What are solo founders actually building?
71 ideas keep coming up in what the builders wrote, in 12 areas. 652 of their 1,284 projects fit one of them; each idea lists its projects and the words that put them there.
Build the product
- Stop rebuilding app foundationsBuilders reuse working infrastructure before implementing a product-specific feature.9 projects
- Building material you can keepThe deliverable is code, a template or an exportable system.21 projects
- When the coding agent becomes a teammateDevelopers need to supervise agents inside actual repositories and running systems.15 projects
- Learn AI through building and guided practiceTraining is attached to practical creation, often with live support.8 projects
- Describe an interface and get an editable starting pointNatural language generates structure users can inspect and refine.8 projects
- Start from an inspectable library of working examplesReference material is packaged so users can adapt it to a specific output.4 projects
The whole landscape
Every project on one board, placed by the waves it belongs to, or the September 2026 map as an image to keep.
How we found these waves
- The starting point
- Founder networking threads, quote posts and related posts, followed by project websites. The September 18 research reviewed 854 records: 851 unique projects and three duplicates.
- What we could learn
- 485 projects had enough evidence for the offering, audience and approach; 177 had a meaningful description with gaps; 189 lacked enough information. 440 projects fit the 70 recurring ideas in this edition.
- What a wave means
- A shared task, audience need or approach, checked against each project’s sources. It describes a pattern in this catalogue, not measured market growth. Some projects fit several waves; others have a distinct idea or need more information.
- Follow the evidence
- Open a wave for its criteria and source excerpts, then a project for the original sources and its builders. Counts above reflect the current published catalogue; the downloadable map records the research edition.