How He Built a $250M Company With Zero Employees | Ben Cera, Polsia

One Person, $10M+ ARR, $30M Raised: How Ben Cera Built Polsia (AI Operating System) Solo

Ben Cera, founder of Polsia, just raised $30M at a $250M valuation while running the entire company alone. His AI agent handles his emails, manages customer support, even led his fundraising calls. This is what a solo founder with an AI operating system looks like at scale.

Polsia is an AI operating system that builds and runs companies autonomously. Give it an idea and it builds the product, writes code, conducts research, creates tweets, sets up company infrastructure, and works 24/7 on your behalf. Users are hitting $10M+ ARR using Polsia to scale their businesses.

In this episode we cover:
00:00 - Intro & The Viral Launch Nobody Forgot
01:24 - How He Raised $30M at $250M Valuation with Himself as the Only Employee
02:15 - The Origin Story: Building Polsia from Scratch
04:13 - Why the Controversial Product Name Became Free Marketing ($Millions in Earned Media)
05:55 - What Polsia Actually Does (AI Operating System for Founders)
06:25 - How He Hit $10M+ ARR Running Solo (No Cofounders, No Hires)
10:30 - Building a Company OS That Works 24/7 on Your Behalf
12:00 - The Psychology of Single Founder Mode (Why It Scales Faster)
14:45 - AI Agents Handling Customer Support, Refunds, & Bug Fixes
16:30 - Email Automation: How Polsia Responds to 100% of His Emails
20:15 - The Viral Fundraising Stunt (Live Dashboard + Agent-Led Investor Calls)
25:00 - Why He Let His AI Agent Handle First Meetings with Investors
28:30 - The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Distribution (More Visibility = More Traction)
32:15 - How Distribution Strategy Becomes Your Go-To-Market
35:45 - Building in Public While Running Everything Solo
38:00 - Customer Obsession at Scale (Staying Close When You're Alone)
42:56 - Founder Availability: Direct Phone Access to Customers
44:00 - Manufactured Moments That Feel Authentic
50:13 - Why Distribution Isn't an Afterthought Anymore

Key Insights:
- One founder + AI operating system beats small teams without leverage (speed, decision-making, equity concentration)
- Polsia lets you build multiple products simultaneously without hiring (products work 24/7 on your behalf)
- The more controversial your positioning, the more people talk (free marketing from debate)
- AI agents can handle 80% of founder work: emails, support, customer refunds, even investor screening
- Live dashboards showing real-time growth create self-fulfilling prophecies (transparency = conviction)
- Distribution is how you reach product-market fit faster (not an afterthought)
- AI agents leading first investor meetings works (validates the product claim + generates buzz)
- Customer intimacy at scale = founder still takes direct texts from users
- Retention matters more than naming: customers don't complain about the name, they just use it
- One person with AI tools > 5 people building without leverage

Why This Matters:
This is the playbook for next-generation founders in 2026. Ben shows you how to: scale solo using AI agents, multiply your output without hiring, go viral intentionally, raise capital through distribution, and stay close to customers at scale. If you're a founder thinking about AI leverage, autonomous systems, or scaling lean, this is essential.

Watch This If You're:
- Solo founders scaling without a team
- Founders interested in AI agents and autonomous systems
- Learning about AI-first product development
- Studying modern GTM and distribution strategy
- Raising capital in 2026 (fundraising case study)
- Building products with AI agents doing the work
- Curious about the solo founder + AI agent trend
- Following autonomous company builders

Connect with Ben Cera:
Founder & CEO of Polsia
Twitter/X: @bencera 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benbroca/

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
Follow Sophie: https://x.com/sophiebuona
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

ABOUT GTMnow
GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing the strategies, tactics, and stories from the operators and investors building the next generation of go-to-market.

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The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

It's gonna work every night on your behalf and then send you a recap on the morning at 8 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Where did this come from? Where did the installation come from? And to this point now we're setting out a load of NAR.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

I mean installation came from like a decade of buildings, to be honest. Like it's uh it's I think it's like a collected sum of all my experiences.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Ben, welcome to GTM Now.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Hello, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

I'm well, thanks. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Pretty good. A little tired, but good.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

You've had a busy stretch. You just raised $30 million at a $250 million valuation. Big congratulations. The launch went pretty viral on both X and LinkedIn. Uh many different factors to that. One is the name and where we can start. Palsia is AI Slop, spelled backwards. Tell us a bit about the naming decision.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

I mean, so the the name came about when I decided to start a new company uh in April 2025, like almost a year ago. Uh, and I wanted to go all in on AI and like build with AI and and build, and I I at the time I have an idea for like the first product was like an app that would build apps. Um, and since then there's a bunch of other apps like that on the app store, but that was the initial concept. Uh, but I knew that the that product wouldn't be that Obial. Um, and when my lawyer asked me, hey, you need like to come up with the name for the C Corp, right? For the Delaware C Corp. I was on my couch at like 10 p.m. at Paris, and I was like, what about Polsia? Like AI slept backwards. Like that sounds it doesn't really matter the name of the C Corp. I was like, whatever. That's the name. But then I had to, then my investors would like keep on referencing the company as Pulsia. I was like, no, no, no, like Pulsia is just the C Corp name. Like, you know, like sometimes it doesn't really matter that name. Uh, my product is blanks. That's the in the product I sell. Um, fast forward, uh, after five building like five different SaaS during 2025 that were not really working, that product blanks didn't really take off. Um, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna build this company OS, right? This this OS that builds companies for me so that I can build many. And then and then and then actually it's a really good idea. And I think users, the consumers would love it. And so I think I should build this as a consumer product. And I was like, how should I name it? And I was like, you know what? That C Corp is called Pulsea. It's actually a name I could get a dot-com for, and it's a pretty good name, actually. Uh, and so I looked for the dot com and I got it for a thousand bucks. I was like, you know what? It's a sign because a thousand bucks for a six-dollar.com is actually pretty cool, pretty cheap. Um, so that's that's how it came about. There was no like uh grandiose uh plan uh and anything. I think that you know it it just felt right. And I think all of Pulsiya, the way I built Pulsia, you know, the design, the UI, the gamified UI, the the vibes, the Polsias personality, like everything came to me naturally and it just felt right. And I stopped caring about how people would think about how it looked or what the name was or like what it did. It I just thought that like it's something I wanted to use myself and I want and I thought that like people would want to use. But fast forward now, when I you have all these people freaking out about the name, I'm like, this is the best marketing I could ever hope. Because I mean, when people s complain about specific aspect of the product or like that if I did slop, that's something else. But people just like repeatedly being like, There's no way this company is called ASL backwards. I'm like, okay, amazing. Like uh, I'm getting a lot of views for free on just uh people having fun with it. So, and and when I talk to my customers, which I actually had just came out of like an interview with one of my customers, they never mentioned the name. Like that's that's not never something that they bring up, right? Like, oh, why is it called Bosia? I don't like the name, or oh, the design, why don't you make it more XY? Like, that's never what they talk about. What they talk about is like Bosia did this for me, like Bosia is maybe an entrepreneur, like I'm building this one thing, and I build this other thing. And that's what I care about. It's like, you know, what cost if if all customers were like changing name, maybe I changed the name, but like for Twitter to be like, why did you call it like that? I'm like, I don't know. Why did Amazon call itself Amazon? Like, is it because it was in a forest or something? Why did Steve Jobs call it Apple? Because like he likes fruit? Like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Well, I think it was a a marketing genius play because so many people are now referencing Pulsea by name, but less, like you said, from does it matter or not? It's just been a memorable marketing moment, is what it's kind of created, or seems like it's created now.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

No, and I think what matters is like in marketing is like end of the day, what you know, what matters is like how people is it pushing people to try the product? And then and then that's where the real game begins. It's like, do people like it? Do people stay? Do people retain? Does it add value to their lives? And that's what really, really matters, and that's like what most of my time is focused on.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

100%, as it always should be. I say uh brand is so much more than a name, obviously. It's really how you make people feel the value you add. And you know, we talked about the name itself, but for anyone unfamiliar with with Pulsia, I'm sure many people saw the launch. But would you mind just explaining what Pulsia is?

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Of course. Pulsia is an AI that builds and runs companies autonomously. Uh, you give it an idea, uh, and it will go about building the product, fixing the bugs, uh making market research. Uh, it can tweet, you can set up a company email and like find leads, uh, respond to support, uh, run ads, uh, and many more things. You know, just introduced uh you can buy custom domain for you and find a name and register it and like set up the DNS and everything. Um so the idea is like is that you know it works autonomously for you. So it will take decisions on your behalf, but you can also guide it. We'll remember what you say and then act on on your behalf uh towards building the company that you your that your idea. Um Stripe is already set up for you, all the APIs are already set up for you. Um and so for you, it's really the idea is like you just talk to it and you just give it ideas. It's gonna work every night on your behalf and then send you a recap on the morning at 8 a.m. where it's gonna summarize what it did, uh what worked, what didn't, what's the next step, and and then you can reply via email or to the dashboard. So it's a very simple loop where you get an AI employee, an AI team, an AI co-founder, however you want to call it, and it's gonna build for you uh as a human would. Like if you hire an employee, like it's gonna work uh when you don't tell it anything, it might continue working, right? But if you go to it and micromanage it, then it will listen to you. And if you say, I trust you, work on this mission, the employee will try their best. And so that's sort of like the way Porcia behaves. Um, it's not perfect yet. It's like it has limitations, it doesn't have all the tools yet. Uh, but the idea is over time to give Posia more skills, more tools, more more ways to act on the behalf behalf of the user so that any idea you have can be created. Whether it's like creating a new business, whether it's just trying out ideas, whether it's like a personal project, whether it's like help having it help you on the on an existing business, which a lot of users are doing, um, it can do all of it.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

I love it. One of my favorite or I guess favorite quotes in that we want to disprove it is the best ideas and most ideas live in the graveyard. And it feels like Pulsia is really positioned to actually stop that happening and just democratizing access to people building. Now, for anyone wondering, there's so much noise around AI right now and so much opportunity for people to build. Why Pulsia versus any other area that they could be building on for someone sitting here with an idea?

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Yeah, I mean, it's it's just interesting. Like um, I think the you know, Pulsia at its very core is no different than a cloud, uh GPT, uh, cloud code, codex, and any every other tool that exists in the sense that like it's fired by an AI that I can act and can do things, right? Where it really differs is two main things, right? Number one, it's already setting up all the infrastructure and environment for you. So it's it's already picking like a hosting solution, uh, picking a where where the code is gonna be hosted. It picks the database provider, it picks like it sets up an email provider, it sets up a Stripe account, right? So all this stuff that you would have to manually set up if you would start a new business. Bosia does it for you automatically. And he doesn't ask you, you know, if you ask Cloud, okay, I want to I wanna host my website, it's gonna say, well, you can use Vercel, you can use Heroku, you can use AWS. For most people, like, I don't care, I just want it to be online, right? And so Bosia just puts it online and doesn't really ask you where, it doesn't really matter. It's included in the subscription, right? Number two, the big difference is that it's autonomous, meaning it will work every day as long as you pay it. Uh it will work every day on your idea and never gives up. And so that's a big difference because if you go to like uh a let's say a cloud, it only works if you prompt it. Right. Right. So that you had this whole prompt engineering thing. And like, and so what does that mean is that like I think a lot of people that I talk to that use Pulsia, they've tried the AI before, they've tried other products, but then they tried it and then they kind of gave up because you know, you you you get it really excited for a few days and then you're like, and then you hit a bug or like you hit a frustration and then you give up. And I think that pulsia, it's not it's not gonna give up on you. Like it's actually given an idea, it will continue on your idea as long as you decide to keep it running. And I think that's a big difference because then Pulsia prompts itself, right? So if you if you tell it, hey, work on this idea and and you sort of like forget about it for a weekend because you're just taking some time off, it's gonna work on Friday, on Saturday, and on Sunday. And when you come on Monday, it's like, well, in the past three days, I did this, this, and this. So it prompted itself to be like, okay, well, where are we at? Okay, so I guess the website is still not done. So like let's continue building. What does it need left? Like, well, I remember my owner said that he wanted this, those features. So you know what? Let me build them. Okay, and then it's the next day. Well, he hasn't responded to me, so let me do some SEO setup so that like the website is SEO ready, right? So, and the user doesn't have to ask for that because Pulsia is optimized to just make it to achieve the goal of the user. And so if it's like, oh, I want to build a company and get customers, then it will set up everything for that. But if it's like, if in the future it's like, oh, I just want to build this little personal project for myself, then it might not need to like do SEO or anything, it's just about building the the tool and maybe researching what are the best ways to make that tool better, or maybe maybe the future could design it to different versions of design. And so that's the main difference is that it's autonomous. Um, and that's and and by the way, autonomy is extremely expensive. That's also why other companies are not fully going in because it's expensive and it's scary. It's expensive because agents are expensive, like they need to run for sometimes five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and just every turn this they cost money. And number two, they can be scary because they take decisions. And so it's like people are like, uh, what if it makes a mistake? Well, it's like, well, I mean, it's better than like giving up, right? So it's like if if you if you actually are for sure want to build this thing and you're not gonna give up and you know what you're doing, just use code code, right? And by the way, code code is generating like you know, tens of billions of views of dollars a year for entropic. So clearly people love it, and I use it also. But there's some people that are like, I don't want to be in a terminal, like I don't even know where to start, like, and also like I don't have time. And then, well, Pulse Yeah, just it just works for you. It's fine. You don't have to worry about it, it's just gonna work for you. Does it do a better job than the clock code? It's not necessarily a better job, it's just as it just works. It will, it will, it will figure it out, it will try, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Which is hugely important for it. Sounds like your ICP, which is at least at the moment a little bit more on the solopreneur side, someone who's got an idea who wants to launch it. And I mean, you've got over 8,600 companies active on Pulse already. So, what are some examples of companies, if you wouldn't mind sharing some uh ideas that are out there that people can Yeah, I mean Yeah, I mean, I mean, I was just like meeting with a customer.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

He has like a like a voice AI product he's building, right? Where it's like you can you can call uh with a phone number, and then like it's like an AI sort of receptionist he's building. Um, I have like other customers that are building, there's a lot of AI SaaS products that are being built, and uh especially the one generic money, whenever I look, it's often like AI SaaS products, like you know, AI ads or AI, you know, AI for this, AI for that. Um I also have customers, like one of the big customer, I want to say big customers is customers that's been the platform for a while and they're really have power users, um, he's using it for his existing business. So actually, he he's managing um a network of it's a marketplace between people who need laundry services and laundry providers. And uh he was using a third-party SaaS for that. That was costing him like 200 bucks a month or something. And so he was like, Well, he told Paul, can you just rebuild it for me? And Paulsia just rebuild that solution for him, and then now he can add the features and make it perfect. He actually connected his own strap account uh because he does he didn't want to pay the the fee of that uh at today I'm charging, which I think I'm gonna drop actually. And and yeah, he's running his business on Pulseo. So, you know, it's like there's all these different ideas. It's also people running personal projects. Um so it's pretty varied. It's very varied, actually.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Very cool, super exciting. And I mean, you mentioned pricing, so why don't we dig into the pricing? Curious how that fits in because it's quite a unique model, you know. I believe $49 a month base plus there's about a 20% revenue share, which is is quite different than a typical SaaS pricing model. It's almost similar to more of like an IC stake in companies uh where your true partner in their building. So talk us through the pricing model and how you kind of landed on that. And it sounds like you're iterating upon it too.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

I mean, it's it's it's very interesting because it's like so where I landed on 49 was because AI is so expensive. So when I was building Pulsia at the time, I landed on like a it was a between a dollar and a dollar fifty per task, right? So I was like, okay, I think I can bring it to a dollar. And so 30, so every night it has one task. That's $30 of AI cost. Plus, like I'm giving them a web server for like you know, five to ten dollars within database that costs me every month. Plus, I give them some API keys because if they use open AI or like you know, voice models, it's it should be embedded so they don't have to think about it. So I was like, okay, I'm I've I I can arrive at 50 bucks. So like let me charge 50 bucks and make money when they make money. So that's the 20%, right? So I thought that was like a pretty fair thing. It's like you you pay for I I sort of break even and I think over time AI cost is gonna go down and I can like make some margin there, but then I'll make money on 20%. Uh so that's sort of like the way, the way I thought about it. And then if you want DAI to do more tasks during the day, uh you can buy tasks and it's around like a dollar to two dollars per task, which cost me a dollar to two dollars. And like again, thinking over time I can lower costs. Actually, the opposite happened where like costs went up. Like the cost per task went up because just because, for example, like engineering agents working on vibe-coded websites and the code basis of customers getting bigger and bigger, like it had to spend more and more time trying to fix bugs or figure out things up. And cost was sometimes 20 bucks, 30 bucks for of costs, because then it would then it would it would go to like opus, like the best AI models to try to fix the bug. And like so the long story short is like is that it actually even at 50 bucks, it's like it's not enough to cover the cost. So I actually started working with uh so I'm working with like different companies that are all building infrastructure for agents in different ways. And one of the companies I work with Sapium, they sort of like I'm I'm exclusively using them for a lot of like the the APIs and the and and the and the things I'm one of their biggest customers in exchange is sort of build solutions for my problems because my problem is going to be everyone's problems when everyone builds those systems. And so one of the things we did together is like when I did build is um is actually renting GPUs and and doing our own AI models so that we get way cheaper model cheaper price, uh, so that I could be, but then the price was like a hundred X less. It's like which is crazy. And when I realized that, I was like, whoa, wait a second. So now it's a hundred, so now I was, you know, I was breaking even or losing money, but now I'm like, now I it's a much cheaper cost for me. But then I was like, well, if my mission, and and then when I meet customers that are that pay the 50 bucks a month, they just love it so much. They're like, they're like, I had this idea in my head, and now I'm an entrepreneur and now I'm building, and like, you know, I have my other job, but like I'm I'm building and I can build different ideas. And you know, obviously I've been an entrepreneur for a decade. And when I see someone becoming an entrepreneur, you know, there's this connection, and I'm like, yeah, I mean, now you understand. Now you're a builder. It doesn't mean that your first company is gonna be successful, but now you're a builder and you're empowered. And and I was like, I need to give that feeling to more people, right? Because my mission is to empower the the 99%, like a billion people. I mean, this is a this is a big, big goal, but like this is the idea of it. And I was like, well, I'm not gonna get to a billion people if I charge 50 bucks a month, because that's actually a lot. It's kind of scary. Younger people can really afford 50 bucks a month, and and so and so now my pricing model is like I'm thinking, well, actually, I have a free version so that people can experience just the autonomy. So they may not be able to like build all the things and like set up all the Stripe stuff, but at least they can experience an AI building for you. So you give it an idea and it starts building slowly daily, and then and then change the pricing where, like, you know, if you actually spend $50, maybe you can try five different companies. So you so there's less pressure for one idea to work and be like, well, I paid 50 bucks, I created one idea, didn't make money. It's like just give it a few ideas, just A B test, start seeing what sticks, right? Because this is also what Paul CR empower is that like you can give it a five ideas and it can build an MDP of all, and you can be like, Well, this actually feels the the best, right? I like that one the more uh the most. And on the 20%, it's interesting because like you know, I I'm thinking like if you know, obviously that was my way of making money, but then I'm like, okay, now that like I'm paying way less on on AI, I could actually make a profit on on compute, yeah, right. So I could see a world where now I can make money on compute, right? And I'm like, do I really want to take 20% of someone's business? It's as aggressive, and also it, for example, the customer who's running his business on Pulsea, he's he used his own Stripe key because he was like, I can't pay 20%. Like that's too much, too much of my business. I don't have enough margin for that. And I was like, Yeah, use your own stripe key, it's fine. Like, just ask Pulsia, I'll connect you on. Um, but I'm like, I kind of want to be like Shopify, like charge like 3% or whatever, and just be more friendly, and then maybe charge 20% in exchange for an investment. So now it'd be like, because I was just talking to a customer earlier and I was like, he he loved the product and he was hustling, and he told me he tried to build the same idea like two years ago and he paid $10,000 to an agency, and now he's rebuilding it, and like, you know, it opens his mind. And now it finally worked, and he was so impressed, and now he's like, think about all these ideas. And I'm like, well, Pulse I could identify this user because they could see that like he's talking a lot, his product works, he got a first customer, whatever milestone, and and talk to the customer and say, Hey, I'll give you a thousand credits or whatever, like I give you an investment in like compute in exchange. Now I take 20% of your business. That's the deal, or 10% or whatever, right? So I get I take that cut in exchange for actually I give you a lot of compute for you to really start building, yeah, right. And I think that that would be instead of taking it by default, I would take it in exchange for uh the users agreeing to get to take an investment. Because that that actually that user was telling me, he tried to raise money, like he had friends, or and it's like the VC said, Well, you need a technical co-founder. And he was like, So he doesn't he doesn't have access to the capital markets like I do, right? So for him, he has to hustle on his own. And I was like, Well, it was very inspiring to talk to users like that and be like, well, yeah, I mean, actually the opposite, like let me let me invest. Like, I want to invest in him, but through credits, right? Like, because I want him to use Possian and like become uh a power user, become an ambassador, you know. So yeah, but it's all evolving, you know, it's like you you also learn from users, right? It's like you have this idea in your head, you put it out there. And then you talk to customers and you're like, you know what? Maybe I'll tweak it. Maybe I'll make it, you know, different.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Especially in the early days. And I mean, it's such an interesting angle because it almost sounds like a wedge that you're using for angel investing and access to then trade off with compute. But compute does sound like it's your biggest kind of variable cost and almost biggest strategic dependency. Are you seeing, even with these partnerships with infrastructure companies, like are you seeing a path forward where you're able to stay profitable or be in like a net positive zone while paying for all this compute? Because compute is, as we know, quite costly.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Compute is like uh the new currency. Like it's like it's it's the new electricity, you know. I mean, it's actually straight up electricity at this point. Um, I think what I realized is it's interesting that like when I launched Bolsi in 20 in December 2025 was the same month that Opus 4.5 came out. And when Opus 4.5 came out, I, like many others in the industry, were like, whoa, something changed. Like the model is just there's there was a step function in the model's ability to reason extremely well on whatever you were saying, its ability to use tools so fluently, and just like being able to like not hallucinate and just like stay the course. And so that's really a model that empowered to me, to me, that model was is AGI, to be honest, like whatever definition we have, because AGI is like this concept of like it's like uh uh an intelligence that's broad, that I can do anything. And if you think about Opus 4.5, it can think about anything, it reason about any concept you give it really well, and it can also use any tools. So it can it can it it can actually act on anything, right? You can give it any tool, any MCP, and for it will figure it out. But fast forward three, four months, uh open source is always trailing through the six months. But now three to six months open source is as good as 4.5. So open source to me is AGI and Sota, like the 4.7 and GPT 5.5, they are AGI 1.2, 1.3, right? So it's like if you think about like what what GPT, just the GPT 5.5 like solved like a math uh theorem that like was unsolved for like 50 years. Uh entropic mythos mythos or whatever it's called, like broke like the is used by DNSA to like figure out leaks in like uh security holes and like uh open source software. It's like my customers don't need that, they just want to create a little bit, they just have an idea in their head and they want to be create, they want to they want to create maybe a community, whatever they want to build, they don't need HGI 2.5, you know? But they do need HI 1.0, which is something that can actually execute and as as well as a human. And so a month ago, if you have asked me, I'd be like, yeah, it's tough to make money, it's gonna be tough. Like I think I need to do 20%, I need to make sure. But now I'm like, you know what? Now with that with those open source models and then and that I can tweak to make it my own model, I can I can actually fine-tune Pulsia and make it a Pulsiar model, right? That like it's the Pulsia personality and like and can be very efficient at like doing what it what Paulsia needs to do. Um I I think that like creating my own model that is fine-tuned to be less expensive, and also GPUs are gonna get more and more efficient, and models are gonna get smaller and smaller. And so I think cost of intelligence will continue to drop, actually. And so and so I do think that the future is will be fine on margins. And I think right now it's more a race of like building the best products, the best abstractions for different different people to embrace AI. I am trying to, my target demo is like non-technical people. Uh, but if you go to like, you know, there's other folks that are targeting the enterprise that are still not using AI that much, uh, or empowering employees in firms, or employ uh empowering lawyers, empowering accountants. There's so many angles, but then the collectively it's like it's about empowering folks to use AI to just output more and more productive and also be more fulfilled. Um and I think that's that's where I always why I raise capital, because then you need the capital to being able to sustain lower margins at the beginning while while and also trying to offer things like freemium that costs money, but it's also marketing because it's like if I can if the haters on Twitter can all use the product for free and uh tweaks they'd be like, you know what, it's actually pretty good. Versus right now they try the embodying and they're like, well, I'm not paying 50 bucks, and also like I don't like it, you know. So uh they they can't really try the product until until you experience it and you you you get the vibe of like, okay, well, that AI is actually it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool that it worked, continue working on my ID when I when it was just, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah. I mean, everything you've shared, it's a it's a pretty radical view, Ben. And you know, you're really betting on the price of compute and AI coming down and this kind of radical new world. If you're right, what does the new world look like? What does the future look like?

SPEAKER_02 27:17

I think that um what I'm betting on is you know, if you have a society where people can find jobs and then they depend on welfare or like some new welfare that like is much higher because certain folks are paying some, you know, government figures are a way to tax like those conglomerates that are milking the economy or running the economy, um, that's not great. That's not a great outcome because you know, people need to have purpose, people need to feel that they contribute. And I but I think that like I think that as long as humans sell to humans, humans know what other humans want. Today, they and by the way, in in the future, people humans will want different things because maybe there'll be more offline experiences, there'll be more, there'll be more uh people will want different things. Maybe the internet will become the dead internet with like this only AI, so people won't go in anymore and they will they'll find other places to go or to hang out or to do things and to feel fulfilled. But what will always be true is that you'll need builders that build those new things that that entertain others or or or save people's time or provide them value. And I think that like if you have a collective society that's educated, that like because it what happens when you build a business is that you become educated on a lot of things because you've educated on engineering, into marketing, into finance, into operations, into support, you you have customers into business, into profits, margins, right? Investing. You know, you you all these concepts become real because you have to learn them because you are trying to run a business. And I think if collectively or societies are like, well, everyone gets educated in business, then you get a much more, you know, uh you level the playing field in a way, and then and then you create a new economy where like actually people can sell to each other, right? You could see Paul C as an economy, not just a tool, right? Where people can buy and sell businesses, people can like buy and sell services inside of Paul CR. Uh, you get, you know, I could see a world where like someone is like, well, you know, I want to build an offline thing, actually. I want to build a bakery, right? It would be extremely hard for someone to, it's so much work. You have to find a space, you have to do this, this, and that. Versus AI could be like, well, you know what? Like, let me find figure out for you. Like, let me figure out like an affordable way to do it. Oh, let me hire staff for you. Let me, you know, because AI could just find the staff, hire them, manage them, pay them, fire them if they don't do a good job, promote them if they do a good job, give them a rating. There's a way that AI could actually employ more people because you know, if you told me today, like I'd love to open a restaurant, but like I know it's about it's not the best investment, it's the most gratifying thing. But never in the world I would spend the time to to to deal with all the ops to logistics. But if I could tell an AI, hey, here's uh 200k, I want to open like a little sign of a restaurant with your super cute with my recipe. Uh I mean I'm a huge snob in terms of food, so I have to think about it. But uh probably something French-Italian. Uh yeah. But it's like I I would give that money because I would be like, that would make me so happy. But I would want the AI to just handle all the operations and all this stuff, and I would just give it my taste. This I would, I would, you know, make sure the recipes are good, the ambience, the design. But the way like the fact that we need to hire someone to clean, someone to cook, someone to open and close the shop, someone we had to pay the rent and you know, figure out the accounting, figure out the taxes, the LLC, like, I don't want to deal with that, right? Nobody wants to deal with that. And that's where the AI is can be really good. And so the long story short is that I think the future can be very abundant and create a society that's more vibrant as long as like people are equipped and educated. And so that's why all this noise they make online is also about education, because whether people like it or not, they now well, this what is this AI slob thing? Like, what is AI slob? Like, wait, what is this thing? And then they try the onboarding, and then for free I give them like an explosion of AI interface, right? And they're like, That's crazy. I didn't know AI could do that because I knew I knew Chat GPT, but like you ask it a question and it answers. This thing like just created a company for me. Is that a company? And then they can decide I like it, I want to continue, or I don't like it, and then you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Definitely. And these kind of radical views, Ben, I mean, first, what an incredible and interesting future and vision that you have. And these kind of radical views, it takes somebody to actually execute on them, just like you are. Where did this come from? Where did the inspiration come from? And to this point now, we're sitting at over over 10 million in ARR.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

Um, I mean, inspiration came from like a decade of building, to be honest. Like it's not, it's I think it's like the collective sum of all my experiences. Um I think Pulsia is like is you know, the way Pulsia talks is the way I talk and the way I see entrepreneurship. Like the prompt is like really about the way I see, you know, so it's like it's a part of me. I think the design comes from gaming, like that a game that I love, loved and love. And it's inspired by that and trying to make entrepreneurship more like a game. Um and I think it's yeah, the inspiration, I mean, to me, like it's not like I had like a I I can remember the the the day I I I had the idea was like I was in Mount Fuji. I I I was actually in Tokyo, like I was pretty stressed out and like about you know, I was working really hard on my first idea, and I went to Mon Fuji to like open my eyes and like mind, and I had the idea for Pulse. So this is how it happened. But it's also happened in a place where like I started being in flow and like not caring too much about what people cared. Like clearly, I don't I shouldn't I don't care that people think it's a bad name or whatever. And when you stop caring about what people care about and like start just building stuff that because it feels right and it feels, you know, that feels right, then I feel like the best that's the best thing that happened, right? Just meeting that customer and then hearing him having trouble raising money and then like just using Pulsia to build things. And I was like, Well, I want I want to be your investor because like you know, I like I love that guy's vibe. And I was like, well, yeah, Pulsia could be an investor. And it's like, and it just comes naturally, it's not like overthought, it's not like I'm not gonna make like a deck and like making a financial analysis if it makes sense or not. I'm like, I feel like that guy would love it, and I think and I think it would be, and I I think it makes sense, and let me try it. You know, it's that's the way I start I I build now. And and I think building in flow is the best way because you don't you stop building for an outcome, you build because it feels right.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

And often you pulled on a great point there when you're listening to the customer. What feels right is what's valuable for the customer, aligned with yourself. So I love that. And you spent, I mean, oh, four and a half years building cloud kitchens. You were employee number two after Travis Kalinick, and Travis Kalinick was um Uber's Uber's co-founder and CEO, an incredible builder. What are some lessons that you learned from Travis that you've carried forward to now building Pulsia?

SPEAKER_02 34:22

I mean, yeah, Travis, uh, an incredible entrepreneur and was a big mentor and like a big, a big part also of how what empowers me to feel be so confident in building Pulsia and grow it is because he's he has this incredible energy about seeing the future and like really believing in a certain future and like just going at it with a lot of boldness and a very inspired inspired boldness, right? And so I think some of the lessons from working for him, I think, first of all, when uh you know, when I started building like a this business line that I built under him at Kitchens called Future Foods, which was like helping restaurants actually launch virtual brands, multiple brands online to help them bring more business to their kitchen, to their to their restaurant, which was really helping them during COVID. That was a very successful business because people were like struggling to get any money in. And so products like mine would really help them. And I remember before at one point I realized, okay, that product works and I think it can scale. And I asked Travis, like, hey, can I hire a salesperson to help me sell that product to more restaurants? And he was like, Man, you don't want to scale a product that doesn't work, trust me. Uh, you're the salesperson, you go close 10 customers and then come back to me when you've close 10. And then if you've close 10, we can discuss. So a week later, I closed the 10 and then I came back to me. I was like, okay, cool. All right, now you can hire one salesperson. And I think that like that that scrappiness and then like that humbleness of like not trying to scale something before you're convinced that there's a customer really wants it. I think that was one valuable lesson. I think the second valuable lesson is like, you know, champion's heart, what he calls champion's heart, which is like if you when you get punched, punched down, you get back up. Like if you get back up every single time you get punched in the face and or you get pushed, you know, in the ground, you get back up. Uh you're instoppable. And so it's like that resilience, you know, like for example, right now on Twitter, people are hating and this and like that resilience you build of like, I'm gonna take the part that they say that is that I that I think they're correct, but the rest I'm gonna just ignore. And I'm not gonna be, I won't, I'm only caring about any customers who's talking or like people that have a point that really, you know. Um, and I think that resilience is important to not be affected by by the world, just be affected by the customer and then also what's right. Because you know, the the consensus can have a moral campus that can help you guide you through ambiguity, right? Because, you know, for example, Travis, when he was hit by the search pricing, there's the logic and then there's the ambiguity of like how does it feel and what's right and how to present it, or the tipping, you know, no tips, and people are like, well, you need to tip. It's like end of the day, you're selling to humans, so like make sure that like it's it's accepted by the human society, right? Or it's in it, you know, you don't want to be completely like um uh sort of like countercurrent.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Right, you're gonna speak their language.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

Uh but yeah. But yeah, so those are some of the lessons, and I think and I think now in this phase of Bolsiar, it's like it's about dreaming big while staying humble, like while you know, still looking at your step and taking one step at a time, but also dreaming big, which you know, obviously looking at Travis' work for the for five years, or clearly like you get you like, okay, well, I guess I guess it's possible to dream big. You have to be smart about it, but it's possible. And in just the the I think it's the first step to think it's possible to then being able to actually accomplish it. The first step is believing, right? Um, and and I think in in parts that's what Pulsia is trying to do in this first phase. It's like showing everyday people that like, no, you can be like the the guy at Silicon Valley that building a startup. Like you can do you can be that. Now, are you gonna be successful? A lot of them are not successful in Silicon Valley. So it's not a it's not a get rich quick scheme, but like just let me show you. I mean, Pulsi out, let Pulsia show you that like you can be a builder and and then you can decide what you want to build or if you want to build.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

But yeah, great, great lessons. And and one thing you mentioned was a scrappiness. I feel like you've taken it to a whole new level in a way because you've hit 10 million in revenue run or 10 million in run rate.

SPEAKER_02 38:45

Run rate.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

One employee yourself. So why why build just yourself? Because you've talked about, you know, thinking about pricing strategy, you've talked about taking customer calls. It's a lot. Um, you've got investors now. Yeah. Why not hire a couple engineers or anyone else?

SPEAKER_02 39:04

So, first of all, like I'm I'm working with four different companies that are building in the agentic space. Uh, and they have engineers and they are building their own platforms, right? That I that I'm using. And so I have a proxy where like I'm working with them. We have a commercial agreement where like I bring them traffic on a specific slice of like the economy, the agenting economy, and exchange is sort of like provide engineers that are building solutions for me that I plug into Pulsia. So that's sort of like a little hack to have help as I build, right? Uh and obviously when you become a big customer, like people are really willing to work with you and help you build because you're a big customer. And so I'm a big customer on behalf of my customers, right? Which, you know, the more so that I think that's that's one thing where like, but but of course, sometimes I'm thinking like, if I had my own engineers that like were working just on Pulsia, maybe, maybe this on that would happen faster. And like maybe if I had like a head of this and ahead of that. And honestly, I'm thinking about it every day. Should I break, should I break the the rule and like hire a full-time team? The reason why I'm staying for now, at least for now, is I think it's a great marketing story, which in the world where like marketing is so hard. You know, someone on Twitter said it's it's performance art, right? It's like I'm sure it's performance art. This is like whole of a it's just like, and I think that's not wrong. I think that's that's not I mean it's not uh it's not fake, but it is it's me being good at marketing, if that makes sense. It's like it's it's like you know what? If I'm doing if I'm hitting those muscles alone, people are gonna be like, what the hell? How is that possible? Right? If I start hiring people that I'm just another dude who has a startup, right? Uh if I stay alone, uh it gets the story gets crazier and crazier. Uh the question becomes, when does it hurt the company? Right now it's like we are like on the hedge, right? Because but also on the other hand, on the other hand, um me being alone means I need to leverage AI like crazy. So for example, you know, obviously Pulsia is all AI, customer support is AI. Now I made it very easy if you have an issue and you talk to Pulsia, they it like just on your behalf sends an email to support that can that that can do more refunds. But if like support cannot fix your issue, it creates a uh bug report. And that bug report, if there's enough people talking about the same bug report, gets automatically solved by Pulse A and then pushed to the code. And I doing that because I'm like, well, there's no other way. Like there's because you people are you are are tapping into too many edge cases because it's all trying to build something different, and they whole and so I cannot fix all these edge cases at once. Um, and so I need to do this, but then if I get it right, I'm unstoppable. Polsey is unstoppable because then, first of all, Polsias starts building for the people, right? So it might take decisions over time that are just aligned with the paying customers, and the voice of the paying customers gets what is what gets built, which is what you want. Like you don't want like some random PM that just decides what's cool. It's like just listen to your customers, right? They'll tell you what's important. So that's the net positive. And also I'm putting putting myself in the shoes of the customer. When the customer has a bug and they call and I for because I give them my phone number to all my customers because I meet them in person, and then they call me at midnight saying, Ben, there's a bug.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

You mean all your customers in person?

SPEAKER_02 42:36

I feel not all my customers, but I'm trying to meet more and more of my customers in person. Uh well, you know, if you go to my Twitter, I I start doing I film, I film them with the content, and then like with conversations and because it's good, it's good content to show showcase sort of like what's going on. Uh but then I end up then they have my phone number. And I tell them if you have any issues anytime, just call me. Because my email, I may have trouble seeing it, but if you text me, I'll see it. So now enough once I say I don't you don't have to say twice.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Yeah, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

Then they will they will text you every single time it's an issue. So so then I feel the pain with them because I'm like, okay, I have this podcast, but then I also need to go fix a bug. Uh so so yeah, it's it's a fun journey, but uh we'll we'll see, we'll see how the how the flow goes.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Well, it's great to see how you how you continue to build it and take us inside your marketing mind a little bit. You've um manufactured some incredible moments intentionally, they are very true and authentic, but you've really been intentional about how you've done it. Um one of that was your fundraise process, another, you've got the live website, which actually shows people building. Let's first talk about email because I've talked to Pulsia via email, for example. Pulsia handles and can resolve most emails, but how much of your emails actually get handled by Pulsia versus when you have to step in?

SPEAKER_02 43:59

So Pulsia. Response to all my emails. Um, and then it doesn't really, I mean, for my my personal for support, if you if you if you go to support at polsiar.com, then it can actually resolve anything related to customers of Paul CR, right? Refunds, add more credits, fix bugs. Uh, but if someone emails me, bet at polsiar.com, I have another Paul SIA that responds, but it's more like to answer questions with when I don't need to answer, when Paulsia knows the answer, or like when it's a common question. Um, and it's also a way to buy myself time because I get so many emails, I don't have time to respond right away. So at least the customer gets a response or someone gets a response, right? But I didn't give it an ability to book a calendar on my behalf because then I I I don't have time to meet most people, to be honest. Uh I obviously mostly say no to I mean, I just don't respond. Uh because I don't have time.

SPEAKER_01 44:57

Um yeah, completely makes sense. And what were some other kind of moments you thought very intentionally about? I know the fundraise is one that stands out uh for myself because a lot of people have been have been skeptical of it. We've had some guests actually talk about agent-to-agent communication on the fundraising side and say, and corroborate kind of what you are doing. For example, Orrin Hoffman of Flex Capital said, you know, the first meeting will be agent-to-agent without a doubt by the end of 2026. You were on your fundraise process uh predominantly with with agents with Pulsia. So curious to hear a little bit more about that decision and that process and when you came in and stepped in in person.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

I mean, yeah, first of all, when I realized that Pulsia was working before uh, you know, before I even moved to SF, and I could see that people really engaged, people loved it. I all my friends started to use it, which was really rare for products like that. And people like, I really love it. Like, I'm building this thing, I'm building that thing, right? I was like, okay. And what happened like in 2025 is that like I built this app that makes apps, like the blanks app. And there was a competitor, someone who built the same thing called Wabi, and they raised like so much money. They raised like, I don't know, like a hundred million dollars or something, like crazy amount of money. And then I was thinking to myself, like, dude, you're like, you build the same thing, but then you stayed on in your cave or like traveling alone, and then you never really gave it a chance. Um, which means that like, you know, if they are successful, you're gonna be like, oh, I should have gone to SF, raise more capital, be more bold. So then when both when I built Pulse and I was like, okay, I really feel like this is a good idea this time, actually. This retention is much better. I was like, I don't want to repeat the webby incidents where like they raised so much and then I didn't raise any. And then like, so then I was like, let me move to SF and I need to do, I think I may need to raise capital, but also I need to market the product. And I was like, well, if I want to market the product, I need to, I think since Bolsia is claim is to do so much to to run a company, which is crazy, what better way to for the marketing to be about AI doing crazy stuff that usually only reserved for humans? And so the first marketing, I was like, well, if I make AI raise my round, that would turn heads. Um and so, and then I actually actually at the time I already because I raised a pre-seed, right? I raised a million dollars pre seed in the summer that I haven't really spent because I was just alone. Uh, so I still had a million dollars in the bank account, and so I was like, I don't really need it, I don't need to raise desperately. But I was like, let me go to SF and let me launch that stunt. Because I'm like, even if I don't raise, I think it could make people talk. And so that's that was the first intent. Um and what ended up happening is yeah, so I I said I plugged Pulsia on my email address, and I was like, you respond to every email. Um we built together the live dashboards, which is supposed to be the data room for investors to be able to like see the data. Because you know, investors are like, hey, show me your data room, show me your data, show me your retention. And so I there was this live dashboard, and then like that showed the actual numbers, number of customers, number of like, you know, the stats, and then the chat where you can ask questions and the and the answers questions about retention, about this and that. And um, and I started tweeting about it and like sent a few emails to a few investors about it, and then yeah, people started like emailing me because the you know, investors, it's their job to just email founders. And so Pulse started having conversations with all of them. And the more this was happening, the more people started talking about it, the more that life dashboard curve was going up. And so I kept tweeting about it, and that was like a self-fulfilling prophecy because the more I tweeted about it, the more the numbers went up, the more people were emailing me about investing, the more like and Post Ya was telling them that it was raising at a billion dollar valuation, and so people were freaking out and telling other people. And so it was a really great marketing moment. And and I there was so many investors emailing that like I couldn't respond to any of them. So I met a few in person. Uh, but while I was doing so, I was getting a flugot of emails, and yeah, and and then I think people were getting convinced at that point. They were just like, okay, like we're interested, right? And so then of course I had to, I mean, I then I answered a few to a few of them and saying, okay, let's meet in person. And then the deal went pretty fast because the company was so hard that like people were like, you know, they just wanted to invest. So it's like after meeting in person, they were like, and also it's like most it was mostly investors that like knew my investors. So like there was like, you know, there was this, it was this uh sort of like because the end of the day, investors are human, so they also need some validation about, you know, background and they made some background checks on me and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

So yeah, love it. Well, I think it's a a master class in building distribution early and building it in such a powerful way and getting a conversation and talk about you early. You know, what we see is a lot of the time now distribution isn't an afterthought to product market fit. It's really how you get to product market fit and how you maintain it now, since it is more of an ongoing state uh rather than an end state. And so you really built distribution out of the gate, which is you know what we're seeing now in in the market of what needs to happen is building distribution, focusing on your go-to-market, even if it's one person, distribution is your go-to-market um earlier in earlier. So very excited for you in the journey ahead.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 50:36

Appreciate all the time, Ben. This has been fantastic. Thank you, and good luck with this next uh state and journey ahead.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

Thank you so much.