I've been working on Zigpoll[0] for ~4 years. AI has changed my trajectory dramatically where it's way more realistic to compete with the big players as a one man show. Trying to close out on 2M ARR this year and then maybe look to sell and ride off into the sunset.
Solo founder (and sole employee) getting to 2M ARR with Zigpoll[0]
AI is making it possible to go after bigger clients so the strategy is to focus on marketing and going upmarket. A lot of new features to add and things to learn as you move up to bigger customers with larger contracts!
Scaling Zigpoll[0] to 2M ARR as a solo founder (currently at 1.5 ARR). Each year you double ARR for a business it comes with a whole new set of challenges which are layered on top of the changes in the tech landscape.
Fortunately I think I've been bailed out by agentic coding the last couple months from a product perspective but I think the major gains so far have been due to marketing and exploring alternative growth channels. Even so, keeping momentum is never a given and requires constant output from all angles! Onward...
Crossed over 100K MRR and I'm shooting for 2M ARR by the end of the year. Growing something in this stage is totally different from making it go from zero to one so it's an interesting learning curve. AI has also changed the calculus as well where it seems less crazy to try and do this sort of thing. Time will tell!
You should almost always stick with an idea for longer than you think. I've had 3 successful projects (one making over 100K MRR[0]) IMO the main differentiator between winning and losing is how fast you are iterating based on customer feedback.
I think about it like throwing a dart at the dartboard. You might hit the bullseye in one shot but usually you'll just hit somewhere random then it's up to you to iterate and find the version of your idea that the market will actually pay for. This is the feedback part of the equation and giving up and throwing random darts may never pay off.
were your projects in spaces you were familiar with? I feel like that makes the dart less random. Also I feel like it's hard to get customers/users on calls
well they were all websites so they had that in common but not much else. I would recommend starting off with an app store of some kind since getting initial customers is a real pain unless you already have some lined up due to past work experience / networking. That said, with enough time and screaming into the void you will get someone to walk through the door. Best to ask them as many questions as you can while they are hanging around!
you can email me if you want: jason[at]zigpoll.com
Ideas came from building something that I wished existed. Honestly I didn't overthink any of them and I'm glad I didn't. If you do too much market research it tends to make your vision seem less exciting IMO.
Either way my whole point is to just iterate on your initial idea for long enough that it goes from being "your fun idea" to "your fun idea that people are willing to pay for". Then just repeat that loop until you retire :)
the requirements for growth keep changing plus all the AI noise means that the playbook changes regularly. staying on top of the state of the market while improving/maintaining the product and understanding our icp + exploring new verticals is a tricky (but fun) task to manage!
Congrats, that's a huge achievement!! Curious where your ARR is approximately right now, and how long it's taken you to get to this point? What's your marketing strategy looked like, and is it just you running things?
That is the traditional view, the view of those who want to improve their own knowledge and abilities, and presumably the view of those who would like to consider the degree to be a meaningful credential.
However I suspect that there are many who 1) are more concerned about the short term outcome, 2) consider the degree/diploma to be little more than a meal ticket or arbitrary gatekeeping without any connection to learning, 3) view the work as a pointless barrier to being handed said diploma, and/or 4) don't see the value of human learning in a world where jobs are done by AI and AI systems routinely outperform humans on complex tasks.
I'm curious about the objective competence of recent graduates compared to previous cohorts, not just in tech but in basic literacy and numeracy.
A lot of Gen Z are ferociously anti-AI, but for tribal and emotional reasons, not because of a nuanced understanding - which is ironic, because the nuanced reasons for being wary of AI are much stronger than the usual talking points about "stealing art".
Being tribal and emotional is going to make Gen Z easier to replace, because nuanced strategic insight is less common and more useful.
You say that but I was a Class of 2013, aka during the massive hiring boom of the teens. I tutored a friend of mine with a Ds get Degrees mentality who eventually graduated and now works an ass-in-seat job for Booz Allen or one of those types. I used to joke about it with another friend, that his diploma ought to include an asterisk and a half dozen other names for how much we ultimately did on his grades take homes. I’m pretty sure he makes about the same as me by now purely on tenure.
Personally, I dropped out despite a full ride+ becuase why would I put in work for a no name state school when I already has an FTE job as a developer out of high school anyway.
Turns out fraudulent action can still get the bag.
I agree with your premise about why accurate evaluation matters, but your post comes across as pretty bitter. Unless you’re at the job with him, you really don’t know that it’s a “I just need to show up” job he has at Booz Allen. Perhaps he has other great traits like a high social or emotional intelligence that make him good at his job beyond whatever was being evaluated on those projects you helped him with.
I think you're missing the point. The majority of jobs at companies like Booz Allen are sort of like Kabuki theater and don't require any technical competence. The main responsibilities are to show up on time and present a certain image to customers.
Part of the purpose for evaluation is to provide feedback. I'm not going to claim that the form of feedback is great, but it does offer motivation to improve.
The other thing that feedback feeds into is credentials. I realize that some people are dismissive of this aspect of the degree, but it is important to pursue further studies or secure a job. While you can argue that these people are only cheating themselves, and some of them are cheating themselves, a great many will continue to cheat as they advance in academia or the workforce. In other words, they are cheating others out of opportunities.
You can imagine a world where the Corporate or State AI handles education, tailors it to individual student levels and talents, and assigns work based on its own direct experience of a lifetime of interaction.
You can also imagine that in that world where most humans would be redundant - unless the AI was optimising for human-to-human jobs and for evidence of unusual insight and creativity, not managing bullshit work for corporate profit.
The problem is that Universities are no longer institutions where people who want to can go to educate themselves but have instead been turned into the first part of your job interview. In this world, Universities are judged on how well they evaluate their students.
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