Solo founders are having a week: Sequoia just led $6M into a solo founder's AI travel agent, the founder of Supermemory explains why he stopped looking for co-founders, and two SFP alumni launched new products. Let's get into it.
Build Where You Have an Edge
“We think you're great and we want to back you, but this idea needs work. Consumer is something you know really well. Travel is going to change. Think about ideas in that space.”
That's what Sequoia told Francis Davidson before leading a $6M round into Odessia, an AI travel agent that can plan and book an entire trip, flights, hotels, and all, in a few minutes.
The advice stuck because it played directly into Francis's background. Before Odessia, he spent more than a decade building Sonder from an apartment-rental startup into a public company (once worth $1.9B).
The full conversation is coming tomorrow on the Solo Founders Podcast. Francis gets into the early days of Sonder, why he started again, and what convinced Sequoia to back him before the idea was fully formed.
Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you don't miss it.
Solo, Together
“I don't want to wake up every day and argue with someone about what we should do next.”
Dhravya Shah (SFP S25), founder of Supermemory, didn't start out as a solo founder. His first two companies had co-founders. One ended in a co-founder breakup.
He tried a few more times and kept running into the same issue: he changes direction constantly. New ideas, new products, new opportunities. He didn't want to spend his life convincing someone else every time he wanted to make a move.
Going solo solved that problem. But it created another.
“If you just don't do something, no one comes and scolds you.”
That's part of why he joined the first SFP cohort.
Today, he's still surrounded by the same founders. Someone will stop him in the hallway and ask, “Did that deal close?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“I forgot to follow up.”
“What the hell?”
Two Solo Launches: OpenHack & Gigacatalyst
Ananay Arora (SFP F25) launched OpenHack, an open-source security agent that finds real vulnerabilities and proves each one with a working exploit. Because it runs on open-source models, it's roughly 40x cheaper than frontier-model alternatives while still keeping pace on benchmarks.
Namanyay Goel (SFP S25) launched Gigacatalyst, which lets SaaS companies embed an AI builder directly into their product. Instead of filing feature requests, customers can create their own workflows, automations, and custom functionality. It's already live inside multiple Series B companies.
Interested in trying either product? Reply with what you're building, and we'll pass along an intro request.
Solo, together.
Kieran
