Solopreneur

Solopreneur is broader than indie-hacker and describes something different than micro-saas. Indie hacker specifically implies building and shipping software, usually with the technical craft and build-in-public culture attached to it. Micro-saas is a product category, not a person. Solopreneur describes the org structure, one person running the full stack of a business, regardless of what that business sells: an agency, a newsletter, a course, a productized service, or a micro-saas are all fair game. The tradeoff that defines the role: full ownership of every decision and every dollar of revenue, and full exposure to every gap. There's no co-founder to catch a blind spot, cover a weak skill, or split the workload when you're sick or burned out. Every function, support tickets, taxes, marketing copy, sales calls, is yours unless you pay to hand it off or automate it. Why it's more viable now than a decade ago: AI tools, no-code platforms, and automation have taken over tasks that used to require a hire. A support inbox can run mostly on an AI-assisted triage flow, a first draft of marketing copy takes minutes instead of a freelancer's turnaround, a basic internal tool can be built without an engineer. None of this removes the workload entirely, but it moves the ceiling on how much one person can credibly run.

One person runs a niche newsletter with a paid tier, a small consulting practice on the side, and a simple scheduling tool they built to manage their own client calls, later opened up as a paid product to other consultants. All three are solopreneur businesses; only the last one is also a micro-saas.