Solo Founders

Sara Du co-founded Alloy Automation at 19 and ran it for five and a half years. Her second company, Ando, she's building solo: team messaging designed from scratch for humans and AI agents working together, freshly out of stealth with a $20M seed from Accel, Index Ventures, and Emergence Capital. A conversation about why agents are locked out of the tools teams live in, and what founding looks like the second time — alone, on purpose.

Topics covered:
- Why Slack's architecture can't serve AI agents (the locked office building)
- Agents as coworkers: identity, permissions, etiquette, and the first 90 days
- Market-personality fit: picking a problem worth ten years of your life
- The solo founder's hiring playbook: attract don't chase, contract-to-hire, minimalist headcount
- Co-founder the first time, solo the second: the bear and bull case

Guest: Sara Du — founder & CEO of Ando; previously co-founder & CEO of Alloy Automation; Thiel Fellow.

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.