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Maor Shlomo sold his company for $80 million.

He built it solo. No co-founder. No employees. No VC funding.

Just him, a laptop, and AI tools that didn’t exist three years ago.

Five years ago, this was impossible. Building a SaaS required engineers, designers, marketers, salespeople. You needed capital, a team, and years of runway.

Today, the entire playbook has changed.

I’ve spent the last six months talking to solo founders building real businesses with AI. Studying their tools, their processes, their mistakes. Testing their systems myself.

Here’s the complete playbook for building a $1M+ solo SaaS in 2025.

Step 1: AI Discovery (Find Problems That Actually Matter)

The #1 reason solo SaaS businesses fail: Solving problems nobody has.

You can’t afford this mistake when it’s just you. You don’t have runway to pivot three times. You need to find a real problem fast.

Here’s the system that works:

Use Reddit to Find Pain Points

Reddit is where people complain in brutal detail. No marketing spin. No politeness. Just raw frustration.

Search subreddits related to your domain. Look for threads where people say:

• “Why doesn’t X exist?”
• “I’m so tired of Y”
• “There has to be a better way to Z”

When you see the same pain point mentioned 50+ times across multiple threads, you’ve found something real.

Do Trend Analysis with Perplexity

Once you have potential problems, validate them with trend data.

Ask Perplexity to analyze:

• Is this problem growing or shrinking?
• What’s the market size?
• Who else is trying to solve this?
• What funding has gone into this space?

If the trend is growing and underserved, keep digging.

Use Claude for Market Research

Feed Claude everything you’ve found:

• Reddit threads
• Competitor websites
• Market reports
• Customer reviews

Ask it to synthesize patterns. What’s the core problem beneath all the symptoms? Who’s solving it poorly? Where are the gaps?

Complete AI discovery guide

The discipline: Don’t fall in love with your first idea. Validate ruthlessly before building anything.

Step 2: Vibe Prototype (Validate in Days, Not Months)

The old way: Write specs. Design mockups. Wait for development. Launch months later. Hope people care.

The AI way: Build a working prototype in hours. Test it with real users. Know if it works before you commit.

Use Bolt, Cursor, or v0

These tools let you describe what you want and watch them generate functional interfaces in minutes.

Not mockups. Not clickable prototypes. Real, working applications you can actually test.

The process:

Describe your solution in natural language. The tool generates the UI and basic functionality. You iterate in real-time, adjusting based on what you see.

Test in Market Immediately

Show your prototype to 10–15 people in your target market. Not friends. Real potential users.

Watch them use it. Listen to what they say. More importantly, watch what they do.

If 8 out of 10 people immediately see the value, you’ve validated the concept.

If 8 out of 10 people are confused or unimpressed, pivot or move on.

Complete prototyping tutorial

The unlock: You can test 5 different approaches in the time it used to take to build one. Bad ideas fail in days. Good ideas get proven fast.

Step 3: Build a Production Pipeline (The Real Work Begins)

Here’s what nobody tells you: The prototype is only 20% of the work.

Getting something working is easy. Getting something that works reliably, securely, and at scale is where most solo founders get stuck.

You need three things:

Build Your Database

How will you store user data? How will queries scale? What’s your backup strategy? How do you handle migrations?

These aren’t sexy questions. But getting them wrong means rebuilding from scratch later.

Create Your Components

Reusable, maintainable code that you can iterate on without breaking everything.

This is where AI coding assistants shine. They help you architect systems that don’t become technical debt.

Build With Scale and Security in Mind

Even at zero users, you need:

• Authentication that actually works
• Data encryption
• Rate limiting
• Error handling
• Logging and monitoring

You can use AI to help with all of this.

Complete production pipeline guide

The reality: This step takes 80% of the time. Don’t skip it. A broken product at scale is worse than no product.

Step 4: Create Your Operations OS (Automate Everything Repeatable)

As a solo founder, you’re the CEO, CTO, product manager, customer support, and janitor.

You will drown unless you systematize everything.

The framework:

“If it repeats, automate it.”
“If it needs judgment, template it.”

Your Tool Stack:

Notion + AI for documentation — Every process, every decision, every piece of knowledge. Searchable and AI-queryable.

Lindy for automations — Workflow automation that understands context.

Cursor for code — AI-assisted development that maintains your velocity.

Amplitude for experimentation — Test features, measure impact, iterate fast.

The goal: Every recurring task is either automated or has a template you can execute in minutes.

Your time should be spent on decisions and creation, not repetitive execution.

Step 5: Create a Marketing Engine (That Runs Itself)

Marketing is where most technical founders fail.

Good news: AI is better at marketing than most marketers.

The system:

Planning

Use AI to generate content strategies, identify channels, plan campaigns. Feed it your product, your audience, your goals. Get back a complete marketing plan.

Community: Automatic Content

Set up agents to create and schedule content automatically. Blog posts, social media, newsletters — systematized.

AI can maintain your content calendar while you focus on product.

Distribution: Automatic SEO and AEO

Traditional SEO optimization plus AEO (AI Engine Optimization) to make sure both humans and AI systems can find you.

AI can analyze your content, suggest optimizations, and even implement them.

Conversion: AI-Powered Trial Engine

Onboarding flows that adapt to user behavior. Automated nurture sequences. Conversion optimization without hiring a growth team.

Watch: Building a 40-agent marketing team

The beauty: This compounds. Every piece of content keeps working. Every automation keeps running. While you sleep, your marketing engine is generating leads.

Step 6: $1M+ Sales Engine (Without a Sales Team)

This is the hardest part for most solo founders.

How do you scale sales when it’s just you?

Traditional sales doesn’t work. You can’t hop on 50 demo calls per week. You can’t manage complex deal cycles. You can’t do enterprise sales solo.

So don’t.

Build Automated Demo Decks

Interactive demos that show value without requiring your time. Prospects can explore on their own, at their own pace.

AI can generate these, personalize them based on user behavior, and optimize them based on what converts.

Create Agents to Push Through Your Funnel

AI agents that:

• Qualify leads
• Answer common questions
• Schedule demos
• Nurture prospects
• Follow up automatically

Not chatbots. Actual agents that understand context and move deals forward.

Make Everything Self-Service

Remove every possible friction point. Users should be able to:

• Sign up instantly
• Onboard without help
• Upgrade without talking to you
• Get support without waiting

The best solo SaaS businesses sell themselves.

Complete sales engine guide

The insight: Every sales touchpoint that requires your time is a bottleneck. Eliminate bottlenecks or automate them.

The Reality Check

Let me be honest about what this actually looks like.

Building a solo SaaS isn’t easy. It’s still hard work. Long hours. Constant problem-solving. Moments of doubt.

But it’s newly possible.

Three years ago, you needed a team. You needed funding. You needed years of runway.

Today, you need:

• Clear judgment on what problems matter
• Taste to make products people want
• Execution discipline to ship consistently
• Strategic thinking to build systems that scale

The technical skills can be augmented with AI.

You don’t need to be a world-class engineer. AI can code.
You don’t need to be a design expert. AI can design.
You don’t need to be a marketing genius. AI can market.

What you need is the strategic layer that AI can’t replicate.

Choosing the right problem. Making hard product tradeoffs. Building systems that work. Maintaining craft. Staying focused.

That’s where you add value as a solo founder.

The Proof Points

Maor Shlomo isn’t alone.

I’ve talked to founders building:

• $2M ARR project management tools
• $1.5M ARR analytics platforms
• $800K ARR automation services

All solo. All using this playbook or variations of it.

These aren’t outliers anymore. They’re the leading edge of a new model.

The solo SaaS wave is here. The tools exist. The playbook is proven.

The only question is: will you build?

Maor Shlomo was you a few years ago. Now he’s sold for $80M solo. Go be the next Maor.

Helping PMs, product leaders, and product aspirants succeed

Responses (1)

Talbot Stevens

What are your thoughts?

This playbook is incredibly detailed! For solo founders hitting $1M+, what are the biggest non-AI challenges? Specifically, how do they manage the sheer mental and operational workload without burning out?

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