Look, I’ll be straight with you. I bombed my first startup back in 2012. Hard. My co-founder and I had this “revolutionary” idea that we were convinced would change everything. Spoiler alert: it didn’t, but I still think it would.
We spent months building features, burned through our investment, and tried to hire developers while also figuring out how to market and sell. And we watched our dream slowly implode under the weight of our own inexperience.
But here’s the thing, I’m itching to get back in the game, and for the first time in over a decade, I genuinely believe the stars have aligned for solo founders to crush it absolutely.
AI Just Became Your Entire Dev Team (and your product manager)
Remember when you needed a technical co-founder or had to drop $100K+ on developers just to get an MVP off the ground? Yeah, those days are dead and buried. I’ve been playing around with Claude Code, Cursor, and ChatGPT, and honestly? It’s mind-blowing. These AI tools can pump out clean, functional code faster than most junior developers I’ve worked with.
I’m talking full-stack applications, APIs, databases, the whole nine yards. Sure, you still need to know what you’re building and why, but the actual coding? That’s becoming a commodity. And if you’re worried about quality, don’t be. The AI-generated code I’ve seen is often cleaner and better documented than what I wrote myself back in the day. It’s able to generate 90% of the code that I want to, sometimes even better.
Even though I love to put on the “product person” hat, I am too lazy to write down detailed PRDs and user stories to pass on to my developers. Now, all that is just a prompt away, and AI can go research about competition, build a compelling business plan with a decent pricing strategy, and create hundreds of detailed user stories in a matter of hours.
Marketing Content at Warp Speed
But wait, there’s more! (Had to throw that in there.) The same AI revolution that’s democratizing development is also making marketing a one-person show. Blog posts, social media campaigns, email sequences, landing page copy, AI can generate all of it in minutes, not weeks.
I spent weeks crafting a marketing strategy for a client half a decade back. Now? I could probably have a solid content calendar, multiple ad variations, and a complete brand voice locked down in an hour. The barrier to entry for professional-quality marketing has basically evaporated.
The Solo Founder Advantage
Here’s where it gets really interesting. While everyone’s been obsessing over finding the “perfect” co-founder, solo founders have quietly become the most agile players in the game. No endless debates about product direction. No equity negotiations. No waiting for your “technical” partner to actually ship something. And it’s only going to grow at a faster rate from here.
You can pivot on a dime, test ideas rapidly, and most importantly, you can execute while everyone else is still stuck in planning mode.
The Bottom Line
We’re living through the most democratized era of entrepreneurship in history. The tools that used to require entire teams are now accessible to anyone with a laptop and an internet connection. The only question is: are you going to sit on the sidelines complaining about how “everything’s already been done,” or are you going to grab this opportunity by the throat?
I know what I’m doing. My 2012 self would be absolutely jealous of what’s possible today. This time, I’m going solo, and I bet I’m not the only one who’s about to surprise themselves with what they can build.