Three lessons worth stealing: trading equity for better odds, why X isn’t always reality, and meeting users where they are. Let’s get into it!
Solo Founder Leverage
“I was willing to trade a few extra points of dilution to increase the probability of success of the company. Being a solo founder allowed me a bit extra flexibility in deal terms.”
When Celine Halioua started Loyal in 2019, she was a solo founder with no formal experience in drug development, trying to create a new category: drugs to help dogs live longer.
Her willingness to give up extra equity let her bring in the right partners early—investors and employees who could make a significant impact.
Five years later: $250M+ raised, FDA efficacy and safety milestones cleared, and the largest animal health clinical trial underway.
The counterintuitive lesson is that being solo isn't about owning more equity. It's about having the freedom to give up a little more for better odds of winning.
“Under the painting model, a failed experiment is a mess you have to cover up. Under the sculpture model, it's progress — one less piece standing between you and the shape underneath.”
Most people think building a startup is like painting. A better model might be sculpture.
This essay was inspired by an office hours Julian hosted for the Solo Founders Program where they discussed framing experimentation that doesn’t work as progress.
Sentiment on X Doesn't Always Reflect Reality
Before the Super Bowl, Anthropic's ad had tech Twitter convinced they'd landed a knockout punch. The reactions were effusive. One investor posted, “Counter-positioning masterclass.” Another wrote: “This one lands as a clean punch. If I were sitting inside OpenAI, I'd be scrambling to reframe the entire conversation.” One founder even predicted it would be “the most effective Super Bowl ad in history.”
Then the actual game happened. According to Adweek, it ranked in the bottom 3% of Super Bowl ads from the past five years. The most common reaction? Confusion. “WTF” dominated the responses.
The problem is that only 7% of Americans know what Claude is. Tech Twitter lives in a world where everyone is fluent in the Claude vs ChatGPT debate. They got the positioning.
But to a Super Bowl audience, it was just an AI-related ad with no clear reason to care. An inside joke for those not in on it.
It’s a helpful reminder that your timeline isn’t always your audience.
Supermemory for Consumers
Do you find it frustrating to re-explain your project context every time you switch from Claude to ChatGPT to Gemini? Copy-pasting the same background info, re-uploading docs, starting from scratch.
Dhravya Shah (SFP S25) built a fix: Supermemory makes your AI context portable. Feed it once, use it everywhere—Claude, GPT, Raycast, etc.
After focusing on enterprises, the team just relaunched for consumers—a smart move given their Claude Code and OpenClaw launches hit millions of views. It turns out individual users don't want their AI siloed across different platforms either.
Not “Another AI App”
A bet is forming: the next wave of AI assistants won't have their own app. They'll live in iMessage.
Flo Crivello (solo founder) just launched Lindy Assistant — an AI that manages your inbox, meetings, and calendar through iMessage. Poke and Linq launched with the same thesis.
The logic makes sense: people are overwhelmed with apps. They don't want another system to learn or tab to check. They want things that work where they already are.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when iMessage itself gets crowded with AI agents competing for the same blue bubble.
That’s all for this issue. Thanks for reading.
Solo, together.
— Kieran, Julian, & The Solo Founders Team
