Kickstart your week with domain-expert coding wins, a gift-card strategy that reduced churn 40%, Julian’s notes on angel rounds, and verification for AI-generated code.
“We all built software last week. None of us should have been able to.”
“I think at this point it's safe to say coding is largely solved.”
But there's a catch: domain expertise beats syntax. You still need to know what to build and when the machine gets it wrong.
A California personal injury attorney built a multi-agent AI product that analyzes ADU correction letters against building codes and won first place. In the demo video, Buena Park Mayor Connor Traut said, “By 2029, I need over 3,000 new homes permitted, including ADUs. Last year, we had under 100. It's not doable with our current staffing levels. We need this software.”
Check out the other projects.
Retention is Growth
“68% took the call. After two years, churn was down 40%.”
One founder sends every churned customer a $50 Amex gift card and a handwritten note: “Thanks for giving us a shot. Would you be willing to spend 15 minutes telling us what we got wrong?” He recorded every call, tagged the reasons into a database, and discovered the top reason customers left. He implemented a solution, and churn dropped 40%.
Most founders send an automated email and get a 2% response rate. The gap in outcomes starts with how seriously you take the issue of why people leave.
But even if you’re asking the right questions and rigorously analyzing your funnel data, you can still misinterpret the results. Aldo Del Valle (SFP S25) identifies three myths that lead founders to focus on the wrong things:
Feature fetish: Your most loyal users use the most features, but that doesn’t mean features drive loyalty. Don’t mistake correlation for causation.
Engagement illusion: High daily active users may seem great, but some show up because their CFO signed a six-figure contract. Don't confuse user activity with product value.
Seasonality blindness: That Q1 retention lift might be due to budget resets, not your new onboarding flow.
Take retention seriously. The market is more competitive than ever. New customer acquisition won't help if you're losing them quickly.
Raising from Angels
“It's important to put work out into the world in a non-performative way. My phrase for this is ‘oscillate until you resonate’ — keep putting things out there, and eventually someone on the same frequency will find you.”
Years ago, Julian posted a Dropbox-meets-Patreon hackathon project on Hacker News that got almost no engagement, but it resulted in a lasting connection with Aston Motes (Dropbox’s first employee). Sometimes you won't reach lots of people, but you still resonate with the right ones.
Read his notes from a talk he gave at ODF27 covering when to raise, who to take money from, and how angels differ from VCs.
“The more reliable an automated system seems, the less closely people watch it.”
Autopilot systems that worked 99.9% of the time slowed pilots' reaction to issues. Aviation learned the lesson and fixed it. The industry didn’t roll back automation. Instead, it added independent verification: redundancy, cross-checks, and required procedures. Commercial aviation is the safest way to travel because automation is paired with strong verification.
Solo founders shipping AI-generated code face buggy code and confident but incorrect explanations. You can't ask the model to review itself. The answer isn't reduced automation but improved verification.
Thanks for reading! Please forward this to another solo founder who may find it useful.
Solo, together.
— Kieran, Julian, & The Solo Founders Team
