Episode Details

Minn Kim runs Lighthouse, the AI-powered immigration firm rebuilding the visa stack for frontier-tech companies. She is solo. She isn't a lawyer. Her first two hires were engineers. The conversation with Julian covers how she got there, why "solve your own problem" isn't always the path to success, the complicated-vs-complex framework she uses to pick what to build, and her bull case for solo founding stated as a fact about her own life rather than a thesis.

Topics covered:

• The Korean-immigrant origin and the 2022 side quest that became Lighthouse
• Services-as-software: why "professional services don't scale" stopped being true around 2021
• Why "solve your own problem" isn't always right — and what to do instead
• The complicated-vs-complex problem framework for founder fit and capital structure
• First two hires were engineers, not lawyers
• Long-game hiring and contractor-to-full-time as a deliberate pattern
• The 30-question anonymous Google Form for surfacing blind spots
• "Twenty of them in the world" — the talent-infrastructure thesis behind Lighthouse
• Bear case and bull case for solo founding, the latter stated as lived experience

Guest: Minn Kim — founder and CEO of Lighthouse, the AI-powered immigration firm for frontier-tech companies and their hires.