James Clift hasn't been employed by a company he didn't own since he was sixteen. He paid for a year of university with a window-cleaning business, bought VisualCV as a $100K legacy resume site and rebuilt it (sold 2020), then went solo at South Park Commons and founded Durable, where about 3.5 million people have signed up to start or run a business, more than half of them brand new, on a six-engineer team backed by a $14M Series A led by Spark Capital. Julian and James get into the mission ("make owning a business easier than having a job"), the co-founder math that never works, why a viral AI website builder that hit a million users in three months was a distraction, what door-to-door sales teaches you about fundraising, and why everyone should make a dollar on their own at least once.
Links:
Subscribe on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@solofounding?sub_confirmation=1
Newsletter: https://solofounders.beehiiv.com/
X: https://x.com/solofounders
Apply to the Solo Founders program: https://solofounders.com/program
What is Solo Founders?
The Solo Founder's Podcast features in-depth interviews with solo founders building remarkable companies. Each week, host Julian Weisser sits down with solo founders who are either operating at serious scale or doing something right now that you need to know about. From Series B and beyond to founders breaking out in real-time, these are the conversations that define what it means to build solo. New episodes every week.