In 2024, for every coder who joined the $1M solopreneur club, about 40 non-coders got in!
New businesses entering the club get grouped into the revenue range of $1 million and $2.5 million, and that range grew about 8% in 2024. Two groups grew much faster. Money people (think: investing, insurance and real estate) grew about 20% while advisers and consultants grew about 11%!
Last time, I wrote about the 117,000 businesses that cleared $1 million on hard mode and had been doing it for decades. That number is now 126,000, netting the second-best growth year on record, right behind the post-COVID boom of 2021!
People treated the post-COVID era like a fluke, an outlier year that would never happen again. Well, we're not only back to similar levels seen during the time the world rebounded, but I think the growth of the $1M+ category will only increase significantly in the years to come!
Now let’s double-click into the coder segment. In 2024, there were actually 2.5% less solo coders in business than in 2023, while consultants grew by about 10% year over year!
I think we will continue to see growth across technical categories in the higher revenue bands as people leverage AI to take them to new heights, but as the technology has largely automated much of the lower-level work, you can see how the lower end has started to stall. And, I believe this same trend is what is contributing to the non-technical categories being able to pull ahead. Because they no longer need the same support and resources to build as they might've needed before.
And the trend is only speeding up. In 2024, America added 1.56 million businesses with no employees, the most in a single year since the Census started counting them in 1997! This year, applications to start a professional services business are up about 30% with 94% of them not planning to hire any employees.
Early adopters of AI are getting the advantage, and non-technical people are the ones moving up.
My moonshot bet: I truly believe there will be 10 times as many $1 million solopreneurs in 10 years. That would be more than 1 million businesses generating $1 million.
How am I so confident? Well one of the things I can’t get over is how the line behind them is getting longer and the time to get there is compressing. The $500,000 to $1 million range grew to 440,000 business in 2024 (up over 7% vs. 2.1% the year before).
AI isn't a coder's game anymore. If you think it isn't for you, read that 40 to 1 again: for every coder who got into the club, 40 people like you and me did.
It's still super early. So be honest: what's holding you back?