Hey there, tech lovers! Nuked here, excited to share some cool news about how technology is helping individuals turn into billion-dollar businesses all on their own!

Recently, big names like Sam Altman and his tech buddies are betting on the rise of the first one-person companies worth a billion dollars, thanks largely to AI. This shift is impossible to imagine without the help of intelligent algorithms, which are fueling solo ventures across the tech world.

Leading the charge is Polar, a platform designed to empower solo entrepreneurs to create and grow their businesses effortlessly. Polar aims to differentiate itself by focusing on developers’ needs, providing the essential tools for online selling and SaaS subscriptions—all with a simple setup that can be done in just a few lines of code.

With Polar acting as the Merchant of Record, handling billing and taxes, entrepreneurs can sell products globally from day one. This ease of use caught the eye of VC firms like Accel, which invested $10 million during its seed round, highlighting the potential seen in Polar’s approach.

Birk Jernström, the CEO of Polar and a seasoned entrepreneur, has a history of success. His previous startup, Tictail, was acquired by Shopify for $17 million. Tictail was all about making online selling as simple as blogging, and it grew quickly to serve over 100,000 merchants.

Smart moves like developing a marketplace helped Tictail compete and eventually caught Shopify’s attention. After its IPO, Shopify expanded into consumer commerce, bringing Tictail’s team onboard to enhance their platform.

Jernström’s journey reflects a passion for empowering small merchants and developers. His experience at Shopify, combined with reflections from his personal life, led him to create Polar, which now boasts 18,000 developer-focused customers. These users include companies behind popular tools like Framer, Raycast, and Vercel, showing how Polar integrates into the developer ecosystem.

Jernström’s vision is to make building and scaling software as straightforward as Shopify did for e-commerce. Inspired by growing AI capabilities, Polar is part of a wave enabling indie hackers and solo founders to pursue their passions and create independent businesses easily.