Solo Founder Era

In March 2023, near the end of the League internship, GPT-4 launched. I created a dedicated Twitter/X account around the same time and saw the AI revolution happening in real-time — solo founders building startups with AI, generating revenue, shipping products that previously required entire teams. The barrier to building had collapsed.

Rather than wait for permission from the job market, I started building. The question changed from "how do I get hired?" to "what can I build?"

Six-week online accelerator for builders with 17,000+ participants worldwide. I built the first version of an AI course generator called FUNdamentals (which later evolved into MyLittleTextbook). This was my first time launching something I had built entirely on my own to the world. The program reinforced shipping fast, iterating based on feedback, and building in public.

A Netflix-themed movie discussion platform and my first proper full-stack application. The project was the vehicle for learning how to build a complete web application from scratch: frontend, backend, database, authentication, and deployment. The extended timeline reflected the learning curve of doing everything for the first time. Demoed at Shopify Builder Sundays in October 2024.

Inspired by a visit to the Louvre Museum, this bot posts artwork from the Louvre's digital collection every day. I exported the collection metadata, wrote Python scripts to process the data and download 10,000+ images, set up a PostgreSQL database to manage the collection and track postings, integrated the Twitter/X API for automated posting and Google Translate API for caption translation, and deployed as a CRON job on a VPS. 1,600+ posts and counting.

The evolution of FUNdamentals. An AI-powered learning platform that generated structured courses on any topic — complete chapters, content, and interactive quizzes with progress tracking and bookmarking. Attracted 10-20 users and was my first foray into go-to-market efforts.

After several months, I made the strategic decision to pivot. The ed-tech space felt too broad, the problem too ambitious, and the path to revenue unclear. The lessons — both technical (AI integration, caching, structured content generation) and strategic (knowing when to pivot) — fed directly into LovePrinter.

The current and most successful project. A personalized printable stationery design platform where users create custom stationery, cards, and printed materials through a multi-page design editor. Development took about 4 months (May — August 2025), launched late August, and has acquired 350+ users with organic signups continuing daily from the initial marketing effort.

LovePrinter represents the full solo-founder lifecycle: ideation, product design, engineering, launch, marketing, pricing strategy, and iteration. I handled every aspect — designing the product, building the entire application, integrating Stripe payments, PDF generation with Puppeteer, Docker containerization, DigitalOcean deployment, and TikTok marketing campaigns.

The progression across projects tells the story. Technical complexity grew from single-feature prototypes to production applications with payment processing, PDF generation, and containerized deployment. User traction went from 0 (Cinements) to 10-20 (MyLittleTextbook) to 350+ (LovePrinter). Speed improved: Cinements took ~7 months, MyLittleTextbook ~6 months, LovePrinter ~4 months — and LovePrinter was the most complex of the three.

I adopted AI-assisted development from GPT-4's launch in March 2023, years before most companies caught on. This wasn't trend-following — it was need-driven. The tools arrived at the exact moment I needed leverage. Two and a half years of daily AI-assisted building has built deep intuition for how to leverage AI effectively: what it's good at, what it's not, and how to structure work to maximize its impact.

AI isn't just a development tool in my workflow — it's also a product feature. MyLittleTextbook's entire value proposition was AI-generated content. LovePrinter leverages AI for design generation. Companies are now adopting the AI-first workflows I've been practicing since 2023.