Maker

The solo-builder conversation is almost entirely about software — code, agents, apps. And every time, the same assumption slips in: that “one person can now ship” only applies to things that compile. That assumption is quietly wrong. The same cost collapse that flattened software shipping is happening on the hardware bench, a few years behind and mostly unnoticed. A single maker with a fifteen-dollar microcontroller, AI-assisted design tools, and on-demand fabrication can now assemble, in a weekend, what once required a team of engineers and a factory. ...

If you build things — software, hardware, or projects for your own reasons — you already know the hardest part isn’t the first week. It’s year three, when the novelty is gone and the thing still isn’t done. Builder Decade is about that version of building. What “the AI era” actually changed For most of the history of making things, the bottleneck was capability. You couldn’t build what you imagined without a team, a budget, or a decade of practicing the craft first. ...