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

0:00It's going to work every night on your behalf, and then send you a recap on the morning at 8:00 a.m. Where did this come from? Where did the inspiration [music] come from? And to this point now, where you're sitting at a a routine minute in ARR. I mean, inspiration came from like a decade of [music] building, to be honest. Like, it's not It's I think it's like the collective sum of all my experience. Polysia is an AI [music] that builds and runs companies autonomously. You give it an idea, and it will go about building the product, fixing the bugs, making market research, and tweets. You can set up a company

0:31email and and many more things, you know? Hit 10 million in run rate with one employee, yourself. Yeah.

0:47[music]

0:52Ben, welcome to GTM now. Hello. How are you? I'm well, thanks. How are you doing? Pretty good. Little tired, but I'm good. 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. Many different factors to that. One is the name, and where we can start. Polysia is AI Slop, spelled backwards. Tell us a bit about the

1:20naming decision. I mean, so the the name came about when I decided to start a new company in April 2025, like a month 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

1:40build 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 the end all be all. Um and when my lawyer asked me, "Hey, you need like to come up with a name for the C corp, right? For the Delaware C corp." I was on my couch at like 10:00 p.m. at Paris and I was like, "What about Pulsia?" Like ASLab backwards. Like that sounds It doesn't really matter the name of the C-corp. I

2:06was like, "Whatever." That's the name. But then I had to Then my investors were like keep on referencing the company as Pulsia and I was like, "No, no, no. Like Pulsia is just a C-corp name. Like you know, like sometimes it doesn't really matter that name." My product is Blinks. That's the you know, the product I sell. Fast forward after five building like five different SaaS during 2025, they were not really working. That product Blinks

2:29didn't really take off. I was like, "You know what? I'm going to 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 consumers would love it. And so I think I should build this as a consumer

2:47product." And I was like, "How should I name it?" And I was like, "You know what? That C-corp is called Pulsia. It's actually a name I could get a dot com for. And it's a really good name actually." 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." Cuz a thousand bucks for a six-dollar dot com is actually pretty cool pretty cheap. So that's that's how it came about. There

3:11was no like grandiose plan and anything. I think that you know, it it just felt right. And I think all of Pulsia the way I built Pulsia, you know, the design, the UI, the gamified UI, the the vibes, the Pulsia's 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. I just thought that like it's something I wanted to use myself and I and I thought that like people

3:40would 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 complain about specific aspect of the product or like that if I did slap, that's something else. But, people just like repeatedly being like, "There's no way. This company's called ASL backwards." I'm like, "Okay, amazing." Like, [laughter] uh I'm getting a lot of views for free. I just uh people having fun with it. So, and and when I talk to my customers, which I actually I just came out of like an interview with one of my customers,

4:19they never mention the name. Like, that's that's not a never was something that they bring up, right? Like, "Oh, why is it called Polsia? I don't like the name." Or, "Oh, the design. Why don't you make it more the it's all like that's never what they talk about." What they talk about is like, "Polsia did this for me. Like,

4:33Polsia has made me an entrepreneur. Like, I'm building this one thing and I'm building this other thing." And that's what I care about. It's like, you know, but cuz if if all customers were like change your name, maybe I'd change 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 they was in a forest or something? Why did Steve Jobs call it Apple? Because like

4:54he likes fruit? Like, I don't know. Well, I think it was a a marketing genius play because so many people are now referencing Polsia by name, but less like you said from doesn't matter a lot. It's just been a memorable marketing moment is what it's kind of created or seems like it's created now. 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

5:20people 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. 100% as it always should be. I say a 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

5:50explaining what Pulsia is? 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 can tweet, it can set up a company email and like you find leads, uh respond to support, uh run ads, uh and many more things, you know, just introduce the you can buy custom domains for you and find a name and register it and like set up the DNS

6:20and everything. Um and 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 remember what you say and then act on your behalf uh towards building the company yet that you you that your idea. Um Stripe is already set up for you, all

6:39the APIs 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 going to work every night on your behalf and then send you a recap on the morning at 8:00 a.m. where it's going to 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

7:07call it. And it's going to build for you uh as a human would, like if you hire an employee, like it's going to 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 Pulsia

7:26behaves. 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 Pulsia more skills, more tools, more more more ways to act on the 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 it help having it help you on the on on an existing business, which a lot of users are doing. Um

7:59it can do all of it. 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 Pulsio is really positioned to actually stop that happening and and just democratizing access to people building. Now, for anyone wondering there's so much noise around AI right now and and so much opportunity for people to build, why Pulsio versus any

8:25other area that they can be building on? For someone sitting here with an idea. Yeah, I mean it's it's just interesting like um I think the it you know, Pulsio at its very core is no different than a Claude, uh GPT, Claude Code, Code X, and any every other tool that exists in the sense that like it's powered by an AI that it can act and can do things,

8:48right? Where it really differs is two 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 going to 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

9:14start a new business. Pulsio does it for you automatically and it doesn't ask you, you know, if you ask Claude, "Okay, I want to I want to host my website." It's going to 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, Pulsio just puts it online and and doesn't really ask you where. It doesn't really matter. It's included in the

9:34subscription, 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. It never gives up. And so, that's a big difference because if you go to like uh let's say a Claude, it only works if you prompt it, right? So, that you have this whole prompt engineering thing. And like And so, what does that mean is that like I think a lot of people that I talked to that just

10:05bought yeah, they've tried 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 a really excited for a few days and then you're like and then you hit a bug or like you get a frustration and then you give up. And I think that Pulsia it's not it's not going to give up on you. Like it's actually given an idea, it will continue on your idea as long as

10:26you 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 going to work on Friday, on Saturday, and on Sunday. And when you come on Monday, it's like, "Well, in the past few days I did this, this, and

10:45this." 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 me to only do this those features. So, you know what? Let me build them." Okay, and then there'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

11:13make 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

11:34it to different versions of design. And so that's the main difference is that it's autonomous. And that's And And by the way, autonomy is extremely expensive. It'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 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes and just every turn this

11:59they cost money. And number two, they can be scary because they take decisions. And so it's like people are like, "What if it makes a mistake?" What'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 then you're not going to give up and you know what you're doing, just use Code Code Code, right? And by the way, Code Code is generating like, you know, tens of billions of of dollars a year

12:24for Anthropic. 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, Pulsar just it just works for you. It's fine. You don't have to worry about it. It's just going to work for

12:41you. Does it do a better job than Code Code? It's not necessarily a better job. It just does It just works. It will It will It will figure it out. It will try, right? Which is hugely important for 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 over 8,600 companies active on Pulsar already. So what are some examples of companies if you wouldn't mind sharing some ideas that are out there that people Yeah, I mean Yeah, I mean I mean, I was just like

13:11meeting with a customer. He has like a like a voice AI product he's building, right? Where it's like you can you can call with a phone number and then like it's like an AI sort of receptionist he's building. I have like other customers that are building There's a lot of AI SAS products that are being built and especially the one generating money whenever I look, it's often like AI SAS products like you know, AI ads or AI you know AI for this, AI for that. Um I also have customers I get one of the a big customer when I say big customer it's customers that's been the platform

13:43for a while and they really it have power users. Um is 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 and laundry providers. And uh he was using a third-party SAS for that. That was costing him like 200

14:03bucks a month or something. And so he was like, "Well, he told Pangea, can you just rebuild it for me?" And Pangea just rebuilt that solution for him and then now he can add the features and make it perfect. He actually connected his own Stripe account uh because he does he didn't want to pay the the fee of that at today I'm charging which I think I'm going to

14:21drop actually. And and yeah, he's running his business on Pangea. So you know, it's like there's all these different ideas. There's also people who running personal projects. Um So it's pretty varied. It's very varied actually. Very cool. Super exciting and I mean you mentioned pricing. So why don't we dig into the the pricing? Curious how that

14:42fits in cuz it's quite a unique model. You know, I I believe $49 a month base plus there's about a 20% revenue share which is is quite different than a typical SAS pricing model. It's almost similar to more of like a VC stake in companies where they're a 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

15:02iterating upon it too. I mean it's it's it's very interesting cuz it's like so where I landed on 49 was because AI is so expensive. So when I was building Pangea at the time, I landed on like it was a between a dollar and dollar 50 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 costs, plus like I giving them a web server for like, you know, $5 to $10

15:35with database that costs me every month. Plus, I give them some API keys because if they use OpenAI 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 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 a pretty fair thing. It's like you you pay for I I sort of break even, and I think over time AI costs are going to go down, and I can like make some margin there, but

16:02then I'll make money on 20%. Uh so, that's sort of the way the way I thought about it. And then, if you want the AI to do more tasks during the day, uh you can buy tasks, and it's around like a a dollar to $2 per task, which costs me $1 to $2. And like, again, thinking over time I can lower the

16:20costs. Actually, the opposite happened costs went up. Like, the cost per task went up because just because, for example, like engineering agents working on buggy coded websites and code bases of customers getting bigger and bigger, like it it had to spend more and more time trying to fix bugs or figure out things up. And costs were sometimes 20 bucks, 30 bucks for of costs because they then 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 is not enough to cover the

16:55costs. So, I actually started working with a 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, Sapien, they sort of like I'm I'm exclusively using them for a lot of like the the APIs and the and the and the things that I'm one of the biggest customer. In exchange, they sort of build solutions for my problems cuz my problem is going to be everyone's problems when everyone builds those

17:22systems. And so, one of the things we did together is like what I did built is is actually renting GPUs and and doing our own AI models so that we get way cheaper cheaper price. Uh so that I could be but then the price was like 100x less. It's like which is crazy. And when I realized that I was like, "Whoa, wait a second." So, now it's 100 So, now I was, you know, I was breaking even or losing money, but now I'm like

17:49now 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 paid 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 yeah, I have my other job, but like I'm I'm building and I can build the different ideas and, you know, obviously

18:08I'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 going to 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

18:32the the idea of it. And I was like, "Well, I'm not going to get to a billion people if I charge 50 bucks a month." Cuz that's actually a lot. It's 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

19:01starts building slowly daily. And then and then change the pricing where like, you know, if you actually spend 50 dollars, 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,

19:16just give it a few ideas. Just AB test. Start seeing what sticks, right? Because this is also what Polarity Powers that like you can give it a five ideas and it can build a an MDP of all and you can be like, "Well, this actually feels the the best, right? I like that one the more

19:32the most." And on the 20% it's interesting because like, you know, 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, right?" So, I could see a world where now I can

19:52make money on compute. And I'm like, "Do I really want to take 20% of someone's business?" It's so aggressive and also if for example the customer who's running his business on Polarity is he uses own Stripe key because he was like, "I can't pay 20%. I can't That's too too much of my business. I don't have enough margin

20:09for that." And I was like, "Yeah, use your own Stripe key. It's fine. Like, just ask Polarity. I'll connect you on." Um but I'm like, "I kind of want to be like Shopify. Like, charge like 2% or whatever." And just be a more friendly and then maybe charge 20% in exchange for an investment. So, now I'd be like because I was just talking to a customer earlier and I was like he loved the product and he was hustling and he told me he tried to build the same idea like 2 years ago and he paid $10,000 to an agency and now he's rebuilding it and like, you know,

20:36it it opens his mind now. It finally worked and he was so impressed and now he's like thinking about other ideas and I'm like, "Well, Polarity could identify this user because they could see that like these talking a lot. His product works. He got his first customer or whatever milestone." And and talk to the customer and say, "Hey,

20:52I'll give you 1,000 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 computes for you to really start

21:11building, right? And I think that that would be instead of taking it by default, I would take it in exchange for 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 he's like the VC said,

21:26"Well, you need a technical co-founder." And he was like, "Huh." 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, "Woah." It was very inspiring to to to talk to users like that and be like, "Oh, yeah. I mean, actually do the opposite. Like let me let me invest." Like I want to invest in him but through credits, right? Like cuz I want him to use Boson like become a a power user, become an ambassador, you know? So

21:51Mhm. 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 customer and you're like, "You know what? Maybe I'll tweak it. Maybe I'll make it, you know, different." Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Especially in the early days. And I mean, it's such an interesting angle cuz 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 um and almost biggest strategic dependency. Are you seeing

22:20even 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 a net positive zone while paying for all this compute? Cuz compute is as we know quite costly. Compute is like the new currency. Like it's like it's it is it's the new it's the new electricity, you know? I mean, it's actually straight up electricity

22:43Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. at this point. Um I think what I realized is it's interesting that like when I launched Boson 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, we're like, "Whoa, something changed." Like the model is 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

23:20course. 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 a an intelligence that's broad, that it can do anything. And if you think about open 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 like

23:50it will figure it out. But fast forward 3-4 months, open source is always trailing 2-6 months. But now, 3-6 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 So, GPT-5.5 like solved like a a math theorem that like was unsolved for like

24:2150 years. Uh Entropic Mytho Mythos, or whatever it's called, like broke like the is used by the NSA to like figure out leaks in like a security holes in like 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 creative, they want to they want to create maybe a community Whatever they want to build, they don't need AGI 2.5, you know? It But they do need AGI 1.0, which is something that can actually execute and as as well as a human. And so, a month ago, if you had asked me, I'd be

24:55like, "Yeah, it's tough to make money. It's going to 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. I make it a Pulsia model, right? That like has the Pulsia personality and like and can be very efficient at like doing

25:17what it what Pulsia 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 going to get more and more efficient and models are going to 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 I will be fine on on margins. And I think right now it's more a race of like the like the best products, the best abstractions for different different people to embrace AI. I am trying to My target demo is like non-technical

25:53people. 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- empowering lawyers, empowering accountants. There's so many angles, but then the collectively with like it's about empowering folks to use AI to just output more and more productive and also

26:15be more fulfilled. Um and I think that's that's where I was why I raised capital because then you need the capital to being able to sustain lower margins at the beginning while and also trying to offer things like freemium that cost 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 I tweet they'll be like, "You know what? It's actually

26:37pretty good." [laughter] versus right now they they tried your money like, "Well, I'm not paying 50 bucks." And also like I don't like it, you know? So uh they they they can't really try the product until until you experience it and you you get the vibe of like, "Okay, well, that AI is actually it's

26:52pretty cool." Yeah. It's pretty cool that it worked continue working on my idea when I when it was just, you know, Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everything you've shared, it's it's a pretty radical view, Ben. And, you know, you're really betting on the price of compute and AI coming down in this kind of radical new world. If you're right, what does the new world look like? What does the future look

27:14like? 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 some folks are paying some, you know, government figures are way to to tax like those conglomera that are milking the economy or running the economy, um that's not great. That's not a great outcome because

27:42you 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 cuz 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 where like this only AI so people won't go on the internet anymore and they'll they'll find other places to go or to hang out or to do things or to feel

28:12fulfilled. 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 cuz what what happens when you build a business is that you become educated on a lot of things cuz you become educated on engineering into marketing into finance into operations into support. You you have customers that do business to profits margins, right? Investing. You like you you all these concepts become real because you have to learn them because you're

28:47trying to run a business. And I think if collectively our societies are like, well, everyone gets educated in business, then you get a much more, you know, 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 You could see Polysia as an economy, not just a tool, right? Where people can buy and sell businesses, people can like buy and sell services inside of Polysia. Uh you get, you know, I could see a world where like someone is like, well, you know, I

29:13want 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 a an affordable way to do it. Oh, let me hire staff for you. Let me, you know, cuz 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

29:39they 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 off logistics. But if I could tell an AI, "Hey, here's a 200K. I want to open like a a little something Yeah, what restaurant would it

30:03super cute with my recipe. I mean, I'm I'm a huge snob in terms of food, so I have to think about it. But uh probably something French Italian. Yeah. Thank you. But it's like I I would give that money cuz I would be like that would make me so happy. But I would want the AI to just handle

30:20all the operations and all the stuff. And I would just give it my taste. This I would I would, you know, make sure the recipes are good, the ambient, 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 who 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 a can be really good. And so the long story short is that I think the

30:48future can be very abundant and create a society that's more vibrant as long as like people equipped and indicated. And so that's why all this noise I make online is also about education because whether people like it or not, they now What is What is this AI Slap thing? Like what is AI Slap? 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

31:11they're like, that's crazy. I didn't know AI could do that cuz I knew I knew ChatGPT, but like you ask it a question and 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

31:27then, you know. Definitely. And these kind of radical views, Ben, I mean, first, what an incredible and interesting future envision that you have and these kind of radical views, it takes someone like you 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 where you're sitting at

31:47over over 10 million in ARR? 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 a that a game that I love loved and love and it's inspired by that and trying to make

32:22entrepreneurship 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 was actually in Tokyo and like I was pretty stressed out and like about you know, I was working really hard on my first idea and I went to Mont Fuji to

32:44like open my eyes and like mind. And I had the idea for Pulsio. 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

33:00bad name or whatever. And when you stop caring about what people care about and like start just building stuff that cuz 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 Pulsio to build things and I was like, well, I want I want to be your investor cuz like you

33:22know, I love I love that guy's vibe. And I was like, well, yeah, Pulsio could be an investor. And it's like and it just comes naturally. It's not like over thought. It's not like I'm not going to make like a deck and like make an a final show analysis if it makes sense or not. I'm like,

33:34I 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, that's that's the way 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

33:52because it feels right. Mhm. And often you pulled on a great point there when you're listening to a customer. What feels right is what's valuable for the customer and 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 Kalanick and Travis Kalanick was 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

34:18building Pulsio? I mean, yeah, Travis 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 Pulsio 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 spider inspired boldness, right? And so I think some of the lessons from working for him I think first of all when you know when I started building like at this business line that I built under him at dark kitchens called future foods

35:00which 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

35:23think it can scale. And I asked Travis like hey can I hire a sales person to 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 sales person. You go close 10 customers. And then come back to me when you've closed 10 and then if you've

35:41closed 10 we can discuss. So a week later I closed the 10 and then he came back to me and was like okay cool. All right, now you can hire one sales person. 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 is a customer really wants it. I think

35:58that was one valuable lesson. I think the second valuable lesson is like you know champions heart what he calls champions 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 you get pushed you know in the ground you get back up. Uh you're unstoppable. 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 going to take the part that they say that is that I that I think they're correct. But

36:29the rest I'm going to just ignore. And I'm not going to be I won't I'm only caring about any customers are talking or like the 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 compass that can help you guide you through ambiguity, right? Because you know, for example, Travis when he 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

37:02and how to present it or the tipping, you know, no tips. 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 counter-current. You have to speak their language. But

37:22yeah. Yeah, so these are some of the lessons and I think and I think now in this phase of Pulsea 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 5 years or clearly like you get you like, "Okay, I guess I guess it's possible to dream big. You have to be smart about it, but it's possible." And and just to the I think it's the first step to think it's possible to then be able to actually

37:56accomplish it. The first step is believing, right? Um and and I think in in parts that's what Pulsea 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 going to be successful? A lot of them are not

38:15successful at Silicon Valley. So it's not a it's not a get rich quick scheme, but like just let me show you I mean Pulsea out let 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, but Yeah, great great lessons. And And one

38:32thing you mentioned was the 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 Run rate. With one employee, yourself. So Yeah. Why why build just yourself? Because you've talked about, you know, thinking about pricing strategy, you've talked

38:52about taking customer calls. It's a lot. Um you've got investors now. Yeah. Why not hire a couple engineers or anyone else? So first of all, 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

39:13proxy where like I'm working with them. We have a commercial agreements where like I bring them traffic on a specific slice of like the economy the agentic economy and exchange is sort of like provide engineers that are building solutions for me that I plug into Pulsya. 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 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

39:45where like but but of course sometimes I'm thinking like if I had my own engineers that like were working just on Pulsya, maybe maybe this on that would happen faster and like maybe if I had like a head of this and a head of that. And I honestly I'm thinking about it every day. [laughter] Should I break Should I break the the

40:05rule 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 a whole of uh it's just like and I think that's not wrong. I think that's that's not I mean, it's not 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 master alone, people are

40:42going to 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 Pulsea is all AI,

41:16customer support is AI. Now, I made it very easy if you have an issue and you talk to Pulsea, 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

41:37Pulsea and then pushed to the code. And I'm doing that because I'm like, well, there's no other way. Like there's cuz it you people are are are tapping into too many edge cases because it's all trying to build something different. And the 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. Pulsea is unstoppable because then first of all, Pulsea start

42:03building for the people. So, it may take decisions over time that are just aligned with the paying customers and the voice of the paying customers gets what gets built, which is what you want. Like 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

42:18what's important. So, that's the net positive. And also I'm I'm putting myself in the shoes of the customer. When the customer has a bug and they call and cuz 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." I'm like

42:33all your customers in person? Not all my customers, but I'm trying to meet more and more of my customers in person. Then uh well, you know, if you go to my Twitter, I I started doing I film I film them with their consent and then like with conversations. And cuz it's good it's good content to show showcase sort of like what's going

42:51on. 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 I may have trouble seeing it, but if you text me, I'll see it. So, now and if once it's I don't you don't have to say

43:04twice. Yeah, yeah, totally. They then they will they will text you every single time there's an issue. So, so then I feel the pain with them cuz 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 we'll we'll see if we'll see how the

43:22how the flow goes. Well, it's exciting 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,

43:40which actually shows people building. Let's first talk about email because I've talked to Pulsya via email. For example, Pulsya handles and can resolve most emails, but how much of your emails actually get handled by Pulsya versus when you have to step in? So, Pulsya responds 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@polysia.com, then it can actually resolve anything

44:10related to customers of Polysia, right? Refunds, add more credits, fix bugs. Uh but if someone emails me better@polysia.com, I have another Polysia that responds, but it's more like to answer questions with what I don't need to answer when Polysia knows the answer, 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 don't have time to meet most people, to

44:46be honest. Uh I always see mostly say no to I mean, I just don't respond. [laughter] Uh because I don't have time. Um Yeah, completely makes sense. And what were some other kind of moments you sought 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, Oren Hoffman of Flex Capital said, you know, the first meeting will be agent-to-agent as I

45:20would doubt by the end of 2026. Mhm. You were on your fundraise process uh predominantly with with agents with Polysia. So, curious to hear a little bit more about that decision and that process and when you came in and stepped in in person. I mean, yeah, first of all, when I realized that Polysia was working before, uh you know, before I even moved to SF, and I could see that people really engaged, people loved it. All my friends started using it, which was really rare for products like that. And

45:48people were like, "I really love it. Like, I'm building this thing, I'm building that thing, right?" I was like, "Okay." And what had happened like in 2025 is that like I built this app that makes apps, like the Blanks app. And there was a 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 like you built the same thing, but then you stayed on in your cave like traveling alone, and then you never really gave it

46:21a chance. Um which means that like, you know, if they are successful, you're going to you're going to like, "Oh, I should have went to SF, raised more capital, be more bold." So then when both when I built Pulsia, and I was like, "Okay, I really feel like this is a good idea this time. Actually, this retention is much

46:35better." I was like, "I don't want to repeat the Wabi incident 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 Pulsia is claim is to do so much to run a company, which is crazy, what better way to for the marketing to be about AI doing crazy stuff that

47:09usually 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 cuz I raised a pre-seed round. I raised a million dollars pre-seed in the summer that I hadn't really spent because I was just

47:26alone. 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 cuz 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

47:52respond 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 cuz you know investors are like, "Hey, show me your data room. Show me your data. Show me your retention and your And so I there was this live dashboard and then like that showed the actual numbers, number of customers, number of like, you

48:11know, the stats. And then the chat where you can ask your 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 cuz they you know, investors it's their job to just email founders. And so I also started having

48:34conversations with all of them. And the more this was happening, the more people started talking about it, the more that live dashboard curve was going up. And so I kept tweeting about it and there 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 Impostor was telling them that it was raising at a billion dollar valuation and so people were freaking

48:57out and telling other people. And so it was a really great marketing moment. And and I and 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 flood of emails. And yeah, and and then I think people were getting convinced at that point. They were just like,

49:21"Okay, like we're interested, right?" And so then of course I had to I mean and 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 hot that like people were like, you know, they just wanted to invest. 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 sort of like cuz at the end of the day investors are humans so they also need some validation about,

49:48you know, background and they made some background checks on me and stuff like that. So, Yeah, love it. Well, you could say a masterclass in building distribution early and building it in such a powerful way and getting a conversation to 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

50:19seeing 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 and earlier. So, very excited for you in the journey ahead. Thank you. Appreciate all the time, Ben. This has been fantastic. Thank you and good luck with this next uh state and journey

50:39ahead. Thank you so much.