Building in Public
The Real Numbers
Real numbers from building solobuilder.ai. Updated weekly. Starting from zero.
Current Stats
Subscribers
0
Just launched
Starting from zero
Open Rate
N/A
No newsletters sent yet
First issue coming soon
Revenue
$0
Pre-revenue
No product yet
Articles Published
7
Blog Chef powered
Since April 2026
Site Launched
Apr 2026
Week 1
Built in one day
Growth Rate
N/A
Too early to measure
Ask me in 30 days
Last updated: April 2026 · Updated as things change
Progress Log
April 2026 — Week 1
✓ What Actually Happened
- Built solobuilder.ai in one day (Next.js 15, Vercel, Beehiiv integration)
- Built APEX Kitchen Architecture — 9 specialized content engines (Iron Chefs): Research, Blog, Newsletter, Author, Technical, Trend, Social, Academic, Due Diligence
- Integrated LightRAG knowledge graph: 19,824 entities, 27,985 relationships
- Published first Blog Chef article: "7 Reasons GitHub Repos Are Non-Negotiable for Solo Founders" ($0.23 cost, 3 minutes, 1,883 words)
- Built publishing pipeline: one-click publish/republish/unpublish from Command Center
- Built 10-question AI Assessment Quiz lead magnet
- Set up custom email (richard@solobuilder.ai) with SPF/DKIM/DMARC
- 74 automated tests passing
- 83 Notion documentation pages
✗ What Didn't Work
- Subagent-driven development cost $172 in one day (switching to inline execution)
- LightRAG migration took overnight due to one bad chunk in retry loop
- Blog Chef frontmatter didn't match site format (fixed: delimiter, date quotes, H1 stripping)
Key Decision
Build the engine first, then produce content. Not the other way around.
What's Next
- →Publish 2 more articles using Blog Chef
- →Send first newsletter using Newsletter Chef
- →Resume LightRAG migration for remaining chunks
- →Start weekly publishing cadence
Weekly updates go to the newsletter first.
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