Why 2026 Is the best time (ever) to become an AI solo-founder

And how to do it without a team, funding, or code.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash. A hypothetical startup founder.

Good Morning,

Looking forward to 2026, I wanted to find a topic might might also be relevant to so many of the Creators, writers, solopreneurs and builders on this platform. Many of whom support AI Supremacy and which I do my best to give back to.

This is a guide for Founders, the bravest kind, the ones who go at it alone.

I’m really proud of finding guest contributors from all around the world 🌍 who are uniquely qualified to talk about the topic they undertake on AI Supremacy.

Majd ALAILY

is from Lebanon 🇱🇧 and a 3-time Founder who was at Google for nine years. I know him from his viral LinkedIn posts, check out his Notes here. He’s recently launched Ruya Advisory, working with founders on building, growing and fundraising in their early days.

“Let’s Launch, Grow, Fundraise For Your Startup Together.”

Check out his Newsletter: Helping early-stage founders validate, launch, and raise with in-depth guides, frameworks and tactical strategies to future proof your startup with agentic AI and relatively recent methodologies.

Get his Free Report: Try the Problem-Solution Pulse: get an 11-page personalized breakdown of your startup’s foundation. Majd is obsessed with design-led growth and systems thinking for startups. His tactical insights and battle-tested advice are drawn from real founder experiences and what’s actually working right now in a dynamic environment.

I asked Majd for his expertise on how Generative AI is changing how solopreneurs are operating and building their own companies, with insights that might be relevant also to many writers building media startups here on Substack.

In this edition: tl;dr ✂️

This article keeps the natural conversational tone of the author in full.

• Why 2026 is THE era for AI solopreneurs, and why the shift is bigger than “no-code”

• 5 forces enabling solo founders to build what once required full teams

• The best business models & categories for 1-person AI companies this year

• A practical solo-founder playbook to build, monetize, and stay sane while doing it

  

  Majd Alaily

On the journey: ✍🏻

• How my biggest growth mistake got me 1M users

• Build a pitch that actually impresses investors (Based on 100+ decks)

• Insider Lesson: How a $55 validation built a $100M+ company

• The 4 Circles Behind Every Great Founder

If you run a Newsletter like a business, you might be a media founder in a manner of speaking.

Why 2026 Is the best time (ever) to become an AI solo-founder

In 2021, I left my job at Google to start my own business.

Coming from a “mega-corporation”, I wanted to stay lean.

But I couldn’t. It just wasn’t possible.

Too many moving parts. Too much friction. Too little infrastructure.

So I had to scale, staff up, build systems the “old-school” way.

Fast forward to 2026, EVERYTHING is changing.

Editor’s Note: If you have the itch to build a small business as a solo founder this article is a mini crash course on some important considerations, strategies, mindsets, growth-hacks and Generative AI implications for doing it in 2026.

✅ No-code tools are everywhere

✅ Agents can replace critical functions