Not impossible, but the asymmetry is brutal. You can ship anything in weeks, and nobody will find it. The thing nobody tells you up front: "build it and they will come" was true in 2005 and hasn't been true since 2015. Distribution is the whole game. Every product idea should be evaluated partly on "can I distribute this without buying ads," because most solo devs can't sustain paid acquisition and paid acquisition with a weak funnel just burns cash anyway.

This is so relevant for me at the moment.

Built a product about 12 months ago, pivoted slightly about 6 months ago.

Had some decent traffic but it has been a serious grind.

I'm doing a few more tweaks to the product then I am going to leave it running in the background for a while.

I need to build something that solved a real genuine problem