News take
Railway's founder solves it himself before he looks at anyone else's answer
By Pat Villaceran · 14 October 2026
Jake Cooper left Uber in 2020. After that, he put together a box of databases for his own side projects. He kept coming back to it. Then he posted it on Twitter. He asked who he should talk to about a job working on it. He got no job offers, just "a few angel checks". That side project became Railway, the cloud platform he still runs as a solo founder. It's all on the episode page for Knuckle Up episode 15. It came out on 13 October.
His rule about other people's answers
The episode page says Cooper won't look at how other companies solve a problem until Railway has tried its own answer. It quotes him: "To me, it's almost like cheating on your homework when you go and look at somebody else's solution. You pollute your own brain with whatever that is."
Founders don't usually talk about research that way.
The host is Nakul Mandan. In his introduction on the same page, he adds a detail. If Stripe or Cursor is doing something, Cooper doesn't want to hear it. He solves the problem himself first. Only as a last resort does he check what others have done.
The numbers are his company's
By Railway's own figures, as the episode page gives them, it's run by around 40 people. It's "closing in on $100 million in annual revenue". It serves more than 2 million developers. Those are the company's claims. I'm not here for the numbers anyway. I'm here for the habit.
Yes, for sure, other people's solutions have their place. Cooper still checks them, as a last resort. But the order is the point he's making. His own thinking goes first.
Why I care about the order
On our agentic AI episode, I asked: "Technology is technology, but then how do you do the creative thinking aspect on your own?"
Cooper's rule is one answer to it. Someone else's solution takes up the space where your own thinking should grow. So does a chatbot's first draft. "Because you're no longer thinking." I said that about handing your thinking to a computer. It fits a competitor's playbook just as well.
What protecting your thinking gives you
In the episode on the sameness trap (S1 E1), I talked about the gifts "that only you have". They come from your life. They come from what you've seen and the problems you've lived through. They need room.
Every time you reach for somebody else's answer first, you give that room away. Do it often enough, and your company starts to look like theirs. Protect it, and what you build comes out of your own experience.
Cooper calls it cheating. I'd call it giving away the best part of you.
Try it this week
Pick one problem your company is stuck on. Close every tab. Leave the chatbot shut. Give the problem one full morning of your own thinking. Bring your team if you like. Then build the first version of your answer. Use what came out of that room.
Only after that, go and see what others did. Notice what you kept.
The button below puts you on the waitlist.
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