but especially if you're a solo founder, when you build a startup, it is truly what you're about if you want it to be if you let it be but if you don't let it be if you kind of follow the factory model if you kind of I call this like contortionism right if you contort yourself well then you're doing yourself this huge disservice right the world is a place where it is desiring of people to go out and do things that are unique that are special to them. And some of those things will really resonate.

38:57Julian Weisser:And some of those things will have a huge impact, right? If you contort yourself, if you do anything less than try to do the thing that is unique to you, unique to your experiences, unique to your background, unique to your interests, if you do anything less than that, it's not just a disservice to yourself, it's a disservice to the world. And the reason I do solo founders is because I feel like we want to encourage more people to do the thing that is in service of themselves, that is in service of the world. And, you know, I think that there are a lot of ways you can do things that are of service to the world that aren't startups.

39:35Julian Weisser:But I think this is a really big way to do it. And that's the reason that I'm so passionate about it. Yeah, amazing.

39:42David J. Phillips:Okay, so I want to jump into a couple of special questions here that you do on your podcast, uh, that would be fun to do here. So, um, first we're going to go over, um, you know, what's the bear case for solo founding? Um, and, and then, um, you know, have a little fun with that and then go into, uh, yeah, what's the bull case. So, so yeah, let's start with what's the bear case. Why shouldn't you, um, be a solo founder?

40:08Julian Weisser:So I, I love, um, When I recorded an episode with Paul from BrowserBase, he like looked at the camera instead of looking at me in the interview. He spoke directly to the people who are watching. So maybe I'll mimic Paul and do the exact same thing. The reality is that being a solo founder is extremely difficult because you have no sort of like motivational force that can truly match having a truly exceptional co-founder. if you wake up in the morning and you're not feeling it it is so much harder to do that when you're by yourself and you don't have other people who could be like the ones who are kind of motivating you because if you have a co-founder you know the best co-founder relationships are these ones where you are trying to outdo the other person it's a competition to see who can do the most to sort of further the mission, not competition in a negative way, competition in a positive way, right?

41:09Julian Weisser:They want to be the best person in that co-founder relationship. And you want to be that best person in that co-founder relationship. And you know that you need to step it up and you need to go and do this stuff, not just for yourself, but in for your business and for your customers, but also for your co-founder. When you don't have that, it's extremely difficult. And I think you have to be built differently. In fact, to be able to really handle that and be able to motivate yourself in the times when, you know, you don't really necessarily have the organic motivation. You had a really big setback with the business.

41:42Julian Weisser:Something outside of the business is fucked up. You know, you're trying to figure it out. You have something going on in your life outside of work. Startups are all-encompassing until something really rough happens outside of your startup. and they're like, wow, it isn't all encompassing. Like the external world is there and I have to, I have to deal with that. You know, if you don't have that ability and that support system, it is extremely difficult. And I think that some people can handle it. I think that others just cannot. I think it's really hard. I think another reason that being a solo founder is just really, really bad is because, um, at the end of the day, you don't necessarily have the ability to, um, to like ask somebody who's truly on your side, like fully ride or die with you.

42:36Julian Weisser:Like, what should we do? Like, am I, am I actually approaching this the right way? You can have other people, but like, it is, it is truly something that you will not have an act. You will, you will have a co-founder shaped hole, um, in your, in your, in your, in your life. And you just have to acknowledge that. Um, it's not to say that it's not surmountable. Like there are so many great solo founders out there and, uh, and, and like people can do great work without it, but I think it's just worth acknowledging that it's tough. Like you are, as you've said in the past, you are playing on hard mode and, uh, you just have to be ready for that.

43:12David J. Phillips:Yeah. Amazing. um okay now let's talk about the bull case why should you go solo so the case for solo

43:19Julian Weisser:is is really just this idea that you can go out there and you can make something that's truly you know one of one that is your thing um you no longer have to try and find people initially uh who will join you on working on your thing that's that's really good because ultimately the thing that's most important of all is that you actually build something for other people you don't need to build something that necessarily recruits talent to work on your company right now. You just need to build something that people who will be paying for whatever it is that you're making or using whatever it is that you're making, that it just really lights them up.

43:56Julian Weisser:So you don't have to worry about investors. You don't have to worry about teammates or co-founders or anything like that. You can just go and do the thing that you really care about and find to make sure that it actually is something that other people care about. So I think that that's like the biggest piece of it is that this is like this is your show this is your thing you can bring on amazing people to help you build like your vision and it becomes their vision as well and they adopt it too so it's not to say that like the team doesn't have authorship the team has incredible authorship but by that point you've already sort of created kind of like you know you've already created the character you've already created sort of the thing it's kind of like think about how many people have contributed to the Batman comic series, right?

44:41Julian Weisser:Like Batman was created by one person, but like the incredible lore of the universe of Batman is so big. In fact, you look at Christopher Nolan, he's so strongly identified with Batman. I bet you if you asked a bunch of people who created Batman, maybe some people would think that Christopher Nolan did it, right? Like there's so many different people who can contribute to like the broad vision, but you have this ability to create that initial character, that initial thing that other people can go run with. I think that's just so wonderful. So I think that that's like one of the main cases for it.

45:12Julian Weisser:I think the other is that you have such an incredible way to build a team that's just different than if you had co-founders. Something that Eugenia, who was the founder of Replica and Wabi said that just stuck out to me in such a way I can never forget it. And it's something that I'd never heard of before. There's this idea that having a co-founder or co-founders creates three layers on a company versus being solo has too. So her whole thing is there's the CEO co-founder, then there's the other co-founders, and then there's the founding team. And that kind of like creates a separation between the CEO co-founder and the founding team because there's that middle layer.

45:48Julian Weisser:And she thinks that it's just really beautiful to have this CEO founder and then founding team. You remove that sort of layer in between and the founding team just has so much more authorship and so much more sort of authority and is so much closer to the CEO that it's really just this great situation. So I think, and then of course, like the way that you incentivize people, the equity that you can give is so much greater than if you were already splitting your company multiple ways with co-founders. So I think there's just so many benefits to it. But I think if I were to sort of just like narrow it down to the one thing, it's that the company only dies if you do, right?

46:28Julian Weisser:Like the main reason that companies fail is because they run out of hope. it's a lot harder to manage somebody else's hope than it is to manage your own. You know, if you're trying to tread water and stay above water while things are tough, it's a lot harder to, you know, to also help somebody else stay up. So in the good times, they might be the one who's handing you the life raft, but in the bad times, it might be actually hard for both of you to stay afloat. So I think that there's just so much positive reasons to be a solo founder. I think the main one is also you just get started. right you don't have to wait you don't have to uh you don't have to try and convince somebody else just get started get going talk to people who you think really care about what you're making

47:13David J. Phillips:and just make it happen i love it i love that uh okay last question um so uh let's say the podcast ends we're walking uh walking out the door uh what do you wish that we covered uh today yeah

47:30Julian Weisser:So I think that the last thing I will say is that, um, is that like, I think that if you, if you think about it, the, the most important thing is actually, uh, if you're, and this is, this is going to read as an advert, I will say for solo founders program, but I think it's, I think it's absolutely true is that there is a big difference between being solo alone versus being solo together. And the most important thing you could do is have people in your corner, uh, who have context on what it is that you're working on, who are not actually co-founders to you, but who care about you, who know what you're doing and who will push you.

48:02Julian Weisser:Um, and they will push you in the way that a founder will push another founder because they know that founders don't like things sort of, they don't like, they don't like being fed sort of a bunch of bullshit. They want to actually get like real people pushing on them in a real way, uh, being blunt with them because they know that that's like the actual truth and anything less than that is actually not just unhelpful, it's actually counterproductive. So being solo together means having a lot of people who are in your corner and who really wants to support you, but also won't pull any punches.

48:35David J. Phillips:Yeah, I love it. I love solo together. I mean, you mentioned it earlier about the value of being with a group of people that are pushing themselves. And I think that's such a huge value of the residency program with solo founders of being in a group of highly ambitious solo founders that are pushing the limits of many things. And yeah, they're in your corner. It's incredible. So yeah, congratulations on one year of solo founders. And yeah, we're excited for what's coming next.

49:05Julian Weisser:Awesome, man. Thank you for being part of it.

49:06David J. Phillips:Yeah, thanks, Julian.

49:08Julian Weisser:If you enjoyed this conversation, we would love it if you can share solo founders with everyone you know, particularly people who are considering starting companies solo or who are already doing it. You know, the entire goal of what we do is to normalize solo founding, encourage more people to solo found instead of end up with co-founding convenience. If you'd like, and we'd really appreciate it, you can go leave a review on Apple, you can go give us a thumbs up, you can subscribe on the YouTube channel, anything helps. And of course, if you are starting a company or considering starting a company, you should go look at the solo founders program.

49:40Julian Weisser:We work together with you in San Francisco alongside of a bunch of other solo founders. The idea is it's much better to be solo together than to be solo alone. I'll spend a lot of time helping you. And we also invest$100 ,000 in your company. So if you're excited to learn more about that, go check out solofounders.com