Minn Kim runs Lighthouse, the AI-powered immigration firm rebuilding the visa stack for frontier-tech companies. She is solo. She isn't a lawyer. Her first two hires were engineers. The conversation with Julian covers how she got there, why "solve your own problem" isn't always the path to success, the complicated-vs-complex framework she uses to pick what to build, and her bull case for solo founding stated as a fact about her own life rather than a thesis.
Topics covered:
- The Korean-immigrant origin and the 2022 side quest that became Lighthouse
- Services-as-software: why "professional services don't scale" stopped being true around 2021
- Why "solve your own problem" isn't always right — and what to do instead
- The complicated-vs-complex problem framework for founder fit and capital structure
- First two hires were engineers, not lawyers
- Long-game hiring and contractor-to-full-time as a deliberate pattern
- The 30-question anonymous Google Form for surfacing blind spots
- "Twenty of them in the world" — the talent-infrastructure thesis behind Lighthouse
- Bear case and bull case for solo founding, the latter stated as lived experience
Guest: Minn Kim — founder and CEO of Lighthouse, the AI-powered immigration firm for frontier-tech companies and their hires.
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.