The Era of Solo-Soul-Preneurs - Bootstrapping thanks to no-code tools and automation
The Era of Solo-Soul-Preneurs - Bootstrapping thanks to no-code tools and automation
Solopreneurs (also known as ‘Companies of one’) are individuals setting about an entrepreneurial venture by themselves without the support of partners and employees. Today they are a large demographic that has been growing - the 2021 MBO Partners report identified 51 million independent workers that are set to grow with 17% of traditional workers expressing interest in going independent within 2-3 years of the report.
Why have they become so popular? Paul Jarvis’ book “Companies of One” makes a compelling case that solopreneurs are "blueprint(s) for growing a lean and agile business that can survive every type of economic climate, and ultimately leads to a richer and more meaningful life". By keeping their businesses small and simple, solopreneurs can create lean, resilient businesses that can also provide autonomy and flexibility to balance work and their personal lives. Many solopreneurs seem to be happier too, with 87% of independents surveyed in the MBO Partners report indicating that they are happier working on their own.
It’s no wonder that more individuals are wanting to become solopreneurs, but many turn away at the challenges relating to limited time and resources. With an increasingly digital economy that has seen new tools develop that can help individuals bootstrap their startups, have the tides perhaps changed? We explore some of the changes to the solopreneur landscape, and why we think now is the time for solopreneurs to shine.
E-commerce enables solopreneurs to trade digitally, and easily.
E-commerce has been around for a long time, but with the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown restrictions limiting physical trading, it quickly become the leading way to trade and do business whether this is selling products in a digital store, or offering services online. In particular, the gig economy has been an easy way for people to commercialise their passions and sell products digitally. Digital marketplaces such as Fiverr where individuals can sell their professional abilities have thrived, with more than 1 million people from 160 countries using Fiverr to trade digital services.
Solopreneurs can collaborate better today.
One tradeoff with being a solopreneur is that one person cannot learn everything that the business may necessarily need to thrive, particularly as independent work grows in popularity and complexity. With more solopreneurs perfecting their craft, and the ongoing evolution of collaboration tools, solopreneurs can team up to build and grow their businesses. With collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, ClickUp, Notion, and Slack to name a few, solopreneurs can form partnerships very quickly to deliver outcomes.
Teams can work together on collaboration platforms where they can ideate over a digital whiteboard, provide live and active feedback on a messaging platform and co-create documents among other capabilities. Digital collaboration tools also offer flexibility in that teams don’t have to physically live in the same place and can collaborate and work from anywhere, with MBO Partners citing the number of American digital nomads doubling from 7.3 million in 2019 to 15.5 million in 2021.
No-code tools and automation reduce barriers to entry.
With no-code platforms and automation software products becoming increasingly more common, the barriers to creating software and automating processes have lifted. Creating software and automating processes no longer require a degree in Software Engineering, but can be quickly created using drag and drop interfaces generating production-ready code at a fraction of the time and cost it used to.
It is worth noting that Gartner’s 2021 forecast on the low-code development technology market noted that by 2024, low-code adoption tools will have been so widespread that 75% of software solutions built globally will be made with low-code software, delivering applications simpler and faster.
It is fair to say that solopreneurs have been enabled by a growing digital landscape which has birthed better tools to provide a solid support for solopreneurs to bootstrap their startups. With an already large demographic of solopreneurs, an increasingly positive sentiment towards going independent, and the ongoing development of tools that can better enable independents to run on their own, we may already be well in the middle of the era of solopreneurs.
Reference links:
https://info.mbopartners.com/rs/mbo/images/MBO_2021_State_of_Independence_Research_Report.pdf