A decade ago, "software business" implied a company: payroll, managers, sales people. Today, a single developer with taste and discipline can build a product, reach paying customers, and clear more profit than a small startup — often without hiring anyone.
The stack shrank the company
Every layer of the business has been productized:
- Payments: global billing handled by a few lines of integration.
- Auth, email, and search: APIs that used to require a platform team.
- Distribution: app stores, marketplaces, and communities that a solo dev can actually reach.
- AI assistance: one person now writes, tests, and documents at the throughput of a small team.
The overhead that used to require a company now fits in a subscription list. What's left is the actual product.
Why now
Cloud costs commoditized, API-first became the default vendor strategy, and remote-normalized markets meant a niche product could find its thousand true fans anywhere on earth. A tool that serves 500 people at $20/month is a real business, not a hobby.
The honest downside
Solo means single points of failure: you're the on-call engineer, support desk, and marketing department. Burnout is the industry's quiet epidemic. The successful indie devs we talk to treat sustainability as a feature — capping growth deliberately, automating support early, and taking actual vacations.
The gold rush is real, but the winners are panning patiently, not frantically.