Anthropic acquired a one-person biotech

Anthropic acquired a one-person biotech

What a week for solo founders: Anthropic acquired a one-person biotech, Wabi raises at a $1.25B valuation, and an SFP4 founder put Skyrim inside Minecraft. Plus, join us for tacos with ElevenLabs. Let's get into it!

Anthropic acquired a one-person biotech

“Surprise 1: Anthropic acquired a one-person biotech. Surprise 2: that person is me.”

For six years, Cody Tranbarger posted about drug development on X under an anonymous account, “Professor Oak.” This week, he revealed who he is, and that Anthropic had acquired his biotech startup, Mithril Medicine.

Mithril is developing a drug for a rare childhood muscular dystrophy that has no approved treatment. Cody was its only full-time employee. With help from part-time consultants, he used Claude to organize the work with 11 outside labs. In less than 18 months, Mithril went from an idea to promising early results in mice.

So how did Cody use Claude to do the work of a larger team? We broke it down, plus what you can borrow for your own company.

Solo founder hits a $1.25B valuation

“What I don't like about co-founders is kind of arbitrarily choosing just a couple of people on the team that will have the top.”

Huge congrats to our friend Eugenia Kuyda, solo founder of Wabi, and the whole Wabi team! They just raised a $55M Series A at a $1.25B valuation, led by IVP. Wabi is a personal AI that pulls your plans, people, and apps into one place. As Eugenia puts it, everyone has an operating system for their phone, and Wabi is building one for your life.

It's the second company Eugenia has built without co-founders. When she came on the Solo Founders Podcast, she explained why.

Most co-founded startups end up with three layers: the CEO, the co-founders, and the rest of the early team. But Eugenia thinks that even with co-founders, “it's really just one person calling all the shots.” So the co-founder title mostly elevates a couple of people over everyone else who's taking the same leap.

She'd rather have two layers: one person who makes the final call, and a founding team that “almost operates as a partnership.” Not having a co-founder lets her “split that pot equally between all members of the team,” because in her view, they all “take the same risk.” And they should be “known as the team that built it.”

Voice AI & Tacos

Building with voice AI? Come hang out with us and ElevenLabs in San Francisco next Wednesday, November 4, at 6:30pm.

We're bringing together a small group of technical founders who use voice AI in their products to meet each other and work through whatever they're stuck on. There's a taco bar, a demo room if you want to build something live, and the ElevenLabs team will be there to talk shop.

Spots are limited and the group is curated, so request a spot soon. We'd love to see a few more solo founders in the room.

Skyrim inside Minecraft

“256 player multiplayer in any game, mod, or mashup.”

What if you could play Skyrim inside Minecraft? Or Elden Ring, or Peak?

Melty lets you play game mashups like these in one click. Its solo founder, David Miller, was part of our fourth Solo Founders Program cohort.

His latest launch, Melty Net, lets up to 256 players jump into any game, mod, or mashup together. The launch video has more than 1.2M views on X.

Grab a few friends and try it.

Know a solo founder who'd like this issue? Forward it to them!

Thanks for reading :)

Solo, together.

Kieran