Three things worth your time: 1) a new podcast episode dropping tomorrow, 2) what customers ask for vs. what they need, and 3) why solo GPs might be a good place to start your fundraise. Let's get into it!
“It’s much better to be solo than to have bad co-founders.”
We sat down with a founder who built one of the first conversational AI products back in 2014, years before the first LLMs. She's a 2x solo founder and a former journalist who built apps for the massive anti-Putin protests in Russia. Her new company has raised tens of millions from a16z and others.
Tomorrow on the Solo Founders Podcast (YouTube/Spotify/Apple Podcasts).
What customers ask for vs. what they need.
“We were a testing company that did exactly what people told us would move the needle. But it fell flat.”
Solo founder Animesh Koratana just raised $20M from Foundation Capital for PlayerZero, but it's not the initial version of the company.
He started with Testgram. He asked engineers what would fix their quality problems, and the answer was always: “We need to test more.” So he built exactly that: AI-powered testing that mimicked real user behavior. It was a good product, but it didn’t actually solve the problem. “Only after building a QA product did we realize, oh crap, this doesn’t solve the problem the way we expected.”
So, he started from scratch. "We've persevered through two years of pivots... It's hard, but the team understands what it takes to catch lightning in a bottle." He went from building what customers asked for to building what they needed but couldn't articulate. It just took two years of pivoting to find it.
Solo GP raises $232M.
“As a solo GP, it would be very hypocritical for me to not welcome solo founders.”
Solo GP Nathan Benaich just raised $232M for Air Street Capital, making it Europe's largest one-person VC.
The quote is from Charles Hudson (solo GP, Precursor Ventures), who was on the podcast last week. He explained, “I had a specific idea about the kind of firm I wanted to create. To create the firm I wanted, it had to be mine.” That’s the same reason many solo founders start their companies: greater authorship. Solo GPs tend to understand solo founders in ways other firms might not. If you’re fundraising, they can be a good starting point.
Thanks for reading!
Solo, together.
— Kieran, Julian, & The Solo Founders Team
