Rahul Sonwalkar is the solo founder and CEO of Julius, an AI data analyst. He raised a $10M seed round led by Bessemer Venture Partners last year, but it took six pivots to get there.

Rahul had a hunch: if GitHub Copilot could help him write code, it could help people write queries. First, he tried it on logistics data because he was an engineer at Uber. Three months in, he couldn't convince a single logistics company to touch AI. So he pivoted to excelcopilot. Microsoft sent a cease-and-desist letter for a “double violation” of the Excel and Copilot trademarks. Next, he created censusgpt, a natural-language tool for U.S. census data. It went viral on launch day and was empty by day two. Turns out people are curious about data, just not census data.

A few more pivots later, it clicked. People want to analyze their own data, not public datasets. That became Julius. Today, Harvard chooses it over ChatGPT.

He also talks about why 8 out of 10 co-founder teams are fighting in private and why Sam Altman can't sell you a pen, but he can sell you AGI.

Solo, together.

Julian

ICYMI, we announced the 4th cohort of Solo Founders Program yesterday: 10 solo founders building "solo, together,” 3 months in SF (+ optional housing), $100k investment, work closely with me + alumni