Six reasons to become a solopreneur, and one reason to be careful
Key takeaways
World Bank and ILO data shows that working for yourself is already the majority condition on this planet. If you have been treating solo work as the risky exception, the numbers say you have it the wrong way round.
Stripe's research found the number of one-person businesses crossing a revenue level most people assume is out of reach more than doubled in two years. Solo stopped meaning small, and it happened faster than almost anyone noticed.
You do not need to be the best in the world at what you do. There is a much smaller and far more reachable standard that decides whether a solo business works, and you can measure yourself against it this week.
"It's a terrible time to start something on your own." Someone says it at a family lunch, or in a comment under a post, and everyone nods, because the evidence for it feels obvious. Layoffs. AI. Costs. Why would you walk into that on purpose?
I went looking for the evidence rather than the encouragement. What I found does not support the nodding.
1. You are not the exception. You are the majority.
Start here, because it reframes everything that follows.
According to World Bank and ILO modelled estimates, 46% of the world's workers are already self-employed. In Sub-Saharan Africa it is 78%. In South Asia, 73%.
Working for yourself is not a fringe choice that a few brave people make. For most of the people on this planet, it is simply how life works, and it always has been. The idea that a salaried job is the normal, safe, default way to earn is a minority experience, common in a handful of countries and much rarer everywhere else.
If you grew up inside that minority experience, going solo feels like stepping off a path. It is not. It is stepping onto the path that most of the world is already walking, and the rewards are increasing year on year.
You are joining the majority, not leaving it.
2. The tools finally match the ambition
This is the part that has changed fastest, and it is the one I find most exciting.
74% of independent workers now use AI tools, and 61% say it saves them time and increases their output (MBO Partners, State of Independence 2025).
Think about what that actually means for one person with a good idea. The work that used to sit between you and a finished thing, the admin, the first drafts, the research, the formatting, the things that made you think "I would need to hire someone for that", has collapsed. Not disappeared, but collapsed.
The gap between what you can imagine and what you can produce on your own is the narrowest it has ever been in working history. For anyone who has been carrying an idea around for years because it seemed too big to do alone, that is not a small change. That is the change.
3. The work is coming to you, wherever you are
The reason that actually gives me the most hope is that the opportunities for solopreneurs are increasing rapidly, especially in the Global South.
The World Bank's Working Without Borders research found that job postings on the largest online talent platform grew 130% in Sub-Saharan Africa, against 14% in North America. There are now 545 platforms connecting clients and independent contractors across 186 countries, and 40% of the traffic comes from low and middle income countries. Nearly 60% of firms surveyed in poorer countries said they were increasing how much work they send to independent people.
For most of history, where you were born set a ceiling on who could hire you. That ceiling has been quietly lifting for a decade, and the fastest growth is not in the places that already had every advantage. It is in the places that did not.
If you are reading this from Lagos, Nairobi, Karachi, Manila or Cape Town, the demand curve is bending towards you, not away from you.
4. Solo no longer means small
Stripe's research on solopreneurs found that more than twice as many earned over $1 million in 2025 as in 2023, with close to three times as many crossing $5 million and $10 million.
I want to be careful here, because that is not a promise and I am not going to pretend it is a typical outcome. Most solo businesses will not reach a million dollars, and they do not need to in order to change someone's life.
But the ceiling has moved, and that matters for how you plan. You no longer have to assume that staying solo means staying small, or that ambition requires an office, a payroll and a funding round. One person with a clear offer and the right tools can now build something with real weight to it.
Plan for the business you actually want, not the one the old constraints allowed.
5. You can grow without becoming an employer
This is the practical unlock that most people miss.
43.5% of solopreneurs already work with at least one contractor, with $72.3 billion flowing to those contractors in a single year (Gusto, 2026).
Staying solo is a decision about employment, not a limit on what you can deliver. You can take the bigger project. You can say yes to the client who needs more than your hands can produce. You bring in help for the part that is repeatable, keep the relationship and the thinking yours, and you never have to sweat about monthly payrolls unless you want to.
For a lot of people, that is the whole appeal of this life: the size of the work without the weight of running a company.
6. And you no longer have to work it out alone
The thing that used to stop capable people was never talent. It was the missing scaffolding. Knowing what to do next. Knowing whether your price is wrong. Having someone to keep you honest at the point where motivation runs out, which it always does, usually around week six.
That used to require a mentor you were lucky enough to find, a coach you probably could not afford, or a business degree you did not have time or money for. It does not any more.
The standard that actually matters
One last thing, because I promised you something you can act on.
You do not have to be the best in the world at what you do. That standard is paralysing and it is also the wrong one.
The standard that decides whether a solo business works is much smaller: be the best available option to a specific group of people who can find you and can pay you.
Best available, not best in existence. Specific group, not everyone. Can find you, which is a marketing question rather than a talent question. Can pay you, which is the part most people skip and then wonder why it is hard.
Run yourself against those four words this week. Most people discover they already meet three of them, and that the missing one is fixable in a month.
That is usually the moment the whole thing stops feeling impossible.
So, back yourself
The conditions are better than they have ever been. I don't mean that as a motivational line. It is what the data says, and I did not expect to find it stated quite so plainly when I went looking.
The reasons to become a solopreneur are strong. The work is crossing borders to find you. The ceiling has lifted. The help exists. And half the world is already living proof that this way of earning works.
What is left is the part nobody can do for you: starting, and then staying.
That second part is exactly why we built soloSei. A step-by-step engine for the work that comes after the excitement, with a coach that keeps you moving when the excitement fades.
You can start free at app.solosei.com.
The odds are on your side. Go and use them.
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