I thought going solo would mean freedom. Turns out, it just means being busy all the time.
When you're handling planning, development, and marketing all by yourself, there's never enough time. Six months in, here's an honest look at where I'm at.
What I Built in 6 Months
I left my job last September to build my own products.
The reason was simple — I wanted to ship things I actually owned, not build someone else's product.
In six months, I shipped two:
Vybbi — Automated spam detection and removal for YouTube and Instagram comments.
KWatch — A simple way to look up Korean stock market data.
There's a third one in the works, but it's not done yet.
The Honest Numbers
Two products in six months. That's slow.
Early on, there was a lot of trial and error. But the biggest bottleneck was doing everything alone.
Writing specs, writing code, doing design, running marketing, fixing bugs. Focus on one thing and everything else stalls.
Revenue over six months: $0. One product launched and nobody wanted it. The other never even got to the point where monetization was possible.
No regrets. But I knew that at this pace, things weren't going to work out.
The Thing That Changed
I'd been using Claude Code on the Pro plan for a while. It was helpful, but I wasn't really leaning into it.
Then I upgraded to Max and started studying how to actually use it well. The more I used it, the more I realized the efficiency gains weren't incremental — they were a step change.
While digging through articles and posts about AI workflows, I came across people who were using AI less like a tool and more like an employee.
They'd delegate tasks, set direction, and review the output — treating AI the way a founder manages a team, not the way a developer uses an IDE.
Think about it. A CEO doesn't tell an engineer which lines of code to write. They say "build this feature," the engineer figures out the implementation, and the CEO reviews the result and steers the direction.
Reading those stories, and reflecting on my own experience, I realized I could do the same thing.
I decide the idea and set the direction. AI handles the execution. I review and approve. That's it.
Right now, this only works for development and planning. Marketing, operations, monetization — I still have to do those myself. There's a long way to go, but the direction is clear.
Two Challenges
So here's what I'm committing to.
Challenge 1 — One-Person CEO with AI Employees
This is the end goal. I decide what to build, and AI executes everything — planning, development, marketing, operations.
I make decisions, review output, and approve. A one-person company where the team is AI. That's the system I'm going to build.
Challenge 2 — Ship One Product Per Month
The only way to prove this works is speed.
If someone who shipped 2 products in 6 months can start shipping 1 per month, something fundamentally changed. First one ships this March.
Next post will be a retrospective on that first launch. Win or lose, I'll write it up honestly.
If you want to follow along, keep an eye on this blog.
Thanks for reading.
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