Being a solopreneur literally means running a business entirely on your own. And while flying solo has its clear advantages, the downsides are just as real. If I had to pick the biggest hurdle, it would be this: you have to generate every single business idea by yourself.
In a traditional company, multiple people handle different roles. A planning team brainstorms through meetings and designs products through collective intelligence. Solopreneurs hit a wall because they have to rely entirely on their own brainpower.
Despite this limitation, the potential of solopreneurs is exploding as AI advances. The numbers prove it. In the United States alone, solopreneurs earning over $100,000 a year jumped from 3.7 million in 2020 to 6.5 million in 2025. Nearly a 100% increase in just four years.
And I believe this number is going to climb even steeper. Why? Because AI is accelerating even faster. Sam Altman already predicted last year that we are about to see a one-person unicorn company.
The technology you need to succeed as a solopreneur is fully prepared and waiting. But there is still one unsolved problem. Like I mentioned, it is the idea. What exactly are you going to sell?
Everyone is busy telling you how to use AI tools, and Why Learning AI Tools Is a Waste of Your Time explains exactly why that misses the point entirely. But nobody is answering the most critical question. What kind of service should you build, and which problems should you solve?
Today I want to talk about the idea discovery method used by Y Combinator, the best startup incubator in the world. I believe this methodology applies directly to solopreneurs like us, not just massive startups. Read this to the end, and I guarantee you will walk away knowing exactly where to find your next business idea.
Planting a Flag in an Expanding Market
The first method YC uses to unearth ideas is not picking a product or a service. It is picking the market first. And not just a massive market, but one that is going to grow. Specifically, the market with the steepest, fastest growth rate.
Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, puts it perfectly.
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| Great markets pull the product out of the startup |
"Market is the most important factor in a startup's success or failure. Why? In a great market, a market with lots of real potential customers, the market pulls product out of the startup. The market needs to be fulfilled and the first viable product that comes along will get the job done. The product doesn't need to be great; it just has to basically work. And the market doesn't care how good the team is, as long as the team can produce that viable product. In short, customers are knocking down your door to get the product; the main goal is actually answering the phone and responding to all the emails from people who want to buy."
So what is our move? Plant your flag in a market that shows clear signs of exploding. If you secure your spot in the market itself, your product does not have to be a masterpiece. In fact, understanding Why Your Need for Perfection Is Killing Your Business is crucial here. Launching quickly is infinitely more important. Because there is no dominant product yet, customers will buy yours simply because it exists.
Just like Andreessen said, if it works, it sells. It does not have to be groundbreaking. You just need to solve a small, specific problem that people are experiencing inside that fast-growing market. When a market is expanding rapidly, plugging even the tiniest hole can make you serious money.
Take vibe coding as an example. Search volume for vibe coding recently skyrocketed by 6,700%. On platforms like Udemy and DataCamp, the number of students taking vibe coding courses has already surpassed 650,000. These instructors did not invent some revolutionary new service. They simply sold tutorials on how to use tools created by others, and that alone brought them hundreds of thousands of customers.
The strategy is simple. Hop on an explosively growing market. Find a problem, no matter how trivial, build a product quickly, and quench the thirst of the people already waiting there.
The Most Primitive Solution
The second method is the most primitive one. Start by solving your own problem.
No matter what field you are in, there is always that moment where you think "I really wish someone would fix this." In the past, solving that problem yourself was incredibly difficult. Today, we have AI.
So use AI to solve those problems for yourself first, then simply offer your solution to others. The best part about solving your own problem is that people who share that exact frustration are usually already right beside you. You do not even have to go out of your way to hunt down customers.
Patagonia, a brand now valued at over $3 billion, started exactly this way.
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| Yvon Chouinard started Patagonia by solving his own climbing problem |
Patagonia's founder, Yvon Chouinard, was a hardcore rock climbing fanatic. He started climbing at 14. At the time, the pitons they used were made of soft iron and bent easily. Since he was poor, buying new ones every time was a real burden. So he decided to make pitons that did not bend.
At just 19, Chouinard bought blacksmithing equipment and taught himself how to forge pitons. In the beginning, he made them exclusively for himself. He had no intention of selling them, no business plan. But his climbing friends saw them and said, "This is really good. I want one."
That is when he started selling them one by one. That small exchange grew into his first company, Chouinard Equipment, which eventually became the Patagonia we know today.
He literally just solved his own problem, and it accidentally became a massive business. And this problem does not have to be anything grand.
From Google Sheets to a Solo Business
Let me share my own story.
I have been deeply interested in business for a long time. Even as an ordinary network engineer working a day job, I desperately wanted to build and sell my own service.
So I started a hobby on the side. I gathered business principles and ideas from world-class entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and organized them all into a Google Sheet. I never thought I would sell this. I just enjoyed collecting the information, thinking maybe someday I would use it when I started my own business. I collected those insights the same way a kid collects baseball cards.
But as I kept gathering, I slowly started to understand how business actually works. Armed with that clarity, I officially launched my one-person business last year.
And those principles I had been quietly collecting? They became my very first web service. I built it specifically for people like me: people preparing for a solo business but feeling completely lost on where and how to start.
To be honest, I do not know if this service will do well. But at the very least, it gave me a deep sense of accomplishment. Why? Because my own problem was solved first.
I actually plan to turn this service into an app soon, and honestly, that is mostly for me too. I feel like I waste so much time aimlessly scrolling my phone every day. I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if I could pull up the principles of these masters on my phone instead?"
As I focused on solving a problem in a field I genuinely care about, I noticed another beautiful advantage. It naturally connected to this blog and my other platforms. Just like Yvon Chouinard handed his pitons to his fellow climbers, I am now able to meet people who share my exact mindset through my service and naturally recommend it to them.
I am not telling you this to brag, or to promote my service.
The core message is simple. It is perfectly fine if the problem is trivial. Just solve your own problem first. That becomes an incredibly solid starting point. And even if it does not sell well, your own problem has been resolved, so you really have not lost anything at all.
If you are sitting there feeling like you have zero ideas, start by fixing whatever is bothering you right now. Then gently offer that solution to the people around you. Keep your approach this simple and straightforward. You will be surprised to find it is really not as hard as you think.
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