Three things worth your time: how a solo founder closed Sequoia, the difference between main and side quests, and why solo founders should stop apologizing for being solo when speaking with investors. Plus, ex-Supermemory employees hit $150K ARR for a new company. Let's get into it!
Solo founder raises $36M Series C.
“People always invest for emotional reasons, but they always reject for logical reasons.”
Mohak Nahta (solo founder) just raised a $36M Series C for Atlys, an online visa platform. But his Series A almost didn't happen. After a hot seed round, he figured “all investors care about is the growth rate” and wrote a metrics-heavy memo to prove it. “I got it completely wrong.”
After talking with Sriram Krishnan at a16z, he scrapped the memo and built a deck that was raw, authentic, and told from a customer’s perspective. He went from 11 rejections to a term sheet from Sequoia.
At Series A, numbers matter more, but investors won't write a check if they don't feel a connection to your story.
Main quest and side quest.
“Internally we always talked about main quest and side quests. Everyone should focus on the main quest, and moderately or not at all on side quests. Both quest lines feel productive but only one of them advances the main mission of the company.”
It's easier than ever to justify building things that aren't your product, like a custom CRM, an internal dashboard, or a tool from your X timeline.
For most solo founders, the main quest is talking to and closing customers. Everything else just feels like progress.
The solo founder equity advantage.
“I used to see people apologize for being a solo founder or try to explain it before I even flagged it as an issue. If being a solo founder was an intentional decision, you shouldn't have to qualify or explain it.”
Charles Hudson (solo GP, Precursor Ventures, 500+ investments) has seen solo founders walk into investor meetings already on the back foot, explaining why they don't have a co-founder before anyone asks. His advice: stop. Don't do it until you're asked. When you are, share how you'll use your extra equity to build a world-class team.
That equity advantage is real but underused. Solo founders own nearly 2x what a lead founder at a co-founded company owns. Yet, they're giving out roughly the same equity grants to early employees. Charles believes that will change: “They will use their cap table as an advantage to make much more aggressive offers.”
Listen/watch the full episode:
Should you join before starting?
“It's not necessary to have worked at a high-growth startup before starting your own, but it makes some things much easier: credibility, knowledge, and network.”
Naman Bansal and Shreyans Jain just got into YC with Manicule, an AI-native agency that builds technical docs for dev tools. They're at $150K+ ARR with clients like Greptile and Reducto.
Before starting Manicule, both worked at Supermemory (SFP S25). Here's what Dhravya Shah shared about the two:
“These are probably the most talented 18 year olds on the planet right now. Insane agency, craft and talent. Great at talking to customers. GO WIN GUYS.”
Naman wrote content that drove millions of SEO impressions for Supermemory. Shreyans built core product infrastructure. Congrats to both on the new company.
Thanks for reading!
Solo, together.
— Kieran, Julian, & The Solo Founders Team
