Sometimes, while you’re busy syncing calendars and writing user stories that no one reads, there’s a person out there—solo, under-caffeinated, and armed with a half-broken laptop—doing the job of an entire product team.
And not just building… but winning.
Here are a few that blew my mind:
1. Bram Cohen — The guy who made BitTorrent
Yes, that BitTorrent. The one that used to clog every hostel WiFi in the 2000s.
Bram wrote the protocol to make file-sharing efficient. While big media companies were building DRM and lawsuits, Bram just built a protocol. From scratch. Alone.
Lesson? You don’t need VC when you have a clear bottleneck and a Python compiler.
2. Pieter Levels — The $3M One-Man SaaS Army
I like this guy. Pieter built Nomad List, RemoteOK, and a few other hits… while traveling the world with just cron jobs and coffee. He basically made a product every month until something clicked. And when it clicked—he scaled it alone.
Moral of the story? You can either build a team of 50 or figure out automation. Pieter chose cron.
3. George Hotz — Built a self-driving car because he was bored
Also known as geohot. First jailbroke the iPhone. Then, because Tesla didn’t hire him, he built his own version of Autopilot from a garage. It worked.
Imagine being so annoyed you create your own version of something that a $1 trillion company is building.
And then open-source it. Classic.
4. Nikita Bier — Created tbh, got acquired by Meta in 3 months
Made a compliment-sharing app for teens. It went viral. Meta acquired it.
Sometimes, all it takes is understanding humans better than algorithms.
5. Marcus Hutchins — Stopped WannaCry ransomware. From his bedroom.
Global cyberattack. Governments losing their minds. Marcus registers a random domain name. Boom—ransomware dies.
Real-world bug bounty, paid in legendary status.
Bonus Round: RMS (Richard Stallman)
Honestly, this guy deserves a separate blog post.
He built Emacs, GCC, the idea of GNU, and the entire “software should be free” philosophy. Alone. While battling corporations, entire operating systems, and anyone who dared ship closed-source code.
If the Matrix had a sysadmin, it would be RMS.
What Do These Guys Have in Common?
- Sharp focus: They all solved one painful, clear problem
- Tools, not teams: They leveraged code instead of scaling headcount
- They shipped (even if it was ugly)
- They owned their story—no marketing department needed
And Because I’m a Framework Guy…
I turned this into something I call the SOLO Framework™ (Because everything sounds cooler with ™):
S – Sharpen the Problem
O – Operate with Leverage
L – Launch Fast, Learn Publicly
O – Own the Narrative
I even made a Notion template. Because of course I did. Ping me if you want it.
TL;DR
One person. One laptop. Clear problem.
That’s all it takes.
Reading these stories made me want to pick up one of my half-finished side projects and actually ship it. Maybe this weekend. Maybe tonight.
If you’ve ever built something solo—or plan to—I’d love to hear your story.
Also, if you know someone who did this kind of “keyboard vs the world” stuff, drop a comment. Let’s make a list.
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