Jess Ramos is a data analytics educator, LinkedIn Top Voice, and founder of Big Data Energy - a media and education brand with 500,000+ followers across platforms. With an MSBA from the University of Georgia, she turned a corporate analytics career (peaking at $153K at Crunchbase) into a thriving solo business after being laid off in 2023. She runs a Substack newsletter with 45,000+ subscribers, teaches SQL to 50,000+ students via LinkedIn Learning, and has brand partnerships with IBM, AWS, Snowflake, NFL, and Claude (Anthropic). Her origin story - doubling her salary 110% in 11 months - became a viral moment that built her community of data professionals seeking real, human-centric career guidance.
Leah Tharin is a Swiss product management veteran, solopreneur, and one of the most influential voices on Product-led Growth (PLG) in B2B SaaS. With 25+ years of operator experience — scaling Smallpdf to 50M monthly active users and GotPhoto to 20M+ ARR — she left full-time employment in November 2023 to build an independent advisory and content business. Her newsletter 'Leah's ProducTea' on Substack, her podcast, and her 58,000+ LinkedIn followers have made her a go-to resource for product and growth leaders navigating the shift from sales-led to product-led business models.
Louie Bacaj is an Albanian-American software engineer turned entrepreneur who climbed from immigrant poverty in the Bronx to Senior Director of Engineering at Walmart, then walked away from it all in 2021 to build a portfolio of small bets. He co-founded the Small Bets learning community with Daniel Vassallo, runs the M&Ms Newsletter on Substack with 9,000+ subscribers, and teaches engineers how to level up their careers and build income outside the 9-to-5. His philosophy: make money with bits, diversify into atoms.
Luca Rossi is an Italian software engineer, entrepreneur, and writer based in Rome who turned a side project into one of the world's most-read engineering leadership newsletters. After co-founding and scaling travel startup Wanderio to 25M+ customers over eight years, he launched Refactoring in 2020 - a newsletter covering engineering management, software teams, and tech leadership. It now reaches 172,000+ subscribers, ranks in the top 10 Substack business newsletters, and generates approximately $300K/year in revenue, all operated solo. He also hosts the Refactoring Podcast, featuring guests like DHH, Kent Beck, and Camille Fournier, and in 2025 released Tolaria, a free open-source macOS knowledge base app built entirely with AI coding tools.
Sabrina Ramonov is a Filipina-American AI educator, serial founder, and creator on a mission to teach 10 million people AI for free. A UC Berkeley CS and Physics graduate and Forbes 30 Under 30 alumna (2018), she co-founded and sold Qurious.io (AI speech analytics) to Pegasystems for $10M+ in 2021, then rebuilt from burnout to grow 2M+ followers and 500M+ views in roughly one year — solo, with zero budget, no team, and no paid ads. She runs the Sabrina Ramonov newsletter on Substack (194K+ free subscribers), creates ~250 pieces of content per week, and solo-built Blotato.com, a social media automation SaaS with 1.4M+ website visitors. In March 2026, she launched Women Build AI, a selective free community for women founders building with AI.
Dan Koe is an American solopreneur, writer, and digital philosopher who went from sharing a rundown apartment with 7 roommates in 2018 to building a $2.6M+ per-year one-person business by 2023. Known for 'The Koe Letter' newsletter, his 2-Hour Writer course, and his book 'The Art of Focus', he has amassed nearly 4 million followers across platforms. He champions the idea that a single person, equipped with writing skills and a personal brand, can build a high-margin business working just 2-4 hours a day - and he lives the proof. He is also co-founder of Eden, a knowledge management app for creators.