Most startups, enablers, communities, and startup gurus talk about unicorns, the magical billion dollar companies, as the holy grail. You have an idea, you pitch investors, you raise millions, you build the biggest company you can with hundreds or thousands of employees. You start by raising one or two million at pre-seed, whatever that means, then a couple more at seed, then, depending on a thousand factors like the global economy and market conditions, you raise a Series A, say ten million at a fifty million dollar valuation. From there it is a rat race, raising bigger and bigger rounds, worrying about down rounds, inflating valuations. Most of the time the next valuation is just whatever a large investor is willing to pay, not something grounded in reality, and the race is to grow into that number before time runs out, which often does not happen. In rare cases the company reaches an IPO and everyone is happy for a day, only to realise that the work of being a public company is just beginning. It is also worth noting that plenty of companies valued at billions in private markets went on to lose billions in the public ones.
There is a whole other kind of entrepreneur building on the internet. People like Pieter Levels or Bhanu Teja, who build small products, sell them by building a community on Twitter or Discord, and make thousands of dollars a month. They spend it on whatever they like, traveling, building, or just chilling. Often they have no employees, or just a few contractors. You might think this is an anomaly, but there are now thousands of them around the world. You just did not know.
I have mentioned a few communities already. Here I want to introduce some of the creators and makers who build in public and are doing really well. The list is tiny compared to what is actually happening out there, but it is a good starting point into the world of makers and creators.
Stories of Creators and Makers
Pieter is an entrepreneur and maker known for building small products on the internet. Through platforms like Twitter and Discord, he built a strong community around his work, which turned into a steady stream of income. At the time of writing, Pieter makes north of $100K a month.
Pieter Levels has built several popular products on the internet, including:
- Nomad List: A platform that provides information and resources for digital nomads, such as cost of living, safety, and internet speed.
- Remote OK: A job board specifically for remote work opportunities.
- Hoodmaps: An interactive map that allows users to explore and share their favorite and least favorite areas of a city.
Bhanu Teja is a programmer turned entrepreneur and maker who builds small micro products on the internet. Similar to Pieter Levels, he has been able to create a community and generate income through platforms like Twitter and Discord. He built a product called sitegpt.ai and is riding the wave of AI companies in the space. He quit his full time job and after a while hired his brother to scale the product. At the time of writing this, he is making north of $10K a month.
Daniel left his job at Amazon, and the first thing I remember is him writing a blog post that went viral and earned him a lot of followers. He then wrote a book on the good parts of AWS, which was impactful given his years of experience there, and got pulled into the world of creators. He launched info products, like how to build a community on Twitter, and later launched smallbets.co, built on the idea that you can build a life by placing many small bets with small products instead of trying to build one giant billion dollar company.
Sam Parr is an entrepreneur and founder who has made a significant impact in the startup and creator communities. He is known for his ability to build successful online communities and products. One of his notable creations is The Hustle, a media company that provides a daily business and tech newsletter with a humorous and engaging tone. The Hustle has gained a large following and has become a go-to resource for entrepreneurs and professionals.
In addition to The Hustle, Sam Parr has also launched Trends, a subscription-based platform that provides insights and analysis on emerging market trends and business opportunities. Trends offers valuable resources and actionable information for entrepreneurs looking to stay ahead in the ever-changing business landscape.
Sam Parr’s ability to connect with his audience and deliver valuable content has made him a respected figure in the startup and creator community. His success serves as an inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs and makers who want to build their own online communities and profitable ventures.
More makers worth knowing
The four people above are just a start. Here are more, across different shapes of business, so you can see how wide this world really is. Treat the revenue figures as public snapshots these founders shared themselves, because the numbers move month to month.
- Marc Lou, a French solo maker, sells coding boilerplates and courses to other developers and has publicly reported over fifty thousand dollars a month across a portfolio of small products. He was Product Hunt’s maker of the year in 2024.
- Tony Dinh, a developer from Vietnam, built TypingMind, a front end for AI chat tools, and announced crossing a million dollars in annual revenue in late 2024, all on his own.
- Damon Chen left an engineering job at Cisco and built two products, Testimonial.to and PDF.ai, that together he has said crossed a million dollars a year.
- Danny Postma, from the Netherlands, sold an AI copywriting tool and then built HeadshotPro, which generates professional headshots and which he has reported running at around three hundred thousand dollars a month.
- Arvid Kahl and his partner bootstrapped a SaaS called FeedbackPanda to roughly fifty five thousand dollars a month as a two-person team, sold it, and he now writes and teaches bootstrapping full time.
- Justin Welsh turned years of operating experience into a one-person education business on LinkedIn and a newsletter, and has reported over four million dollars a year with no employees.
- Marie Martens and Filip Minev, a couple in Belgium, bootstrapped Tally, a form builder, past a few million dollars a year with a team of around five.
You could fill a whole book with names like these. The point is not the specific numbers. It is that none of these people raised a giant round or built a giant team. They found a real problem, built a small product, reached the people who had that problem, and kept going.
The movement and where to find it
This is not a handful of lucky outliers. It is a movement with its own communities, and you can walk straight into them today. Indie Hackers is the central one, full of interviews and revenue numbers from real bootstrapped founders. MicroConf and TinySeed, both run by Rob Walling, are built specifically for self-funded SaaS founders who do not want venture money. Daniel Vassallo’s Small Bets community grew the idea of building many small income streams instead of one big company. Starter Story publishes thousands of founder case studies. Spend an hour a week inside one or two of these and within a year you will understand this world better than most people who have spent a decade in tech.
Building in the AI era
When I first wrote this book, the leverage was already incredible. AI has multiplied it again. Sam Altman has said that he and other founders keep a running bet on when we will see the first one-person, billion-dollar company, something that used to be unthinkable. Real examples already exist of tiny, often solo, AI products making serious money, like Pieter Levels’ Photo AI crossing a hundred thousand dollars a month.
But here is the part that matters, and it is the spine of this whole book. AI lowered the cost of building so much that building is no longer the hard part, and so it is no longer the advantage. When anyone can build, the edge moves to distribution, taste, and trust. Peter Thiel put it plainly, that poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. Marc Andreessen has said the same thing for years, that successful companies become distribution-centric, not product-centric. Paul Graham’s advice still fits on a sticker: make something people want, and do things that do not scale to get your first users. None of that changed because of AI. If anything, it got more true.
So the opportunity in front of you is bigger than it has ever been, and the fundamentals you need are exactly the ones in this book. Build something small and real. Reach the people who need it, by hand at first. Keep going. The rest is detail.