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My First MillionMillion Dollar Businesses with 0 Employees
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Solo Founders, Surprising Traffic Sites, and Overlooked Online Business Opportunities Uncovered
- Steph Smith presents solo-run businesses such as BuiltWith, Ugmonk, Carrd, NextEpisode, Bannerbear and Headlime that earn anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year.
- She argues the common thread is solving an existing, seemingly niche problem that many people actually have, rather than inventing demand, and that solo builders get creative because they handle marketing, design and development themselves.
- The pair examine surprising traffic and sales stories, including the Glitchn Deals community, Nugget Comfort's reported $4 million month with no ad spend, and the Public Domain Review and Food Timeline sites.
- Smith and Parr outline an opportunity around 'healthiest X' searches, combining a TikTok presence with an affiliate site, under her 'your listicle is my opportunity' idea.
- They close with chess star Magnus Carlsen as an example of an athlete building equity through a company, alongside chess.com's scale.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasSolo businesses can be remarkably large
Smith cites BuiltWith at about $14 million, Carrd at $1 million ARR, and SurveyMonkey at $19 million with 12 employees as examples of tiny teams with big revenue.
Solve an existing problem, even if it looks niche
Smith says people often fail by chasing problems that don't exist, while Bannerbear, Headlime and Carrd address needs that most companies or creators already have.
Doing the whole stack breeds creativity
Smith notes that solo founders who handle marketing, design and development aren't constrained by formal training, citing Peter Levels giving away $10,000 to a retweeter instead of buying ads.
Old, unpolished sites can still be lucrative
NextEpisode.net has a dated interface but gets about 3.6 million monthly uniques, with 80% direct traffic, run solo for 15 years; they guess it makes around $1 million a year.
Shared obsessions create large audiences
Glitch deal groups, giveaway-loving communities and parent-focused products like Nugget Comfort show how passionate niches can drive big traffic and sales.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesI think the thing that a lot of people do wrong when they're trying to, like, do their, like, own little startup is they look for things that, like, don't really exist.
— Steph Smith
Like, you don't become a billionaire from working for a company and buying ETFs.
— Steph Smith
I find they're actually a lot more creative, right? So they're, like... They're not, like, constrained by the marketing degree that they had, you know, before.
— Steph Smith
I think it's a, like, the indie hacker community and the nomad community overlap 'cause they're both kinda, like, rebellious in a way. They're like, "I don't need to live in one place," or like, "I don't need to raise venture capital."
— Steph Smith
I just love that there's someone who's this weird and quirky enough to dedicate time to do this because I love people like that, and people who are crazy enough to put all their energy into something like this.
— Sam Parr
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
