economics
Everyone talks about AI making things cheaper. Almost nobody shares actual numbers. So let's fix that. I'm going to break down what AI actually costs to run productively as a solo builder in 2026. Not the free tier. Not the "just use ChatGPT" version.
strategy
There's a segment of the market that's quietly getting disrupted, and most of the incumbents haven't noticed yet. It's not the enterprise market — those companies have budgets, procurement processes, and compliance requirements that favor large vendors. And it's not the
economics
Let's talk about math. In 2023, a solo consultant billing $150/hour could realistically handle about 25 clients. The bottleneck wasn't expertise. It was time. Research, drafting, communication, follow-up, admin. Each client consumed roughly 6-8 hours per month of work, and maybe 3 of those hours