Rahul Sonwalker is the solo founder and CEO of Julius AI — the natural-language data analysis platform that took six pivots (and one cease-and-desist from Microsoft for calling a product "Excel Copilot") to find. In this conversation, Rahul breaks down the "co-founder trap" that keeps most smart people stuck searching instead of building, why every great startup violates 1–2 core best practices, and why he insists on being the worst coder on his own team.

Topics covered:

• The co-founder trap — why 8 out of 10 co-founder teams are fighting in private
• Solo founding by accident — second startup, friends bailing, and not going back to co-founder matching
• The football analogy for building momentum as a solo founder
• Startups as a game of outliers — why generalized advice pushes you to average
• The recipe for hiring as a solo founder — multipliers, not delegators
• Equity philosophy: less cash, more equity is a green flag
• Culture at 50% and 66% — why your first hire is half the culture forever
• Six pivots to Julius: logistics AI, Excel Copilot, Microsoft cease-and-desist, US Census demo
• The Julius Caesar chiseling metaphor for how companies emerge from marble
• Convincing as the real job — "Sam Altman can't sell you a pen but can sell you AGI"
• Authorship and why success has many fathers
• Bear case and bull case for solo founding

Guest: Rahul Sonwalker — Solo Founder and CEO, Julius AI. Natural-language data analysis platform. Formerly engineer at Uber. Based in San Francisco.