Happy new year friends-

It’s been (checks notes) 3 months since the last time I wrote you. Time flies when you’re having a baby.

My wife and I welcomed our daughter back in mid-November, and I’ve been relishing the distinct vibe that is parental leave over the holidays. Or whatever you call “parental leave” when you’re self-employed. The second half of 2024 felt like a COVID time warp — it’s virtually impossible to mark time with a new infant, and the weeks leading up to her arrival were a special kind of limbo. Knowing you’re about to be fully consumed makes it hard to bite off anything new.

All that to say, there’s something invigorating about dusting off the keyboard right now. There’s a new life under our roof to go along with the fresh energy of a new year. I spent a lot of 2025 ruminating on the idea of solopreneurship and the opportunity in craft tech^[1], and as we take our first steps into January my focus has turned to making it reality. My goal is to be owning and operating my first software solopreneurship business by the end of the year, whether through a 0-1 build or an SBA-fueled acquisition. This quarter I’m working to understand my two key constraints:

• Technical capabilities — how sophisticated a product can I actually build as a novice/intermediate developer with AI tools?
• Acquisition budget — how much can I actually spend if I go the acquisition route? How much could I get through an SBA loan, and what does that look like?
  
  
  The answers to both of these questions will help shape my search for and evaluation of first business opportunities as I get into Q2. I started chipping away at #1 in between naps last month, mapping my circle of competence by building a hub for my own AI assistants and agents. I chose it as a first project for a few reasons:
• It forces me to better understand the AI APIs and context management that will be the lifeblood of virtually any idea I use for my products.
• As I’ve written before, the rate limits on the consumer Claude app are a major bottleneck to my approach. Having my own platform gives me the flexibility to pay when I want to use more (within certain bounds).
• The eventual goal is to link up my knowledge base (primarily in Notion) to my AI workforce, a key capability for building an AI maximalist solopreneurship business.
  

Until next time.

Nate