I Asked 5 Massively Successful Founders Why They Went Solo

0:00Yasser Elsaid:We've done 12 episodes, not including the one where David from Fondo interviewed me about solo founders. And what I wanted to do is actually just go through and talk about some of the things that have been covered so far, because we've covered just a lot of ground with a lot of different types of solo founders and an investor. And I thought it would be great for us to just actually look at some of the things that, you know, might have been buried inside of each episode and actually maybe pull on them a little bit and also kind of draw lines between the different conversations that we've had. So without further ado, let's just jump straight into it.

0:34Yasser Elsaid:The first clip that we're going to look at is from Ben. And Ben is the founder of Pulsia. Pulsia just announced a pretty incredible raise,$30 million at a$250 million valuation. The company has not been around for very long, but it has rocketed to$10 million in annualized revenue. And he's also what I describe as true solo, someone who has literally no human teammates. He's just working with him and AI. And he, of course, works with some contractors as well. But it's literally just him full-time as the only full-time human. So let's go to this clip that Ben has here. Essentially, I think in 2026, if you have a new company and you now make it 80 % autonomous, meaning 80 % of the operations and engineering and marketing day-to-day is not done by AI, you will be cooked because if it's a good idea someone else will apply that and they will beat you because they'll go faster cheaper um but like what is the 20 right the 20 is taste creativity uh direction uh sort of like just like guiding the ai to towards something that's meaningful to other humans.

1:56Yasser Elsaid:This is really interesting because what Ben is saying when he says taste and guiding the AI, it really is judgment, right? What humans can do really well and what creative people can do really well is have judgment, have opinions. And what Ben is doing with Pulsia, even though he has so many AI agents helping him build the company and helping other people build their companies using Pulsia is he is applying his own opinions, his own judgment, his own taste, and then directing the agents in that direction. If someone else were to have the exact same scaffolding for building a company as Ben does, they would still end up with a very different company because the input of what he as the solo founder, the true only person on the team, means that ultimately the result of the input is a very different type of output.

2:55Yasser Elsaid:And we are seeing so much that is possible from one individual, not just as solo founders, but individual teammates at a company, what they're able to do using the tools now that are available to them. And the creative use of these tools and the creative inputs into these tools drive really creative outputs. He has this really incredible perspective around automating 80 % of what you do at a company and then saving the 20 % for the human sort of in-the-loop, human judgment, human opinion, human taste. And I think that's a really good model. Obviously, it's somewhat used in a spicy way and it's sort of like a Pareto principle approach there, right?

3:40Yasser Elsaid:And the 80-20 rule. But at the same time, I think there's something really to be said for it. And I think we are moving to that world. I think the other thing I would say is that while he's talking about 80 and 20, we're also able to really amplify both what the 80 % is and what the 20 % is, because the amount that we're able to accomplish because of the tools that we have right now is really significant. So it's pretty exciting to see. I think that this actually transitions really nicely into the next clip, which is a conversation with Paul, who is the founder of BrowserBase. And he talks a lot about this idea of solo and judgment and taste and also sort of authorship and voice.

4:22Yasser Elsaid:So we should talk a little bit more about this. But first, let's roll the clip.

4:26Paul Klein IV:All in all, I think it just requires a degree of very high self-awareness to build a culture as a solo founder. But it's also really beautiful because it's so direct. It's you to the company. There's only one layer of alignment. When you have co-founders, you have to be aligned to your co-founder and then the co-founder and you need to be aligned to the company. That's much more complex and a little bit more muddled. You don't know which person is feeling insecure. Therefore, the company's feeling insecure about a feature. I know if I'm feeling insecure about something, the company will pick that up and I'll see that in some way that we're investing or some hedge that someone's doing.

4:59Paul Klein IV:I can't hide my emotions and the company picks on that vibe. So I think it's really beautiful. I think it actually allows to build stronger cultures when you have a solo founder because the clarity is there. The clarity alignment is there all the time, every single day.

5:13Yasser Elsaid:I think there's something really special about what Paul's saying. And, you know, Eugenia, who is the founder of Wabi and Replica, you also use the word beautiful to describe sort of the aspect of building a company as a solo founder. And I don't really think you hear the word beautiful thrown around in any way other than sort of talking about aesthetics typically when it comes to startups. Oh, it's a beautiful design. But I think that the way that people describe sort of the design of a solo founded company, they use the word beautiful. And I think that there is something true about that. And part of the beauty is in the simplicity.

5:49Yasser Elsaid:The idea that when you're a solo founder, you are sort of the one sort of voice that the team has to look to as sort of like the main voice. When you have co-founders, especially early on, there could be a lot of ambiguity around who actually makes the call. In some ways, having multiple co-founders in a positive situation could mean that people are really pushing each other on their decisions and things like that. But in the less positive scenario, it just creates a lot of ambiguity around who to trust, who actually makes the decision. And it actually makes it quite difficult, especially for early team members, to actually know what to do.

6:33Yasser Elsaid:So I think Paul has some really good points about how clarity is something that is much more in control when it's just coming from one person as a solo founder. I think that, you know, that probably transitions us pretty nicely to looking at what Charles Hudson, who is the only so far investor that we've had on the Solo Founders podcast, has to say about solo founding versus co-founding and the benefits around solo founding and maybe some of the potential drawbacks around having a co-founder?

7:06Charles Hudson:I've told a lot of people, my preference in life is two really deeply connected, tightly coupled co-founders who have a lot of trust and previous experience. Even those teams can break up and blow up. Sure. But I think maybe that's the platonic ideal. The second best thing, and the third isn't even close, is a really talented solo founder. I would take a really talented solo founder over a mismatched team.

7:31Yasser Elsaid:So I think there's something really fascinating, which is happening more and more, which is that at one time, there was the belief that you needed to have a co-founder in order to even start a company, let alone potentially be successful with one. And the reason that we started solo founders is because we really rejected that. We rejected the idea that you needed to have a co-founder in order to be successful, and especially that you need to have a co-founder in order to even get started. The thing that Charles touches on, which I still believe is very true, even though we are all about solo founders, is that if for some reason you happen to have the absolutely perfect co-founder for you, it makes a lot of sense to strongly consider working with that person.

8:20Yasser Elsaid:But here's the reality. Most people do not have that. What they actually have is they have somebody who they feel like they need to bring on in order to maybe convince investors that they're backable or because they feel like it's going to be lonely to be a solo founder. All these different reasons that aren't actually about having a great, like perfect co-founder match, but are because you feel like there is some need to actually have a co-founder outside of the fact that this person is the absolute ideal co-founder match for you. If we eliminate that belief that you need to have the absolute perfect co-founder, as Charles said, it's way, way, way better to have a solo founder than two co-founders who are really only co-founding out of convenience.

9:13Yasser Elsaid:And if you look at the reason that companies fail, it's because of co-founders typically, right? In the early days, about two-thirds of companies fail because of co-founders. So you really want to make sure that if you have a co-founder, it's for the right reasons. And if you don't have a co-founder, don't fret. Actually feel good about it. Know that you're making the intelligent decision and make sure that you go out there, you get the support system. That's why we built the Solo Founders Program in the first place, by the way, is this idea of solo together so that I could work with the solo founders and they could work with each other.

9:50Yasser Elsaid:But get a support system in place and work really, really hard to make sure that you are doing things for the right reasons, not just because you think that's what investors want to see. Co-founders are very often because you think that's what investors want to see or because you think that is sort of the normal way of doing things. The reality is don't do it unless you know it's a great, great fit. I want to go to the next part of this, which is part of our conversation with Eugenia. And the reason I want to go to this next clip is because I think it fits really nicely in to the flow that we have, which is we were just talking about how Charles was saying that it's much better to be solo than have a co-founder of convenience.

10:37Yasser Elsaid:Well, at the same time, The reason that solo founders, in my opinion, are so compelling is because they are always building from something very personal to them or very often building from something very personal to them. And if you have co-founders, it's very unlikely that all of the co-founders will have the same level of connection to the problem. So why don't we go to the clip from Eugenia, founder of Wabi and Replica.

11:04Eugenia Kuyda:Oh, for me, it's completely a personal story. Like for me, it's just the most personal thing that can exist. But as we know, what's most personal is the most universal. So that resonated with so many people. Really, I grew up like a pretty lonely kid. I was an only child. My parents was extremely young. So they were kind of off doing their own thing very early on in my life. So I just remember myself writing like bad poetry and skateboarding and smoking joints and just kind of, you know, figuring shit out on my own. and it felt really lonely all my life. So when I found some of these friends that, you know, these relationships with me, they kind of, sorry, with my friends in my 20s, that kind of became my family.

11:46Eugenia Kuyda:They kind of became my family. And so those relationships were really transformational for me. And so when I lost kind of one of them and everything kind of fell apart from there, that's where I felt like I want to recreate that. I want to recreate that friendship that allow me to feel a little bit less alone. I want to create it for other people because I know what it feels like.

12:09Yasser Elsaid:Something that she said there that really resonates with me is this idea that the personal is actually the universal. And I like to say that startups in their best form are very often a type of art similar to an album or a painting or a book or a film. And often the best books, at least the best fiction or the best songs, they have some aspect of storytelling that tells a story of an individual. It tells a personal story. Now, it might not be the personal story of the director, but it's a personal story of a character. And that personal story resonates with people who don't actually have that personal story because the personal, as Eugenia is saying, is universal.

12:54Yasser Elsaid:So this idea that you can have some personal experience that then lends itself to building a really beautiful and important business makes a lot of sense to me. And I think that it's very easy for you to go from the idea of having a personal experience that informs an idea that you're working on and then go to convincing mode, trying to convince co-founders to join you or trying to convince investors to back you. But the reality is, if you actually just go from that personal experience and make something and then go to the people who would actually use it, instead of trying to go and convince investors or potential co-founders or potential hires, you start with the people who are actually going to use it.

13:39Yasser Elsaid:That means that you have the opportunity to create that resonance. And once you have that resonance, well, then it makes it a lot easier to get investors on board, make hires, that sort of thing, because they have seen how the personal went to the universal. And if you're a solo founder, unless you absolutely need funding, it's much better to get started by getting out there and getting to the people where you can take that personal experience and create that thing that has more universal resonance. Now, I want to go to the next one, which I think is actually a really good, again, I think the curation here that Ari has done with some of these clips is really great.

14:18Yasser Elsaid:He's now pulled a clip here from Daniel. And Daniel has a really interesting perspective on how to think about the mission that you're working on. And I think that this is a really good one because not every company needs to have this sort of life or death mission, but I think it can certainly help. It can help you stay motivated and it can also help motivate the team and make just people really excited about what you're working on. So let's see what this clip is. there's a lot of studies about the impact of marginal officers on the homicide rate and with how effective our software is at saving report writing time the math shakes out that basically every 115 officers on our platform one life gets saved per year i could fire someone who's not measuring up like if the software is 10 worse and we got you know 1 ,100 people on the platform, then you just killed someone.

15:15Yasser Elsaid:I think there's something really important for some people to have this sense that their work not only matters from a business perspective, but happens to matter for something outside of that. And it's really, really motivating to know that your work is going to be saving lives, or your work is going to be helping people with chronic illnesses, right? If you can do things that actually have that connection or just help people run their small business, if you can do something where you actually feel some level of connection and responsibility for the people that you're serving, it's extremely motivating.

15:54Yasser Elsaid:It also is extremely clarifying, as Daniel said, because now if somebody is not performing, they're actually actively harming people in the real world. that example that he gave of if people are underperforming at his company causes people to die out in the real world it's a good reason to let that person go and to build a great team and i think that that is extremely he calls it aligning and i think it is right because ultimately that means that you have this opportunity to create something that other people will look at and they'll say you know what i am going to be very serious at this company because I understand the consequences of not being serious or not working hard enough are really, really severe.

16:42Yasser Elsaid:So it's a really great way to think about things. And I think it's a good perspective when you're thinking about the types of things that you want to solve. And also the different ways that you may or may not be feeling motivation. Some people don't need that to be motivated, but for some people it really helps them. I want to go to maybe one or two more clips and let's maybe go talking with Yasser. Yasser just announced something pretty remarkable. He announced 10 million ARR. He is a solo founder who bootstrapped his company. And that is really remarkable because you see a lot of these people that are called solopreneurs and they might make a million dollars a year.

17:26Yasser Elsaid:Some of them have lots of different sort of small projects that kind of add up to pretty substantial revenue and substantial profits all the time. But Yasser is one of the few people who's not only bootstrapped, but he's also bootstrapped to a point where he has a really sizable team and a really sizable business, a business that by anybody's standards would be considered a venture scale business. Yet he built it starting out in a college dorm room in Canada into a$10 million annual recurring revenue business. So let's hear what Yasser has to say about all of this. I think he's a really good example of following a different type of path, even though the actual sort of outcome here of building a venture-scale business without the venture is still something that's very achievable, at least in his case.

18:14Yeah, I think the case for solo founding is that it's very hard to lose, i think like i think that companies go out of business or like startups they they crash because i think the biggest reason is co-founder breakup because if you don't have breakup you can just like pivot or you can just you know like try to raise more money or you can just like there's a lot of other options but co-founder breakup when it happens then like you have to that's it like the company's not going to work out um in in most cases i think i i mentioned this before i think having an amazing founder is better than having no co-founders, but having a slightly below average co-founder is much, much worse than being solo.

19:00Yasser Elsaid:I think this just goes back to what Charles Hudson was talking about, but instead of it being the investor perspective, it's the founder perspective, which is, yes, if you have this amazing co-founder, then yeah, it's really worth considering, but it is so much worse to have a co-founder of convenience. And you can accomplish so much as a solo founder. You could hire amazing people once you do need to scale and add humans. Because I think that a lot of businesses still do need actual human teammates. Sorry, Ben from Pulsia. I know that you are trying to build true solo. By the way, Yasser, I describe him as building free solo, meaning he has no venture funding.

19:43Yasser Elsaid:but at the same time, he's building a venture scale business. I think this is a great time to wrap for now. This is a new format that we're experimenting with. We typically do these long form sit down conversations with amazing solo founders. We're going to continue to do that, but I thought it would be good for us to actually have more commentary instead of just letting the conversations go by, actually sit back and reflect on some of the pieces there. So I'd love to hear what you think about this. If you can give us some comments, if you can give us reviews, anything you can do to let us know how this is going.

20:18Yasser Elsaid:And also just tell people about this, right? And again, if you're actually looking at you're starting a company or you already are starting a company, you should check out the Solo Founders program. All of this stuff is over at solofounders.com. All right. Talk to you soon, everybody. Take care.