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Comment by johnj-hn | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means.

No, AI dials up the OPs axiom to 11. Heavily leveraging AI for dev is going to accelerate you as a solo dev but you will hit serious friction trying to scale to more than the individual.

> Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means.

I disagree; it's even more obvious with AI that, with AI, a solo dev can go even faster, but still, with AI, you need a team to go further.

Can you talk a little about what "further" means to you?

Sure:

1. A primary meaning, "Further" means "revenue" (or "profit"). You and your AI together can sit and create a competitor to Windows 11, do the marketing copy, a sales strategy, feature testing etc, but without a team that product isn't going anywhere.

2. A secondary meaning, "Further" means "Stamina". You + AI can create everything above, but without a community (whether paying customers or free users), the product dies when your interest in it dies, even if it is still making money!

Ok, I see where we diverge now. My project is free and open-source so there's no money at play here. It's a labor of love. I agree with you if you're talking about a for-profit product that you'll probably do better with a team.

Even as a labor of love, the second definition still applies. Once your interest wains, the project dies.

Sure but if it's open-source then anyone is free to fork it to keep it going, if they want to. That's the beauty of open-source.

Neither of those definitions require a team. There are many solo founders making tons of money, like Pieter Levels, and he has a community too.

I see OP responded but I'd add on that "further" can mean product vision and pivots. When you're the only one in the room that voice is limited; even when you may have only listened to 1% of these pitches it may be the one you never would've come up with.

It can mean the power of delegation and creativity. The worst kind of teams are monocular, democratically oriented teams where every member must be on and act in the same manner. It's great for efficiency, it's horrible for productivity and creativity.

In the time it takes me to make a single-node webservice with a CLI POC client I can now have a fully scalable SAAS with clients for iOS, Android, mac, linux, windows and web-based, user documentation in several languages and a suite of unit tests.

Surely that's both faster and further?

IMO AI agents are like a team of remote consultants that only talk shop and have no sense of humor.

> I can now have a fully scalable SAAS with clients for iOS, Android, mac, linux, windows and web-based, user documentation in several languages and a suite of unit tests.

Which you won’t be brave enough to put on the internet.

Many people do however.

AI does change the equation. It frees a solo developer to focus more on the big picture. BUT... with the current generation of AI agents, I think you are still right. You still need a second (or ideally more; I'd say 5) developer(s) to get enough perspective to have solid plans and roadmaps.

So, while I currently [mostly] agree, I think the / a next generation of agents might take that over a threshold and make solo development close enough to the equivalent of current 2-dev work to meaningfully change the equation. Furthermore I think that does not even need new models; I think current models with better "harness / tooling / system prompting / skills / etc." (whatever you may call the text files describing important procedures), might be able to fill most of that gap.

Obviously work that needs more than 2 devs planning might take even longer to fully solve with 1 dev + multiple agents, if ever.

My current mental model is that humans can very well think about and walk the boundary of problems, while [current] AI agents can fill the inside to some extent. If a problem has inherent "multi-dimensional boundaries", it might be hard for a person to imagine and walk it well to guide the agents. And I think most of the interesting problems fall in this category.

With AI, we can go... somewhere?

I agree. If everyone on my team is just prompting agents, why would I spend money on their salary when I can use that for tokens instead? No one has yet given a good answer for this question when I've asked before.

"prompting" is a skill, you pay for that.

Is it worth paying 200k a year for that, especially if I'm already good enough at prompting? That amount gets me a lot of Claude Code licenses instead.

it may not worth to pay you 200k if someone can also do that prompting..

Indeed, that's why I'm a solo founder.

Depending on scale of your products you may find that single person won't be able to cover all aspects. "Prompting" requires some domain knowledge and also quality control and guidance.

Like I said, more and more AI is indeed covering all aspects. I would not be surprised to see even larger million dollar one person companies [0][1].

[0] https://themilliondollaronepersonbusiness.com/

[1] https://theownerscollective.com/podcasts/paul-jarvis-company...

sure, million dollar company can be automated using AI.

Yes it can, even if you don't believe it to be so.

Because agents alone cannot create good software. You are paying for people who understand how to use the agents. LLMs are a tool, and software engineering as a discipline ain't dead yet.

I already understand how to use them as a professional engineer myself, so I don't see the benefit especially for the amount of money a salary and benefits cost.

Then maybe you don't need them. Only you can answer that for yourself. That's kind of the point of my post. It seems like you're looking for an argument here, and I don't want to argue. I have no idea whether or not you need a team. Maybe you'd be better off spending money on tokens. I don't know.

I'm not looking for an argument, this is a discussion forum so if you think it's an argument, then that's fine, you do you, but my point is that the cons you listed don't actually seem like cons in this day and age with AI so I am questioning and validating assumptions anyone would have as well; for example my friend whom I talked to recently is also a solo technical founder and he too doesn't think it's worth it to hire people anymore.

Counter question: where's the useful production-grade software that's been made entirely with "agent swarms"?

Personally, I don't think useful business problems can be solved entirely with LLM loops. If you choose not to pay others to handle part of that then it's all on you.

I agree. It sure does change what it means.

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