Why You Don't Need a Co-Founder to Start | Dave Morin, Offline Ventures

Dave Morin helped launch Facebook Platform, founded Path, co-founded Slow Ventures, and now runs Offline Ventures. He backed Ben Cera fifteen years before Polsia and chairs the OpenClaw Foundation. He calls himself a producer, not an investor, and makes the case that founding is a relational act: most startups fail on relationships, not product, and the only way solo founding fails is believing "solo" means alone.

Topics covered:

- The Alchemist, and why starting is freedom from suffering

- "YouTube can be your co-founder. ChatGPT can be your co-founder."

- The producer, not the investor: why startups die on relationships

- What Jony Ive told Dave when Steve Jobs died

- The first twelve hours with Clawdbot, and finding Peter Steinberger

- How Polsia actually started: Gift Shop, Kyoto, Company OS, and "Am I crazy?"

- Ramble, and the 10,000-dinners test for what to build

- The bear case and the bull case for solo founding

Guest: Dave Morin — co-founder of Offline Ventures (offline.vc); early Facebook, founder of Path, co-founder of Slow Ventures, Chairperson of the OpenClaw Foundation.