This essay is based on a conversation with Justin Parnell, 39, of San Francisco. His previous and current employment has been confirmed by Business Insider. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.
In July 2023, my wife and I had paid off our mortgage and were planning to have a baby. It was a dangerous time to leave a senior position with good income and benefits all to yourself for something unknown.
But at age 36, I quit my job as VP of Marketing at a San Francisco-based innovation management software company to become a solopreneur, or “solopreneur.”
We were able to do this with confidence because of the commitment from our early believers and belief in ourselves and what we were building: custom AI agents for other entrepreneurs and companies.
I taught myself about AI using ChatGPT, Google, and YouTube
My career began in communications marketing and moved into sales management. I started my identity verification business in 2015, ran it for two years, and learned a lot about entrepreneurship. After that, I returned to the B2B SaaS world.
When ChatGPT arrived in 2022, I quickly realized that it represented a major paradigm shift for knowledge workers. Seeing what it could do early on and how quickly it improved convinced me that this was a technology I needed to understand deeply.
Parnell was about to give birth when she quit her job as vice president to start her own business. Ian Tuttle of BI
In 2023, I completed Google Certification on Transformer Models and other courses to learn how AI works at a fundamental level. I also taught myself using YouTube, asked ChatGPT to explain technical questions, and read material collected from Google Deep Research.
The more I learned, the more I wanted to create. We learn best by doing, so we started experimenting with using AI in our daily work, from go-to-market operations to content creation.
Alongside that, I started helping solopreneurs and small business owners who want to use AI to work more efficiently. I also had a lot of friends who kept asking me if AI could help with this or that. I started building an AI agent for them.
After doing this for some of them, a friend of mine encouraged me to pursue it as a career. Eventually, I got the courage to start my own business again.
My AI side project became a company
After I left in July 2023 to become a freelance AI consultant, by 2024 my business had matured to the point where I needed to become an LLC so large companies would feel comfortable contracting with me.
My client wants to use an AI agent to help with customer acquisition and evaluating lead quality. The agents I created can analyze new leads, research companies, score them against ideal customer profile criteria, and tell clients whether each lead is a good fit.
In my business, agents handle everything from inquiries to proposal writing. For example, when someone fills out a form on my website, they receive a custom roadmap for construction agents. Another agent generates a proposal and sends it along with a meeting link to book time on my calendar.
Justin Parnell uses AI agents to help create proposals and send invoices. Ian Tuttle of BI
From there, your agent will create a proposal that you can sign. After the call, another agent updates the proposal and related documents based on the conversation. It’s just an intake. The billing agent then initiates the invoice workflow.
Thanks to these agents, you can save time on all your projects. The AI workflow is running in the background, which I rarely touch, which makes it much more efficient.
AI allows you to grow your business without hiring staff
Thanks to AI, you can scale up without adding staff. Otherwise, you’ll likely need to hire two more people or contract outside help for proposals, content follow-up, invoicing, and general housekeeping. If that happens, your margins will be eroded.
Although it is a one-man show, working alone is never lonely. San Francisco has a strong community of solo founders. We collaborate on projects and exchange deals when we don’t have capacity.
As AI accelerates and layoffs continue, I think we’ll see more people become solopreneurs, bet on themselves and become their own boss.
