Han Solo — my journey from Google to founding Kalo

My first ever HackerNoon post attempts to broadly make sense of my journey over the last year; the challenges and opportunities I faced of leaving Google, becoming a solo founder; and from idea and a $50k investment from my roommate, to completing Techstars and raising $3.3m in funding from Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures.

Our company is currently headquartered in London with a newly opened San Fran office. There are now 18 of us, living the dream and working hard.

Caveat: I took great enjoyment from badly weaving Star Wars references into this article.

‘Never tell me the odds!’

I first met Jon Bradford, the Managing Director of Techstars London in a cafe in Clerkenwell in October 2014. I had an idea, and this was the man that was going to help me. Jon was upfront, saying he’d only taken that the meeting because I had been introduced by Google Ventures (a lesson in the power of serendipity that I have never forgotten). He went on, blankly pointing out that the odds of me getting into Techstars, as a solo founder, with no product, no team, no business plan, and looking, as I did, about 12 years old, were about the same as Northern Ireland winning the Euros in 2016. I loved his humour but quickly realised that any chance of using our Northern Irish connection was, more than likely, out the window.

I knew it was going to be a tough sell after reading a Wall Street Journal article that quoted David Cohen, CEO of Techstars, and a number of the Y-Combinator guys saying that they did not accept solo founders. In fact Paul Graham, puts being a ‘solo founder’ as the number one factor that will kill a startup. And there I was, alone except for a big idea and less than a year of computer science under my belt.

I was all about out of hope, and wanted to crawl back to my warm, cosy, Google team of designers, creatives and engineers. It was there that I was in my element, doing what I did best, solving problems, designing UI, and eating three free lunches a day. But despite the rocky start, the meeting lasted lasted 45 minutes, something I considered an achievement given what I’d heard about Jon.

And just as the meeting ended, Jon threw me a bone. He said he loved it. I looked at him like he was from another planet. He said getting me onto the program would be a challenge, but pending a few other chats with his colleagues, he would endorse me, on one condition. That I leave the warmth of the Google mothership and the bubble I had been raised in for the last couple of years.

Tatooine

So there I was, out in the cold reality of the startup world without a wingman. I had nothing more than a place on the Techstars programme and a generous cheque from my housemate, Courtney Grant. (One of the conditions we wrote into the term sheet; I wasn’t allowed to introduce him as his banker friend anymore).

It was then that the hardest part of my journey as a solo founder began. Aside from the fact that it was a huge personal challenge, financially and culturally, going through the accelerator programme put me completely out of my depth professionally and exposed me in a way I had not been for many years. Despite yearning for a bigger challenge during my entire tenure at Google, the months at Techstars that followed my departure were brutal, and I hated it.

During the Techstars process, they have a fortnight they called ‘mentor madness’. It’s like speed dating for mentors — with people who are successful in some field related to tech startups (or not).

Unlike others, I didn’t have a co-founder there to back me up, support me while these ‘experts’ tore my idea apart, but more importantly, to be there to put the idea back together, to foster and improve it. For the first two months I felt like i was throwing a tennis ball against a wall, with idea after idea smacking me right back in my face.

I felt like Luke, abandoned on Tatooine with not a glimmer of hope in sight. I needed a co-founder, someone to be there to support me, encourage me to try new things and push boundaries. Without this partner in crime, I was never even going to ‘show up’ as Tak Lo, a director of Techstars put it. And so, I didn’t, literally. After two weeks of the mentors ripping my idea (not even a product) to shreds, I’d had enough and I ran away. I spent the next two weeks at home, researching and reading, more about how to survive an accelerator than how to run a company.

Lesson number one: And I can’t stress this hard enough, never do a fucking startup without a co-founder. Ever. Never ever let it be about the equity. There’s a reason why these incubators don’t accept solo founders. Because it’s brutal and it’s way too easy to give up when there’s no one else to let down.

Jedi Knights

Luckily, I didn’t give up completely. Before long, I found myself back in the room and began to see the silver lining of being a lone ranger. Being on my own, I ended up naturally relying heavily on the network of mentors around me, much more than others. The mentors I had managed to persuade to help me, people like Matt Webb (Berg.com),Scott Dodson (Gamesys), Adam Ross (Goldcrest Capital), Guy Podjarny (Snyk.io) and Richard Fearn (Friday Club London) would become a lifeline for me in the first six months of the company. Likewise Mark Evans, of Balderton Capital, who around this time, I can make a good guess, was spending considerably more time with me than some of his much larger investments.

I would definitely not be in the position I am today if I hadn’t listened to those around me and taken their advice, mainly encouraging me to make a conscious effort to forget what I thought I knew and acknowledge that I was nowhere near as smart as I thought I was.

Because, for all my complaining and initial resistance of the program, I would never be where I am without it. As a solo founder, you will need an ecosystem like this around you.

Lesson number two: Build a network around you. Forget everything you know about the world of working, accept that your way is not the right way and embrace the people who can help in light of not having a co-founder.

Fueling the battleship

Keeping the lights on was a constant worry for me the whole time and has been until we started getting some serious traction and subsequent funding.

The first fundraise was the hardest. I had left Google, with a $50k cheque in my pocket from my flatmate who invested in Kalo, with the only certainty in my life being that I knew the money wasn’t going to last me very long.

Like many start-ups, I had rejection after rejection, going door to door at VC firms, trying to get intros to any angel investors I could find online but it wasn’t working. I quickly came to the conclusion that unless you are coming out of an environment in which you are already immersed in that world, with that network of capital at your disposal, finding funding as a solo founder is next to impossible without an accelerator program like Techstars.

It was Techstars that introduced me to investors, both directly and indirectly, and ultimately led to our most well known round of funding, led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, which has since catapulted us into a Silicon Valley network of ex-Stanford, ex-Paypal / Palantir power players we could have only dreamed of having access to 12 months ago.

One of things that was key to landing our second funding round (totalled $2.75m) was that I wasn’t selling myself anymore. I was selling a dream team of passionate hungry and experienced professionals, demonstrating that we not only knew what we wanted to achieve but had a firm grasp on how we were going to that. At seed stage of a startup, the investors have in the majority of cases, nothing to go on but your team and your idea. So if you’re on your own, you need talented people — any form of serious fundraising requires a founding team.

Lesson number 3: You won’t get big funding alone. Use your network and build a team of people that angels and VC funds can believe in. Strength in numbers.

Taking on the Empire

The main thing above all else that still baffles me is how I persuaded two of the most dedicated, talented (and patient) people to join Kalo, and irrevocably change the future of the company.

When Kalo was just me and one junior engineer, with no Peter Thiel involved, no $3.5m in funding and no headline stage opportunities at TechCrunch Disrupt we made two game-changing hires. Fergus Doyle, previously the Head of Platform engineering at OneFineStay and Akosa Melifonwu, an enterprise account executive from Salesforce decided to join me on my journey, but it took a very long time to get to that point. Hiring talent as a solo founder is tough. I had no idea if I could trust them or if they would share the same passion or vision as I did. I interviewed over 30 candidates in total for their positions (CTO and Head of Sales respectively) and without a co-founder it was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make, as the buck literally stopped with me.

As a young startup, with an inexperienced founder, investing in the wrong people at the beginning given we had a limited roadmap/funding to prove our concept, would ultimately determine whether Kalo sank or swam. Persuading candidates to even have a chat with me, let alone leave their secure jobs and join me on my mad, solo journey was a challenge in itself.

During this period, I relied even further on my now slightly larger network, having investors that hadn’t even put cash in Kalo yet interview the final few candidates for me. These candidates took five months to find.

Lesson number four: if going to be a solo founder, you better be bloody good with people and you better trust your instincts as you’re the only one who can build your founding team.

Master and Apprentice

Finally, back to the man that helped start it all, someone that despite the lambasting during Techstars, couldn’t have been a better person for me to be mentored by. Jon Bradford constantly gave me a hard time, questioned everything — from the way I spoke, how I dress, to how I answered questions, to almost every step I made along the way. It is my adoption of what he taught and preached at Techstars and his work ethic that still influences me and my team, everyday at Kalo. Jon is still on standby when I need him, giving me hiring advice, funding strategy help and is always someone I can vent to.

Finding a mentor that is not only a great fit for you as a solo founder, but as a human is something I can’t ever really put into words how grateful I am for the people I had around me. The fact that with mine I landed Jon and a group of individuals that were not only compatible with me but willing to be patient, teach me, push me and spend late nights with me, is well, now how would I put it, as about as likely as Northern Ireland winning the Euros in 2016.