I was at this amazing Mexican restaurant in San Francisco with a few friends and I saw a young woman, mid-thirties, blond hair, sitting at a table, eating alone. My instant reaction: wow, she is such a badass for doing that.
She wasn’t waiting for someone. She wasn’t scrolling her phone looking uncomfortable. She had a margarita, a book, and absolutely zero interest in what anyone thought about her being there all by herself. I remember thinking: that’s confidence.
That’s also, weirdly, the best way I can describe what it’s like to be a solo founder.
You’re at the table alone. Some people think it’s brave. Some think it’s sad. Meanwhile, you’re just... eating your tacos and building your thing.
Hi, I’m Durva. I have a background in supply chain, and a “work-in-progress” re-commerce startup.
For the past several months I’ve been building Shezaar, a platform that helps fashion brands get the most value out of their past-season inventory. And the journey to get here has been one of the most fun and humbling experiences of my life.
A few months ago, I was deep in consumer discovery. Five calls in one day. I was pitching Shezaar as a place where shoppers could discover amazing pieces from brands they love, all discounted. But call after call, I kept hearing the same thing. People had their go-to spots for deals. They had their routines. They weren’t looking for another app to browse.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Five calls. Same signal. So do I pivot? Is five enough? Maybe the sixth person says something completely different. Maybe I’m reading the pattern wrong. Maybe I’m reading it right but acting on it too fast.
This is the part of building solo that no one pays attention to. Not the work. The decisions. When you have a cofounder or a team, you can debate it. You can say “I’m hearing X, what do you think?” and someone with skin in the game pushes back or agrees and you move forward together. When it’s just you, the decision sits in your lap and stares at you.
I decided to shut down the consumer route entirely and focus on the B2B side. Being the one-stop partner that takes a brand’s excess inventory and helps them squeeze every dollar out of it. I made that call because standing out in the consumer world would take a different kind of muscle (one I didn’t have) and a lot of money (which I also didn’t have). That math felt clear enough to act on.
But was it the right call? I still don’t know. I’m still figuring it out. And I might not know for months or even years. But, in that moment, all I could do was just make the best decision with what I had, and then keep building.
And honestly? Who doesn’t like a little risk, ambiguity, and chaos. The part where you have to figure it out in real time, with no playbook, no team huddled around a whiteboard, just you and a Google Doc and the stubborn belief that you’ll get there.
Being a solo founder is not tragic. But it's not glamorous either. It's just a very specific experience. You make every decision. You carry every task.
And the wild part is, most of us are doing this in total silence. Not because we’re lonely. Because there simply aren’t that many spaces built for people like us.
The accelerators want a team. The Slack groups have ten thousand members and your question disappears in forty seconds. The podcasts feature people who raised fifty million dollars telling you to “trust the process.”
Cool. But what about the rest of us? The committed ones who are pre-revenue, pre-team, pre-everything?
That’s why I’m starting Table For One.
It’s a blog for solo founders who are in the early stages of building. If you’re figuring out your idea, trying to land your first customers, learning how to explain what you do without putting people to sleep, or just trying to navigate the beautiful chaos of doing this by yourself. This is for you.
Every week I’ll be sharing the stuff I wish someone had told me when I started: how to run customer discovery when you have no network, how to build a brand when you have no budget, what to do when your go-to-market falls apart and you have to rebuild it over a weekend. I’ll write about frameworks and tools that actually work that I am actually using. I’ll share stories from other solo founders who figured it out.
No fluff. No “rise and grind.” Just real, useful, occasionally funny dispatches from someone who is actively in it.
If any of this sounds like your life right now, subscribe. If you know a solo founder who could use this, send it their way.
The table is set. Pull up a chair.
- Durva