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.
Organize everyday work
- Protect focus and sustain effortUsers add structure or friction to keep daily effort aligned with their intentions.23 projects
- Retrieve what you already savedSaved material becomes useful when people can find it again in context.8 projects
- Attach a consequence to daily behaviorRewards, access and stakes make progress change something visible.10 projects
- Make a stream of news navigableGrouping, geography and context help users follow events across stories.4 projects
- Build a personal index of things you collectCollection software preserves the identity and progress of individual items.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.