Mykhailo Zborovsky, an expert in strategic development of iGaming products, asks whether in the age of AI, founders actually need a full team to help build a billion dollar business.
The IT market used to be quite straightforward: either you were a large conglomerate with a billion-dollar budget, or you had a great idea that required an enormous amount of effort to bring to life. Between an idea and a product stood a large team of developers, designers and another department of people explaining why it would take three months.
Then AI arrived and it became clear that a laptop, internet access and the right subscription could significantly amplify a team’s capabilities, even without massive R&D resources.
Solo Founder: Human + Neural Network = A New Startup?
In recent years, a new type of entrepreneur has emerged more frequently: the solo founder. You’re technically alone, but not entirely. AI is always there to write, generate and assist. The idea is simple: one person equipped with the right combination of AI tools can be far more productive than a traditional startup team.
According to Carta, the share of startups with a single founder grew from 23% in 2019 to 36% in the first half of 2025. And it doesn’t seem to have reached its peak yet.
Some experts (for example, from Switzerland’s Solo Unicorn Lab) are even predicting an almost science-fiction-like scenario: a billion-dollar company created by a single founder could become a reality within the next four-to-nine years.
Does that sound exaggerated? Perhaps. But five years ago, the idea of building software without a development team didn’t sound particularly serious either.
Base44: When an Idea Instantly Becomes a Product
Imagine having a tool that can build fully functional software from just a few text prompts. No “we need to find a developer,” no “let’s allocate a design budget,” no “we’ll finalise the requirements next month.” Just an idea and a working product appears on the other end.
This is exactly the logic behind Base44, a project created by Israeli developer Maor Shlomo. It moved from theory to practice incredibly quickly—and even faster into an $80 million acquisition deal with Wix. All within six months.
At its core, Base44 is an AI-powered builder that transforms a simple text query into a complete application. You describe what you want to create, and the system generates a working version of the product. The most interesting part isn’t even the technology itself—it’s how it changes the process. What once required lengthy approvals can now be achieved through a single description and instantly generated code.
After launch, the platform attracted 10,000 users within its first three weeks and around 250,000 users within six months, all with almost no external investment.
The team consisted of roughly eight people. For comparison, not long ago a similar product would have automatically required a team of 50+ specialists, several contractors, and a dedicated management department.
And here’s the key nuance: AI didn’t so much replace people as it removed unnecessary layers between an idea and execution. Algorithms don’t handle everything yet, but they significantly reduce the need for large teams.
Another Example: Vercel
The story of Vercel is particularly illustrative.
Initially, it was simply a tool designed to make developers’ lives easier. The goal was to prevent website deployment from turning into a stressful process involving servers, configurations, and endless technical hurdles.
Its real breakthrough, however, came during the AI boom. By 2025, Vercel had grown into a multi-billion-dollar company with approximately $200 million in annual revenue. In my view, the reason goes far beyond good hosting services.
Vercel was right on time for the new wave of AI development. Especially after the advent of Claude Code from Anthropic. Now everything works very simply: Claude writes the code, and Vercel immediately helps to launch it. As a result, a solo founder can literally assemble and roll out his product to the Internet in an evening.
I think this is the main secret of Vercel’s growth. They didn’t sell a “big corporate platform.” They became a place where people just feel comfortable creating something quickly. And then some of these small AI projects suddenly grow into big businesses — and stay within the ecosystem.
So What Has Actually Changed for Solo Projects?
If we strip away all the AI hype, the main change is highly practical: today, a single person can realistically go from idea to a working product on their own. Thanks to tools such as Claude, Cursor, and Vercel, the technical barrier has become dramatically lower.
Previously, the process looked very different: first you had to find a team, then secure resources, and then spend months building. Without these elements, many projects never even got off the ground.
Today, one person can rapidly build a prototype, validate an idea, and acquire the first users.
And here, in my opinion, is an important point: AI really helps to make not just a demo for showing, but a working thing that can be launched and given to people for use. It is not yet perfect, but it is more than enough for a start.
Therefore, the logic is simple: first you yourself bring the idea to a working state and see how it lives in the real world. And only then, when traction appears, a team begins to gather around it, developing not a product hypothesis, but something that has already confirmed its value.
If we talk about iGaming
In our niche, conversations about AI often get stuck at the level of “will it replace designers?” In reality, the biggest breakthrough is something entirely different: one person can now single-handedly build the technical backbone of a product that previously required hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But if you look at it through the eyes of a solo founder, the picture changes. Previously, just to reach the testing stage of a new slot mechanic, you needed a small team: a mathematician to calculate RTP, a backend developer to build the logic, and an artist to create the assets. Today, platforms like xGenia.ai allow a founder to produce working code and visuals tailored to a gambling-related request within a week. This fundamentally changes a startup’s budget.
A similar transformation is happening in betting analytics. Previously, forecasting required large teams to process odds and manage risks. Today, platforms like Shurzy demonstrate that language models can process data faster and at a scale that is beyond human capability. In practice, a solo founder can manage these processes through AI agents.
However, it is important not to fall into illusions. I am by no means diminishing the value of large companies. On the contrary, corporations remain the foundation of the industry. A solo founder may be able to build a product quickly, but they cannot single-handedly handle compliance, complex licensing requirements, payment security, or global 24/7 support. A large team is not “extra people” — it is the infrastructure that sustains the market and provides the stability that a solo project may still need years to achieve.
Conclusion
We are still at the stage of high expectations. So far, there are not enough cases where a solo project has stably maintained the volumes of a huge corporation purely on algorithms – technologies need to be tested in a real market and with big money. AI does not kill big business, it simply makes the entry threshold easier. If we take iGaming, then this is a golden ticket for those who did not have millions for R&D, but had cool ideas.
But to be honest – you should look at all this soberly. If we talk about the operator as a full-fledged mono-product, then in a solo format it is almost unrealistic. Yes, you can assemble a prototype on xGenia, you can even screw AI for support, complaints and payments. But then reality begins: the operating system, compliance, legal requirements – and all this very quickly turns the project into a story that one person simply cannot physically pull out.
I tried to test this hypothesis: is it realistic for a solo developer with business experience, on an AI stack, to enter the fiercely competitive SEO Worldwide niche and make a product that not only survives, but also starts to pay off.
The results so far are mixed. It was possible to break into the niche, there are the first conversions, but when you reach normal growth and a stable model, AI is no longer enough. There comes a point where you simply cannot do without specialized people.
Therefore, the honest answer is this: in complex industries like iGaming, a solo operator “from scratch to success” is more of an exception than a real scenario. But another model definitely works, when a small team of three-to-five people builds a product, and AI takes on a huge part of the routine under their control.
The future of the industry is an ecosystem where some bring rapid innovations, while others provide scale and security. Success now depends not on the number of people on staff, but on how well you use technology for your growth.
