In 1983, Douglas Adams—author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—went to a bookshop searching for a birthday gift. He bought a fountain pen for £135. Then, seeking advice on using it, he discovered a retired calligrapher named Mr. Rudd with a shop in Covent Garden.
Adams wrote in an essay: "I realized that here was an old world craftsman who'd been overtaken by technology three times. First the mass-produced pen, then the typewriter, then the word processor."
Each technological revolution eliminated intermediaries between creator and audience. Each time, the tools democratized, and individuals gained power previously reserved for institutions.
I thought about Adams' essay often over the past ten months. Because I've been living my own version of this story.
Scribe → Press → Internet → AI
Let's trace the pattern:
The Scribe Era: Reproducing a book required months of labor by trained professionals. Information control belonged to monasteries and royal courts.
The Printing Press: Gutenberg eliminated the scribe. One person with a press could produce hundreds of copies. Luther's Reformation was fundamentally a printing press phenomenon.
The Internet: Eliminated physical distribution. One person with a website could reach millions. No need for publishers, distributors, or retailers.
AI: Eliminates specialized skill requirements. One person with the right prompts can produce work that previously required teams—design, code, analysis, content.
Each revolution makes individuals more powerful relative to institutions. Each revolution eliminates middlemen. Each revolution lets one person do what previously required many.
The plugged.in Experiment
Ten months ago, I started building plugged.in—an AI agent orchestration platform. I had a vision for connecting AI models with real-world tools through the MCP (Model Context Protocol) standard.
Today:
- 14 repositories
- Production deployment
- Paying users
- Federation architecture designed
One person. No employees. No venture funding. No team.
This would have been impossible five years ago. Not because the ideas didn't exist, but because executing them required capabilities I didn't have—frontend design, mobile development, complex API integrations, marketing copy, legal documents.
AI changed the equation. The skills I lack, AI supplements. The time I don't have, AI compresses. The team I can't afford, AI simulates.
C2B: The Individual Sells to Business
The traditional model is B2C (business to consumer) or B2B (business to business). But a new category is emerging: C2B—Consumer to Business.
Individual creators and operators now sell directly to companies:
- A solo developer selling a SaaS tool
- A single analyst providing research services
- An independent consultant with AI-augmented capabilities
- A one-person agency delivering complete campaigns
The "creator economy" discussed over the past decade was just the opening act. AI-augmented solo operators are the main show.
I'm not unique. I'm not even early. I'm simply riding a wave that's lifting millions of individuals into capabilities previously reserved for well-funded companies.
The Right Questions > Technical Skills
In the AI era, competitive advantage shifts from "can you execute?" to "do you know what to ask?"
The programmer who knows the syntax but not the architecture? Replaceable. The domain expert who knows what needs to be built and why? Essential.
This is why I say "asking the right questions" is the key skill. AI handles execution. Humans provide direction—the understanding of problems worth solving, the taste for solutions worth building, the judgment about trade-offs worth making.
Twenty years of experience doesn't become worthless with AI. Twenty years of experience becomes leverage—you know which questions matter.
The Economics
Traditional startup math:
- Raise $2M
- Hire 5 engineers
- 18-month runway
- Ship v1.0 by month 12
- Hope for product-market fit
AI-era solo math:
- $500/month for tools (AI APIs, cloud, domains)
- No salaries
- Infinite runway at low burn
- Ship v1.0 by month 2
- Iterate based on real user feedback
The economics fundamentally favor experimentation. When failure costs $5,000 instead of $500,000, you can try ten ideas for the price of one. Each failure teaches. Each iteration improves your questions.
I'm not against teams. For some problems, teams are essential. But the minimum viable team size dropped from five to one for a huge range of products.
The Dark Side
Solo operation has real costs:
Isolation: No colleagues to discuss problems with. No watercooler insights. No serendipitous collaboration. You have to actively cultivate community, or you work alone in every sense.
Breadth over depth: You're doing everything—product, engineering, marketing, sales, support, accounting. Nothing gets your full attention. Some things suffer.
No safety net: When you're sick, the work stops. There's no one to cover. Every vacation is a calculated risk.
Decision fatigue: Every decision lands on you. Some days you're too tired to decide well. Nobody catches your mistakes.
These are real. Anyone romanticizing solo operation hasn't done it. But for the right person, on the right problem, the trade-offs are worth it.
The Old Craftsman
Douglas Adams' Mr. Rudd—the calligrapher overtaken by technology three times—could have given up after the fountain pen democratized writing. Or after the typewriter. Or after the word processor.
He didn't. He adapted. He found his niche. He taught others.
The AI revolution will overtake many jobs and industries. That's not avoidable. But it also creates new niches, new opportunities, new leverage points for individuals willing to adapt.
I'm 40+ years old. I've been doing IT infrastructure for two decades. By traditional career logic, I should be managing a team, not writing code. I should be strategizing, not building.
Instead, I'm building a one-person empire, learning new tools, shipping new products. Because AI changed the game enough that it makes sense.
What's Next
I don't know if plugged.in will succeed. Solo ventures fail all the time. Markets shift, competitors emerge, and the world doesn't care about your effort.
But I know this: the cost of trying is lower than ever. The leverage available to individuals is higher than ever. The opportunity to build something meaningful without asking permission from investors or employers is more accessible than any time in history.
Adams wrote about Mr. Rudd: "I had a strong impression of a man who had let several worlds go by."
I'm not letting this world go by.