This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Justin Parnell, 39, who is based in San Francisco. His former and current employment have been verified by Business Insider. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.
In July 2023, my wife and I were closing on a mortgage and expecting a baby. It was a dicey time to leave a senior role with an income and benefits for something unknown and all on me.
But at 36, I quit my role as the vice president of marketing at a San Francisco-based innovation management software company to become a solo entrepreneur, or “solopreneur.”
I felt confident doing it because I had commitments from early believers, and belief in myself and what I was building: custom AI agents for other entrepreneurs and companies.
Do you work in AI? If you’re comfortable speaking about it with a Business Insider reporter, please fill out this quick form. We want to hear from people whose first job out of college was in AI or those who made a mid-career switch into the industry.
I used ChatGPT, Google, and YouTube to teach myself about AI
My career started in telecom marketing before I moved into sales management. In 2015, I launched an identity verification business that I ran for two years, which taught me a lot about entrepreneurship. After that, I returned to the B2B SaaS world.
When ChatGPT came out in 2022, I quickly realized it marked a major paradigm shift for knowledge workers. Seeing what it could do early on, and how rapidly it improved, convinced me it was a technology I needed to understand deeply.
Ian Tuttle for BI
In 2023, I took Google certifications on transformer models and other courses to learn how AI works at a foundational level. I also taught myself using YouTube, asking ChatGPT to explain technical questions, and reading material I gathered from Google Deep Research.
The more I learned, the more I wanted to build. I learn best by doing, so I started experimenting with using AI in my day-to-day work, from go-to-market operations to content creation.
The AI-Powered Solopreneur series explores how solo business owners use AI to drive growth.
On the side, I started helping solopreneurs and small business owners who wanted to use AI to work more efficiently. Many were friends who kept asking me whether AI could help with this or that. I began making AI agents for them.
After doing this for several of them, my friends suggested I pursue it as a career. I eventually plucked up the courage to start my own business again.
My AI side projects became a company
After I left my job in July 2023 and became a freelance AI consultant, by 2024, the business had matured to the point where it needed to become an LLC to help larger companies feel confident contracting with me.
My clients often want to use AI agents to help with acquiring customers and assessing the quality of leads. The agents I’ve created can analyze new leads, research the companies, score them against ideal-customer-profile criteria, and tell the client whether each lead is a good fit.
In my own business, agents handle everything from inbound inquiries to proposal building. For example, when someone fills out a form on my website, they receive a custom road map for building agents. Another agent generates a proposal and sends it along with a meeting link to book time on my calendar.
Ian Tuttle for BI
From there, an agent creates a signable proposal. After our call, another agent updates the proposal and related documents based on the conversation. That’s just intake. Billing agents then kick off invoice workflows.
These agents save me hours on every project. There’s an AI workflow running in the background that I barely touch, which makes me massively more efficient.
I can grow my business without hiring staff, thanks to AI
AI allows me to scale up without adding staff. Otherwise, I would likely need to hire two more people or contract outside help for proposals, follow-up content, invoicing, and general housekeeping. That would erode margins.
Though I’m a one-man show, working solo never feels lonely. There’s a strong community of solo founders in San Francisco. We collaborate on projects and pass deals back and forth when we don’t have capacity.
As AI accelerates and layoffs continue, I expect to see more people become solopreneurs, betting on themselves and becoming their own bosses.
