Senior engineer, OpenAI and Claude, $3,999 a month. I build the automations you keep putting off. Cancel anytime. The code is yours on day one.
- Analyze
- Automate
- Monitor
monthly retainer
Who this is for
You run a bootstrapped or lifestyle business solo. You do sales, support, admin, and product — sometimes in the same hour. AI automation for solo founders is the only lever that adds real capacity without adding payroll. I work with one-person businesses and indie hackers who want working automations in their actual stack, not a no-code workflow that breaks every time a vendor updates.
The pain today
- The ceiling is my own hours — the business literally stops growing when I stop working.
- Zapier flows I built two years ago break silently and I find out from a customer.
- Every SaaS tool pitches AI features at $200/mo but none of them fit my workflow.
- I spend 2–3 hours a day on email and follow-up that any half-decent system could handle.
- I cannot justify hiring even a part-time person, but I need the capacity of one.
The outcome you get
- 10–20 hours a week returned to the founder, starting in month one.
- Automations built on direct API calls — no fragile no-code middleware.
- Flat $3,999/mo retainer I can cancel when cash tightens.
- 100% of the code and workflows transfer to me under Work Made for Hire.
- A voice-trained AI that drafts in my tone, not a generic bot.
Where I start: the triage audit
Before writing a single line of code, I ask a solo founder to list every task that happens more than twice a week. Then I sort them: how formulaic is it, and how bad is a mistake? Tasks that are highly formulaic and low-risk go to AI first. Tasks that require real judgment or touch customer trust stay with the founder.
For most solo businesses, three categories surface immediately: inbox management, lead follow-up, and recurring reporting. Those three alone typically account for 10–15 hours a week. That is where month one goes. Later months add product feedback triage, content drafting, and outbound research.
This triage step is what separates working automations from the graveyard of Zapier flows. I am not automating what sounds impressive; I am automating what is actually costing the most time.
10–20 hours a week returned to the founder, starting in month one.
The solo founder ROI math
The retainer is $3,999 a month. The question is what it returns.
For Norte Web Digital, a one-person digital agency I worked with, automating their lead capture and follow-up process grew their lead base by over 500% and brought 250 new leads per day into the pipeline. That was not a funded startup with a team. That was one operator with a working system.
For a solo founder whose business runs on their own hourly output, recovering 10 hours a week is the point. At the low end, that is capacity for one more customer, one more product iteration, or simply not working weekends. At the high end, it is the difference between a business that scales and one that plateaus at the founder's personal bandwidth.
The math works even at conservative numbers. The retainer does not require a big revenue base to pay back — it requires that the founder's time is actually worth money, which it is.
+500%: Lead base growth.
How voice training works in practice
One of the first objections I hear is: the AI will not sound like me. That is true out of the box. It is not true after setup.
I feed 30–50 of the founder's existing emails, Slack messages, or social posts into a prompt context that travels with every Claude or OpenAI call. The system learns cadence, vocabulary, what the founder never says, and how they handle difficult requests. Within a week, most founders tell me they cannot spot the drafts.
The founder still reviews and sends. I build in a confidence threshold — below a set score, the AI flags the draft for human review instead of queuing it. Full automation is optional and comes after the founder has seen 50–100 drafts and trusts the output. There is no pressure to hand over control before that trust is earned.
Stack philosophy: no new subscriptions
Solo founders run lean. Google Workspace, Stripe, one CRM, one email tool, one analytics layer. I build automations into that stack without adding SaaS line items.
The integration layer is code, not a workflow app. Claude and OpenAI via direct API. When a vendor changes their pricing or API shape, the integration adapts in a patch — there is no downstream no-code tool that silently breaks. The solo founder controls the stack.
API costs are paid directly to OpenAI or Anthropic on the founder's account. Most solo operators see $20–$150 a month in API spend on top of the retainer, depending on volume. That is still far cheaper than the manual time the same tasks would consume.
Reliability: rollback and error handling
A solo founder has no safety net. If an automation sends a wrong message to a customer or corrupts a record, there is no ops team to catch it. I build every automation with that in mind.
Every AI-triggered action writes to an append-only log. There is a one-click rollback window for the last seven days. Below a set confidence threshold, the AI defers to a human review queue rather than acting. For anything that touches payments or customer-facing communications, I add a confirmation step before the action fires.
Data hygiene follows the same logic. No customer data routes through third-party services that are not already in the founder's existing stack. For sensitive data, I use local redaction pipelines before anything reaches the model. The goal is that a mistake is recoverable, not catastrophic.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
A custom CRM that turned Google Maps into a lead machine
Built a purpose-built CRM for a digital agency that captures leads from Google Maps, reaches them via official WhatsApp (Twilio + Meta API), and uses AI to suggest replies and standardize templates. The system scaled the lead base by over 500%, with 250 new leads entering the pipeline every day.
Read the case studyKeep reading
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
A rough threshold: 10 or more inbound emails per day, or 15 or more recurring manual tasks per week. Below that, the retainer takes longer to pay back. The triage audit I run in week one answers this precisely — I map your actual task volume before we commit to anything. If the math does not work for your stage, I say so.
The code is yours from day one under Work Made for Hire. Every automation runs on your own API accounts and your own infrastructure. Cancel end of month and everything keeps running. Nothing is locked to my accounts or dependent on me staying involved.
Yes, and I usually do. Zapier is fine for simple triggers, but it adds a fragile middleware layer and a recurring bill for every automation. I replace those flows with direct API code — more reliable, cheaper to run long-term, and easier to debug when something goes wrong. The transition is usually done in the first two weeks.
I train the system on 30–50 of your own emails or messages before it writes anything public-facing. Most founders cannot reliably identify the AI-drafted messages after the first week. You stay in the review loop until you are confident in the output — there is no push to go fully automated before that.
Week one is the triage audit — mapping your recurring tasks and deciding which go to AI first. Weeks two and three are the first automation in production (usually inbox triage or lead follow-up). Week four is review, tuning, and scoping month two. Most founders have a working system live before the first invoice is due.
Your API account, your bill. For a typical solo founder workflow — email drafting, lead follow-up, light content — expect $20 to $150 per month in direct OpenAI or Anthropic costs. That number scales with volume, not with the retainer. High-volume automations cost more; lighter stacks cost very little.