John Glasgow founded Campfire, finance software for corporate finance teams, after a 15-year corporate finance career at Adobe, Fidelity, and Bill.com; he entered Y Combinator in 2023 with a two-week-old newborn, briefly had a technical co-founder, then went solo and spent two years in the wilderness before finding product–market fit, ultimately building a company with 100+ employees and significant revenue.
Starting a company with his identical twin
John and his identical twin brother started their first company right after college, building a social shopping product similar to what Pinterest became.
They lived and worked together in the same room, splitting technical and business roles, and were driven by a shared frustration with browsing endless pages of unwanted clothing online.
The idea came from both of them experiencing the same pain: wading through noise on sites like Nordstrom and Amazon to find quality items, and wanting a way to surface signal from the long tail of catalogs.
Why consumer startups are brutal
Consumer social is a binary category: either you become Facebook or you have zero revenue and go nowhere; there is no middle ground.
They faced a two-sided marketplace problem — needing both users to populate collections and merchants to support linking — and lacked funding to buy time to jump-start the network effect.
In hindsight, John had no unique “right to win” in consumer shopping; everyone shops, so he had no differentiated insight or distribution advantage.
What a “right to win” actually is
A right to win is a unique, defensible advantage: felt pain as a customer, engineering prowess in a niche, unique go-to-market access, or a celebrity network — not simply “outworking everyone” since all founders work 80–100 hours a week.
For Campfire, John’s right to win was 15 years living the corporate finance workflow, feeling the pain of legacy ERPs daily, and knowing exactly which three problems were most acute.
The first startup had no right to win; the second was built entirely around one.
4 in the bank: the 15-year detour through corporate finance
After the first startup failed, John had $4 in his bank account — literally unable to afford chicken nuggets — and moved back in with his parents in San Jose.
He took the first finance job he could get in 2010 (post-financial crisis), built savings, moved to San Francisco, and spent 15 years at Adobe, Fidelity, and a Series C company later acquired by Bill.com.
He never felt a strong pull to start again until he experienced the pain of legacy ERP tools at the Series C company, which reignited the founder itch.
Inside Adobe: warm intros and innovation budgets
At Adobe, John learned that even internal collaboration requires warm intros; you cannot cold-Slack a colleague you haven’t worked with.
He discovered “innovation budgets” — discretionary funds with low procurement overhead that can be used for pilots, especially for AI initiatives.
As a corporate finance analyst, he sat on the buyer side of vendor reviews, doing the math on whether to purchase software, giving him a tactical view of the enterprise purchasing journey.
The enterprise sales playbook: champions, the $95K tactic, budget cycles
The single most important lever is finding a champion who will navigate procurement, security reviews, and internal politics; they must have enough authority to actually move the deal.
Pricing just below approval thresholds (e.g., $95K to avoid a VP sign-off required at $100K) can dramatically increase close rates by keeping the deal at the director level.
Annual budgeting cycles (often in the fall) dictate when large purchases can be approved; selling incremental budget mid-cycle is extremely difficult unless you replace an existing line item.
Cross-P&L or cross-geography deals fracture ownership; keep stakeholders as narrow as possible to avoid “you pay for it” deadlocks.
Deal velocity matters: a nine-month deal can collapse if a single stakeholder leaves; compressing the cycle increases win rates.
Why now: starting Campfire, YC with a newborn
After moving from Adobe to a 90-person Series C company, John felt the direct impact of his work ( >1% of output) and realized he wanted that agency at 100% ownership.
He applied to YC with a raw idea rooted in deep ERP pain; accepted with a two-week-old daughter, he quit his Bill.com role and started building.
The YC $500K check provided the runway to go all in; the timing was terrible personally but the conviction was high.
Going solo and two years in the wilderness
The technical co-founder departed quickly; the passion and pain were John’s alone, and the co-founder lacked the same conviction.
Pre-product–market fit, John describes “running in the wilderness” — working frantically without knowing if he was moving in the right direction, physically picked up off the floor by his wife on bad days.
Investors and YC batchmates urged him to pivot; he was the only one in his batch still on the original idea after two years.
Deep personal pain and conviction were the only things that kept him going; customers eventually responded and the trail appeared.
Cold outbound with Excel files: the first customer
In week one post-YC, John cold-outbounded a corporate finance leader on LinkedIn, showing Excel mockups (no code yet).
The prospect offered to meet weekly for an hour, unpaid, because the pain was so acute; he became the first paying customer after a summer of iterative feedback.
This validated the problem before any product existed; John emphasizes cold outbound to strangers, not friends who say “cool” but never use it.
Caveat: if employed, ensure clean IP separation before writing code or incorporating; institutional investors expect full-time commitment.
Selling on domain credibility before the product works
Early buyers bought on John’s credibility: “I am you, I felt this pain, I know the three worst parts of board reporting and ARR tracking.”
The product was rudimentary, but customers believed he would figure it out because he spoke their language at their depth.
Building narrowly for his own known pain points let him skip broad discovery and execute tight, high-conviction experiments.
Don’t listen to anybody but customers; burnout kills startups
Many founders pivot through 3–6 ideas before landing on the one tied to their actual experience; they often run away from their background then circle back.
YC’s parting advice: the #1 cause of failure is not running out of money, but burnout — especially when running in the wilderness with no visible progress.
John avoids burnout by celebrating wins, having a “happy place” (family, no screens, 15+ minutes daily), and refusing external validation; only customer traction matters.
Founders often run out of hope before money; co-founders can amplify hope or drain it — 66% of failures stem from co-founder breakups.
The support system: a twin brother one stage ahead
John’s twin brother runs a Series B company a few years ahead; he served as a built-in mentor who had just solved the problems John faced (e.g., Series A fundraising mechanics).
His wife, though not full-time at Campfire, acts as a sounding board: she asks therapist-like questions that let John self-answer, provides perspective on HR/engineering dynamics, and reframes bad days by highlighting calendar wins.
For solo founders, a deeply trusted person outside the company — spouse, sibling, mentor — is essential for mental health and decision clarity.
Founding with a family at 36
John started Campfire at 36, married with a newborn (later two daughters); he rejects the myth that founders must be young and single.
Ruthless prioritization: weekends are Campfire or family; no video games, tennis, or hobbies. He works early mornings, after bedtime, and during naps.
He views family as his recharge mechanism, not a distraction; delaying life milestones for the startup often fuels burnout.
His wife’s technical background (engineering org experience) helps him communicate with engineers more effectively.
First hires as a solo founder
First two hires were engineers with founder mindsets: one an exited founder, one seeking a gnarly, unsexy problem for a second act.
Engineers often want to join post-PMF; pre-PMF, John had to sell them like investors — leaning on seed investors and early customers to close candidates.
He built a “team slide” for prospects that included design/marketing contractors, advisors, and investors to appear larger and more credible.
Solo founders must shamelessly tap their tribe (investors, customers, advisors) to recruit and close early hires.
The bear case for solo founding
The odds of startup success are near zero; a co-founder adds a tailwind — someone to debate direction with in the wilderness, punch through a big customer win, or share the psychological load.
Loneliness is real; without a peer at work, the solo founder bears every win and loss alone.
The case for going solo
Solo founding is the ultimate bet on yourself; it forces total ownership and clarity of vision — no co-founder debates, no coordination overhead.
Decision velocity is radically higher: John could micro-pivot (company size focus, feature scope) instantly without convincing anyone.
The path to PMF tightened because he ran tight experiments at high speed; large companies move slowly due to cohesion/coordination costs, and even two-person founding teams inherit that friction.
With AI coding, non-technical founders can now build functional prototypes, iterate daily with customers, and reach paying users before hiring engineers.
Non-technical founders in the AI era
John’s “Figma” used to be spreadsheets scoped for engineers; now he ships clickable, backend-connected prototypes in GitHub via prompting, despite zero engineering training.
Pre-PMF, scalability and SOC 2 don’t matter; he can one-shot wild ideas, test with 10 customers in parallel, and only involve engineers when the idea proves out.
Engineering is now Campfire’s fastest-growing team, but the early solo phase — vision + vibe coding + customer conversations — is “incredibly pure” and the best way to start.
The old rule “non-technical founders need a technical co-founder” is obsolete; AI removes the code gate, making solo founding viable for domain experts at any stage.
