Turning Services Into Software To Move Talent To America | Minn Kim, Lighthouse

23:07Minn Kim:Maybe this is something we should co-create and put on the solo founders website. It could be. Yeah, that'd be really cool. If you're enjoying this conversation, then perhaps you're starting your own company. And if so, you should apply for the solo founders program. I spent the last seven years working with startups and founders who are figuring things out. And I'll tell you, the ones that make the most progress are the ones who make sure that they have relationships that can help them go the distance. The Solo Founders program is about bringing 10 solo founders together so that they can build solo together versus building solo alone.

23:38Minn Kim:I'll work with you, we'll invest$100 ,000 and we'll make sure that you make the most progress that you possibly can in three months. If that sounds interesting, you should learn more and apply it at solofounders.com slash program. A while back, you were talking about sort of the shape of the business and how you feel like the shape of this business that you're building at Lighthouse is one that you're really suited for. but other business shapes, maybe not. I think that very infrequently do we talk about shape of the business. And there's so many aspects of the shape of the business, right? It's the founder and whether they fit the shape of the business.

24:13Minn Kim:It's like, what is the capital structure required for the shape of the business? What is the team required for the shape of the business? And maybe we can talk a little bit about kind of all of those things as it relates to the shape of businesses, especially because, you know, you've worked with a lot of companies. You're not just a founder, you've been an investor, you've done a lot of things with the community. We were co-workers in a past life. So maybe you could share a little bit more about how you think about the shape of the business and how it informs the founder fit, how it informs team, and how it informs capital.

24:50Julian:I'm going to butcher, there's actually a concept, I think it's like the Finnaman's square or something like that. But I thought a lot about this actually. There are complicated businesses or there are complicated problems and there are complex problems. I am not the right person to solve complex problems, but I am a good person to solve complicated ones. And the difference there is that complicated problems, there's a point A and a point B. And point B, like where you want to be, is known. The question is, how do you get from point A to B in the most efficient, effective, whatever, choose your adjective.

25:34Julian:Complex problems don't know what point B looks like. And so these are like heavy R &D, like biotech, you know, is like one of them, I think, where, or like true kind of like science discovery to some degree like AGI is a complex problem because we don't really know what the end destination looks like. It could look in an infinite different ways. And so I think like my disposition is like a lot more suited to complicated problems where there's a very clear outcome. It's measurable. And so that means I can build backwards from where I wanted to look like, what I wanted to look like. And so I actually think so other analogous like businesses that I thought a lot of around were kind of like the likes of like an Uber or like a Tesla, right?

26:22Julian:Like these are not to say that I'm a good person to buy cars, but these are complicated problems. Like you, at the end of the day, you want to deliver to a customer a car. You are trying to get somebody a ride. If like your DoorDash, like you're trying to get somebody a delivery. And so the end outcome is known, measurable and discreet. and so how do you now do that in the most efficient effective way productive way um i like problems like that um because it feels like it's just like like an equation with like maybe in like lots like lots and lots of variables but they're all just knobs that you can turn um and i'll know if it's working because i'm getting to the outcome that i want faster cheaper better um like amazon i think is a good example of like another business like that like i would not be the right person to solve like you know cancer diagnostics via like drug discovery um both not my domain and also not I think like the kind of problem that I'm suited to build um but yeah and then I think capital structures probably correlate to some degree of that where yeah if it's a complex problem and you don't really know what the end outcome will be it's kind of a like if it works like hopefully that's like insane and amazing and it will like give birth to the Cambridge explosion of like diagnostics tools or something like that.

27:41Julian:That on one hand is really incredible because it's probably an open-ended market. Like that market might not exist at all today. And so it could be a trillion dollars. It could be 10 trillion dollars. It could be a hundred trillion dollars. Who knows? So it's really unbounded and that has its own benefits. Complicated problems often I think are can grow markets obviously like uh um like spacex basically like regrew a market to some degree um uh but there is a market usually it's just a matter of like how do you now navigate this market like way more um efficiently than anybody else and i think that there's something

28:22Minn Kim:also to be said about and i kind of call it like the the factory model of startups i think that like this idea that there are these general principles that should apply for most companies um i think that a lot of them like the most successful companies actually violate a lot of these general principles um and if you if you look at what you're doing with uh with lighthouse it's like okay um you started out building for a customer that you weren't like you didn't have any experience with this you started out selling a service um and it was a service where you weren't an expert um but you were but you were learning it as I go yeah as you go you then evolved it into a business uh like an actual business not sort of like a little side hustle um that most people would look at and say this isn't a venture scale business uh at least like at the start and then you also um you're also doing it as a solo founder right so like all of these things kind of go up against almost all of the prescriptions for how to build a company and yet i think that that's actually how you build really significant interesting companies um i'm curious um maybe if you could share sort of a little bit about your first experience like you know co-founding something kind of like how you thought about that and sort of juxtapose that with sort of the experience of deciding to go solo for for this company yeah yeah wow I did not realize how many

29:57Julian:how many anti like anti-story features I have there I started my first company with one of my best friends and I have so many lessons learned and I'm so grateful for that journey because of it um we ended up building a company together for about a year and a half uh um I think call it two ish months of um exploring things together um two three months or so um and and and one thing is we neither of us at the time um or both of us at the time like each individually were pursuing our own stuff like we were both kind of in our own explorer like exploration lanes and um one a a couple of things that came out of that is I think there's a couple like startup laws of gravity that are probably like reasonable not to break and you are not the exception.

30:54Julian:One of which is it is it's worth having like the hard conversations up front. It is like getting married. And so if I were to do it again, like I would have had a lot more of that was like early, early on. Hindsight 2020, I think. But because there was all this affinity and like because we had been friends and we had also worked together in the past, I think that was something that I took for granted for sure. The second was what changed my mind? How I hire and how I think about hiring, I think has changed between doing my first company and my second one. And part of that is because I'm a solo founder today where super, super lucky.

31:42Julian:But to me, it was like really important where if the premise of this is automate me away so that we can spend time with customers and automate all of like the, like the rote work away as quickly as possible. My first two hires were engineers. And I was really lucky that I had really smart friends who I could just like call upon. And that was like, so I was lucky enough that I had that and I knew I needed that when I was starting Lighthouse. And if I couldn't do that, I think, or actually because I was solo, I think I instantly knew that and like wanted to like de-risk that as like the number one priority.

32:24Julian:Yeah, those are like two big learnings. And then I think it is true, like you go, you go faster solo, but you go farther together. And so I think one of the best parts of like having a co-founder that you trust a lot is like being able to have somebody who's who is as invested as you are right like there is no question there is no doubt that this person is working equally if not harder than you every day and when you're a solo founder you don't have that and even like my founding team it's like not exactly the same expectation that I can have because just the economics are really different and it is like that emotional attachment is very different.

33:05Julian:And so I've, so my first like, like when we first started the company, like the first five people, it was like really important to me that each one of them were people that I like trusted like so deeply. And they were each like incredibly competent, because I needed them to all like all feel like they were in it together. Because I think if it was just like me, and then like one other person, I think that dynamic would have been a lot harder to navigate.

33:34Minn Kim:You know, there's something really important about what you said around co-founding with friends, which is it is so easy to, in hindsight, you know, it's so obvious in hindsight, but it's so easy in the moment to assume that the things you know about what somebody is like as a friend translate over to being good co-founders together. And that's not a judgment about people, right? It's actually, in many ways, it's a self-judgment, right? Because this is what you hear happen all the time with co-founders, right? This is not an isolated situation. Oftentimes when you start companies with friends, you assume so much more than you would than if you started a company with somebody that you recently met.

34:23Minn Kim:I mean, when we started ODF, the whole premise was, hey, there's this great opportunity to meet other people that you don't know well and you can start companies with them and we saw through that that there was a great thing that happened which was that nobody made the assumptions that they made with somebody that they just met they don't have the same assumptions with that person as they do about a friend that they've had for a while or a former co-worker and people extrapolate in potentially you know hazardous ways about friends and former co-workers when it comes to evaluating them as co-founders they don't have the hard questions that they would have with

35:02Julian:somebody that they met more recently yeah yeah or you have like and um like yes you make a bunch of implicit assumptions about like value systems and um like not in a judgmental way but more as like you might have different ones yeah for sure and how do you surface them and i think when you start companies with somebody that you're like just less familiar with in some ways um you can also see the behaviors like more more objectively. Right. And you can then like my brain, I think, if I were to start it with somebody that I wasn't as familiar with, where maybe I spent like two months with them, I think if someone did something that would have been a decision I wouldn't have made, I would actually just be curious.

35:47Julian:I'd be like, oh, interesting. Like, tell me why. Tell me more. And then that would reveal like a different preference or a value system. And And I would imagine actually I would have been able to catch those things like sooner because we didn't have like all these assumed behaviors embedded into like my worldview.

36:04Minn Kim:I imagine there's also something to be said about when people are, you know, exploring with co-founders, this aspect of you're kind of easing your way in. It wasn't like you immediately thought you were co-founding a company together. so it kind of like the water gets hotter and hotter but like it's the temperature is increasing at such a rate that you don't really have a chance to realize that like you are now co-founders in some ways right um so maybe that somewhat contributes to the challenges that people have when it comes to co-founder relationships yeah it comes back to like have hard conversations early on yeah maybe maybe you could share a little bit more about kind of uh what it's been like you know starting solo and kind of thinking about bringing on early team members kind of how you pitch them on joining what that was like like the actual recruiting I know they were friends of yours that you hired as as your first engineering hires to to lighthouse um but can you share a

37:04Julian:little bit more about what that was like long games I'm a big believer in them and what I mean by that was my first two engineering hires were, well, one was a friend and then the other one was like a friend of a friend that I met through a mutual friend. But neither of them were looking for jobs. In fact, one of them wanted to start a company. And so when I was starting my first company, that's how he and I had first met. And at the time he had just left his job. He was figuring out what he wanted to do and I think when somebody's like different founders of different approaches there but from my perspective if he wanted to go start a company I wasn't going to convince him otherwise um in fact I think there was like something I saw where he really wanted to see if that was something he wanted to do um and if I tried to hire this person right now then the reality is that like six months from now 12 months from now you know some time from now that itch isn't going to go away and so I'm either going to just have end up like losing this person like in the future or um I'm like I'm going to trust that this person is um like going to go do that and then it's my job to like poke uh like poke every couple weeks every couple months and then um and so you know I would invite him to come co-work I would invite him to like dinner like a dinner here or there and just like kind of keep him top of mind and um I remember I used to have like a short list of people like this um still do the list has changed but there's always like a short list of like you know five ten people that you're just like if I could have the opportunity to work with these people like absolutely um and just periodically like keeping them in the loop of like what am I doing is it interesting to you like is there any opportunity and so the first my like my first engineering hire was um it started out as a contractor um and then it became like okay can you like do this part-time um and then finally when it came to lighthouse it was like okay like you're in it you're like fully bought in and by that point we'd already had several months of working together and so there was there was like a lot more trust for that reason

39:19Minn Kim:say more about the contracting thing because um i feel like this is something that we see solar founders do a lot um which is you're solo you might want to start working with somebody maybe you can't actually get them straight away to be full-time totally because they're they're they're tied up with some other commitments uh Paul from browser base we talked about how he had this uh he did this for the first person to join browser base he started out with part-time contracting um I think maybe Eugenia from Wabi like a bunch of people have talked about this So I'm curious sort of how you think about contracting.

39:55Minn Kim:Was that a one-off thing that you did sort of very early on? Is that something that you sort of approach nowadays, even when it comes to new people joining the team? I know the team is growing a lot. If anybody's listening or watching and they're interested, somebody just emailed me right before we hit record here saying that they actually joined the company after hearing about it on the podcast. That's so cool. So that's pretty cool. But I'm curious how you think about the contracting stuff and what your experience has been with that.

40:21Julian:So valuable because I think there's like two types of contracting opportunities, or at least in my experience. One is you have like a really specific point in time need and it isn't one that's full time. Like hiring a part time recruiter, for example, it's like a very discrete specific need. We don't need one right now full time. And so that and also it's a not right now, but like at the beginning of a company's journey, you might literally not be able to afford it. Right. And so there's some practical reasons where I think contractors are really valuable. And then the second contracting type, I think, is like the strategic one where it is somebody that like great people always have options, to be honest.

41:04Julian:And so when I'm trying to work with somebody who's like insanely talented, that person's going to have options. And so a way to help them feel bought in, give them the opportunity to like build trust with us and me and be invested in like what we're building. I found that to be like, great, let's do like a two week work trial. Let's like, let's like hack on a project together. Is there like a weekend that we can do something together? And we've done that a couple of times as well. And that's always been like, it's a really good way to like build that relationship. And then if it works out, then awesome.

41:40Julian:If it doesn't, then we've been able to like do something productive and meaningful like together. And, you know, it's like a nice relationship to have.

41:48Minn Kim:It feels like oftentimes people want to try and just jump straight to you're working with the person full time. But I think the reality is this try before you buy sort of mechanic is great for everybody involved.

42:01Julian:Yeah, yeah. Especially when like my company was early. There's no reason. Like in my head, the reason that anyone would be wanting to join full time is either one because they believe in the mission. But at the time, to be honest, like it's a little bit of like an esoteric one sometimes. And so not everybody is like that's not going to be everybody's pull. And the second is like they believe in me, which amazing. But that also only scales so much. And so this like I think I have found it really valuable to allow people under the hood of what we are doing. And then when they see that and like they get to kind of be open kimono with us, it's such a like fun demonstration of like who we are, what we believe in, how we work, like our values, how we operate.

42:50Julian:I think a lot of like secret startup culture or a lot of the secrets behind successful companies is like what happens under the hood, right? Like how do these people collaborate together? Like what's your like weird like team cultural like ways of working, ways of communicating? Are you like a very documentation, like written down everything kind of culture? Are you like, you know, totally in the beautiful chaos of, you know, everything is in like one big slack thread like I don't know but uh I think these like contracting opportunities like kind of show people under the hood what's working and why and that's been often like that's almost always been like the big pull like anybody who's ever worked with us in any part-time capacity um on the surface they're like oh interesting and then they get under the hood

43:34Minn Kim:and they're like oh interesting I feel like uh at one point we were talking about sort of the long view and sort of this idea of, you know, you might not be able to work with somebody now, but maybe in the future, or maybe you'll work in some way that you would have never imagined. And it just was funny hearing you talk about that because, I mean, we met so many years ago now at this point. We've worked together in a variety of ways. It's like almost a decade. And, you know, now we're collaborating between Solo and Lighthouse, and it's just awesome. But I think the thing that really came to mind as we were talking about this is, in many ways, what we're doing together at ODF, what you're doing at Lighthouse, what I'm doing at Solo, these are things that are all about how do we help more people start great companies.

44:25Minn Kim:ODF through the lens of can we encourage more people to start great companies by being around other explorers and finding potential co-founders. um lighthouse it's well a very big competitive advantage to build a great company is to build it in america and build it in probably the bay area or some of the other the other hubs um that's not just great for that individual to build a great company it's great for our country right america uh benefits by having the best companies get started here um and then and then of course solo is saying, hey, can we help more people get started and realize that not only is it unnecessary and potentially dangerous to have a co-founder of convenience, it's much better to actually just really own it and be solo and do your thing and get great people to join you as you go.

45:20Minn Kim:I'm curious sort of how you think about what Lighthouse is doing as it sort of helps more people start these great things and what that actually means for them and what that means for

45:33Julian:the world i think of the mission of lighthouse is actually we are building talent infrastructure for today frontier companies into the technology industry tomorrow why not all companies because um i do think that like the core common thread across like my career certainly is like thinking about like people and thinking about workflows um that like is a weird intersection and um we are today really thinking about like great if you are a frontier company solving like really advanced technology problems um you want the very best people and oftentimes the very best person is this like niche uh like semiconductor engineer in like australia um and there's only like 20 of them in the world and so of course you want that person and so what is the fastest path to getting that person here.

46:24Julian:And that's one of the, that's like the core problem that we're solving because it is the difference between somebody being able to start that role in a couple of weeks versus a couple of months. Especially when like the pace of technology is moving so fast. And then, you know, after that, you start to think about like, okay, then we're starting to collect all this information about like where some of these best people are, where they come from, what they studied, where they go into work, what like level of professional accomplishments they have. And then you start to be able to see patterns around like, oh, where can we go find them?

46:56Right.

46:57Julian:And so that's like the kind of like a phase of the company that I'm really excited about where we start to see signals around like where great people come from. And a lot of these great people, especially when they're like not in the U.S., they've never even thought about it. I remember going to I went to NeurIPS, not the most recent year, but the year prior. And it was in Austria, I believe. And I remember meeting like dozens and dozens of these like literal geniuses and majority of them had not even considered coming to the U.S., had not even considered applying for a job at like a major lab because they were so fearful about not even about the visa process, but the anxiety of not even knowing what to expect.

47:38Julian:right and then on the flip side worried that well if I tick that box that says I need sponsorship am I just going to get like you know filtered out of the pile and I think a lot of startups these days like recognize like the value of like making sure that they're hiring great teams I mean all startups like that is like one of the core ingredients right and part of the part of the narrative shift that we're trying to help employers see is if you want great people like this is such a strategic lever like you want to go hire that person in Canada in the UK in like in like in random Switzerland you know you can go do that and then those people also will be so bold so like bold over that this you're like giving them a path to be able to do that and we've seen that

48:28Minn Kim:happen like thousands of times at this point you know it really is interesting because if you extrapolate outwards the idea that you can take something that without your operational excellence might take months if it happens at all um and get that down to weeks and then you multiply that out times not just individuals but companies um it really is the definition of pulling the future forward right so so because by bringing talent to companies that are building the future and a lot of them are building like very positive things for humanity like that is a really good thing for the world and it's a good thing for the companies and it's a good thing for the individuals um i think that the other thing that's really worth noting is and noemi who who runs solo founders program and also helps solo founders with, uh, with immigration and it collaborates a lot with you all lighthouse.

49:32Minn Kim:Um, you know, we've seen so many people who felt that they had a hopeless case. Um, and you know, we've worked with them alongside, alongside you all and they've gotten their visas and it's been amazing. And they've come here, they've raised money, they've hired people, they've built businesses that solve real problems. And I think it's just wonderful. um so i think that hopefully people who are listening to this take away a few things i think that one is you you could find something that is really a fit for you um and don't try and force yourself to fit some other business type like you've done such a wonderful job of of really finding something that the shape of the business fits who you are and what you what you're great at um but also hopefully they'll take away the meta point that um you can hire those great people from around the world, and you should.

50:24Minn Kim:And also, if you're listening to this and you want to build in America, you really should try to because it's a great place to build companies. There's a huge opportunity here to do it. And we really want to see more great companies built here. It's great for our country to have the best people coming here and building great things. I'd love to just close this with sort of our customary two-parter, which is the first question being sort of around the bear case for solo founding, the reason that you shouldn't maybe be a solo founder? And we can talk about that a little bit. And then just to give you the foreshadowing, we'll then ask about sort of the case for solo founding.

51:06Minn Kim:But let's start out, what's the reason that somebody maybe shouldn't be a solo founder?

51:11Julian:Immediate answers that come to mind is you are not good at asking for feedback. being a founder is constantly having to solicit feedback and then improve um and when you're a solo founder i think or certainly i do like i make a really conscious effort to like ask for feedback all the time from my team my customers like anyone it's like truly a gift um because otherwise like you don't have a counterpart who's as invested in like your growth the company's growth all of it to be able to play that devil's advocate uh so if you're uncomfortable with asking and receiving feedback, probably going to be tough.

51:53Julian:You will not grow as fast as you need to.

51:56Minn Kim:Okay. So that leads me to a very natural next question, which is how do you process feedback?

52:04Julian:So I have a preference of it being written down. So both when I receive and I give, I have a preference for it being written. It allows me to kind of see it more objectively and then like process it, think about it, reflect on it, and then respond accordingly. The reality is that I think, like, depending on whoever is the audience or the recipient, like, you also have to learn how to, like, accommodate different styles of that. But a lot of it, I think, is just finding good ways to moderate, like, your own reactions to the feedback, positive or negative.

52:37Minn Kim:I guess on top of that, though, the processing is sort of the format, but also the what to integrate, what to discard. Totally. How do you approach that?

52:46Julian:It takes, it doesn't usually happen in real time. I will admit that. In like the day to day, there's like, like thousands of decisions that any founder is making that I think when you receive feedback, it is actually tough to, to actually like, know how to discern what parts of it to take away. um sometimes it's a lot more obvious obviously if you have like uh like an angry customer or something like that there's clearly like something to take away from that but even still um I think it usually you usually go for like a really long walk on a Saturday or something and just like clear my head and just like reflect on like what happened this week what I'm what do I feel good about like what went well what didn't go so well and then for the um for any of those it's like kind of running the self retro of why and that why is I think so important um because it I start to be able to discern um is it because this person who gave that feedback um like where are they coming from what is their worldview um are they like are they feeling a certain way about the situation if so okay how might that color what they're communicating um and actually we're we We have like a really increasingly so like retro feedback culture because I think it's actually really important on like a team and organizational level that there's no like judgment or emotional valence to it.

54:18Julian:It is literally just like here's what happened. Here's what we expected. And why or why not? Was it different? Right. And can we like start to measure and manage like what that, you know, what that delta was? So, yeah. So I think like the two answers to like being a solo, like not being a solo founder and being a solo founder are kind of like two sides of a similar coin for that reason.

54:39Minn Kim:Do you have any more reasons or any more if you were to articulate the case for solo founding, maybe through the prism of you being a solo founder? What's the case you would make for why someone should consider it?

54:51Julian:I think everyone should consider it in large part because I, as somebody who never even thought about being a founder, found myself being able to do it. And it literally didn't cross my mind that I shouldn't build Lighthouse. Like truly when at the beginning of the company, like it was sort of a, well, I have to do this. And I don't have an option right now to have a co-founder. And so, well, I guess I'm just going to have to do it. Like that is a resource that is not available to me. And it wasn't a blocker, you know. And so if that's true for me, then I think about, I don't know, I know so many smart people.

55:30Julian:And, you know, it is not a required ingredient to be able to solve a problem that you care about.

55:38Minn Kim:Amazing. Thanks for doing this. This is awesome.

55:40Julian:Thanks, Julian. This is fun.

55:41Minn Kim:If you enjoyed this conversation, we would love it if you could 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-founders of 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.

56:12Minn Kim: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 slash program.