Ben Cera

Polsia is about to hit $25M run rate. Next stop: $100M ARR. And things keep accelerating: $0 → $1M in 12 weeks $1M → $10M in 10 weeks $10M → $20M in 6 weeks I just published one of my favorite and most successful aisloP episodes yet: “The Run Rate.” I tell the whole story, from idea to $20M, month by month. The episode ends in Tokyo, where I went a few weeks ago. Probably the best place on Earth to take a deep breath, get inspired, and rethink what’s possible. I came back with an even bolder vision for Polsia. The road from $25M to $100M is going to look very different. Polsia v2 is coming soon.

Having an affair with a spy is a billionaires right of passage at this point Elon, Rupert Murdoch, now Jensen Huang Stay safe out there boys...

Everyone should experience building a business It's the most healthy & purposeful thing you can ever do

Either get into wearable AI, hardware, or farming...

You'd scale 1000x higher (& faster) with a good mentor I'm all for solo business, no cofounders, etc But to become the best you need to learn from the best Fortunately, I had Travis Kalanick (Uber)

Most people wait until they feel ready to start. I've been building companies for 10 years. I've never felt ready. Not once. You start first. The ready part comes later.

I hit a $20M run rate in 7 months and all I did was: Make my product better Talk to customers Post founder-led content Ruthlessly focus on the basics and you can do it too

I've met a lot of customers in person and it's crazy to me how most founders have no clue what their customers are asking for. You can't fix your product, onboarding or roadmap until you know what's really broken. I've automated most of this at Polsia. Here's my setup: 1. Report during the conversation Agent log every issue while talking to customers: > Is it a real bug? > Is it a feature request? > Is the customer just confused? It's a direct part of support so everything is logged. 2. Read every ticket A PM agent pulls all tickets from the day and ranks how critical it is. It's usually not a bug at all. 3. Build everything with an agent Top tickets go straight to an engineering agents that builds the fix. So we don't just know what customers want. We ship the fix as well. 4. Check what it built against what might break We QA each fix, then ask Codex to double check it's safe to ship. The build is easy so focus on verifying it's right. 5. Turn it into scope Agents only push to production on their own when every rule is met: > Severity: lower-category bug > Payments: fix doesn't touch them > Onboarding: fix doesn't touch it either > Second opinion: Codex agrees it's safe > Everything else: comes through me first Then we just widen the scope as models get better. This runs our bug fixes, features, releases and roadmap.

AI can write the code now. It can run the ads, answer the emails, ship the site. It still can't tell you what's worth building. That part is still on you.

Blind ranking AI models w/o knowing what comes next

Touch grass once you've made it.

Where does a one-person company hit its limits? I'm talking about it with @julianweisser and @bran_don_gell at @every on Thursday. Drop your questions below. nitter.cf/every/status/211767495…

How to cut your AI compute without downgrading your product: First... figure out what your users are doing. > How complex their tasks are > Which tasks need an answer right now > Where you're running the biggest models Knowing your workload is key here Then set up 3 things: 1. A routing layer that sends every task to the right model based on complexity (small open source models for simple tasks, bigger ones for complex work, frontier models only when essential) 2. Full caching on your prompts plus tighter prompt management (cached tokens are much cheaper & smaller prompts stop the model from doing unnecessary things) 3. Batching for every background task (anything that isn't time-sensitive runs only when the GPU has spare capacity) Now you have an AI product that: > Serves the same quality > Handles more users > Stays affordable for you All without charging customers $500/month

I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 2 decades. Word of advice for the younger hustlers: The grind never stops. There’s always another problem to solve. And if you’re ambitious. You need to live in a city that inspires success. I love Paris, but nothing beats SF. The air is different here. Find your version of that city & move there immediately.

Note to young ben: Just keep hustlin' for 20 more years, it'll all pay off.

Just dropped my guide on how to start a company in 2026 with zero employees. aisloP ep 11 “The Startup” out now on YT: youtube.com/@bencera-aislop

A great predictor of success is skill exposure... Ask any successful founder how they got started and you'll very quickly realize they've done TONS of things. > I've worked at a trading desk, > Ran consumer apps, > Been a CTO, > Built a division at a (now) Series E company, > And a lot of other things Was all of it successful? Definitely not... Did all of it contribute to my success? 100% All of the skills you build up through the years & and through making asymmetric bets, indirectly lead to your big home run. Expose yourself to more skills... Do more things, don't sit on ideas, experiment, use everything as an opportunity to learn and level up.

Why would anyone seek out a cofounder in 2027??