👉🏼 About the Guest:

Yana Welinder is CEO and Founder of Kraftful (YC S19) – an AI assistant that helps product teams build better products by listening to users at scale. Before starting Kraftful, she led product teams at multiple tech companies and personally experienced the challenge of trying to involve millions of users in the product development process. At Kraftful, she built a team of Meta, Slack, and IFTTT alumni, backed by Y Combinator, Google, Samsung, and other exceptional investors and entrepreneurs. Yana is also a Stanford fellow and has been invited to give talks at the White House, the UN Internet Governance Forum, Yale, NYU, and many product events and podcasts over the years.

👉🏼 About the Host:

Sharath is a founder, creator, and community builder. He is also a serial maker who built and shipped 15+ projects using no-code tools. His SaaS product Shoutout generated $30k ARR, which was sold to a UK-based product studio. Prev, Sharath worked for world-changing startups like Product Hunt and On Deck, where he helped build and nurture communities. He also grew his audience on Twitter from 200 to 24,000 using give-first principles and creating high-value content. He recently sold his second SaaS product, GuestLab, and he is working on a startup idea while hosting this show.

👉🏼 Sponsor Corner:

Shoutout to Acquire.com for sponsoring The Undefeated Underdogs podcast! They’re the best online marketplace to buy/sell startups and I know many founders who have sold their businesses there. If you're looking to wind down your business and cash in some of your founder chips, check them out - https://try.acquire.com/sharath/

👉🏼 Description:

Listen in as Sharath and Yana discuss founder mode, creating sticky products, mental health as a solo founder, and more!

👉🏼 Timestamps:

00:00: Episode Highlight
01:00: Shoutout to Acquire.com
03:26: Introduction to Yana Welinder - YC alum, solo founder at Kraftful – an AI assistant
05:01: How Yana discovered a niche for Kraftful
09:40: How to carry off a pivot, emotionally and tactically
15:52: Signals that indicate a need to pivot
18:30: Building a support system as a solo founder
19:50: Therapy frameworks that help solo founders
22:10: Habits to calm you down as a founder
25:51: How Y Combinator changes your startup journey
30:55: How Y Combinator has changed over the years
34:57: How to drive organic traction as a founder
41:45: Wearing many hats as a solo founder: hiring, growth, marketing, product
45:40: How to make your product sticky
48:22: Founder mode vs Manager mode
54:10: Yana's reply to "founder mode is trash" takes
56:58: Outro and closing thoughts

👉🏼 Resources:

👉🏼 Where to find Yana:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yanatweets
Website: https://www.kraftful.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ywelinder
TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/author/yana-welinder/

👉🏼 Where to find Sharath:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/5harath
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@5harath
Website: https://5harath.com/
Newsletter: https://5harath.substack.com/
Founder Gigs: https://foundergigs.com/

Yana Welinder - How to build and scale a VC-backed startup as a solo founder!

The Undefeated Underdogs