/01
One voice. Built in public.
One solo founder, $200/mo budget cap, every metric public. No ghost-writers, no agency, no team. Receipts in the dashboard above.
Read the manifesto → FOR SOLO FOUNDERS · BUILT IN PUBLIC
From $0
to $500K
with AI.
The playbook, the stack, and the skills bank for solopreneurs scaling to $500K ARR with Claude, ChatGPT, and AI agents — real numbers, no fluff.
Free newsletter · join the build 1-click unsubscribe EN only No fluff
LIVE DASHBOARD · UPDATED DAILY
Building in public.
Numbers, not promises.
$0 → $500K ARR · publicly tracked KPIs
LIVE
Journey to $500K ARR
$9.5K / $41.7K MRR
MRR
$9.5K
1 client · Meta Ads management
Articles indexed
101
live count
Newsletter subs
early-access
join the build
LLM citations / wk
tracking
wired soon
WHY 500K.IO
The opposite of an AI content farm.
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The Skills Bank.
200+ Claude / Code / MCP skills, scraped weekly from GitHub, Anthropic and the community. Searchable, ranked, free.
Browse skills →/03
The $500K AI Stack.
The 13 tools I actually pay for, ranked by ROI per dollar. Total: ~$565/mo to run a content factory of 1-5 articles a day, ramping.
See the stack →
THE $500K AI STACK
13 tools. ~$565/mo total.
Run a content factory.
CC
$100/mo
Claude Code
content
Cl
Included in
Claude.ai
content
GA
$20/mo
Gemini Advanced
content
Be
$39/mo
Beehiiv
content
Su
free
Supabase
ops
Cl
free
Cloudflare
ops
Re
free
Resend
ops
Wa
$10/mo
WaveSpeed
ops
Na
$1.25/mo
Namecheap
ops
Lo
$15/mo
Loom
productivity
Stack total: ~$565/mo · powers daily publishing on a $200 budget cap
See all 13 tools DISPATCHES · DAILY
The blog. No fluff.
1-5 articles a day, ramping.
All articles 
AI MARKETING
Lead Gen With AI by Vertical (Bathroom, MVA, Mutuelle)
I run lead gen across 3 verticals at The Kreators AI — US bathroom remodeling, US auto injury, and French mutuelle senior. AI changes the playbook by vertical. Here's how, with real CPLs.
AI MARKETING
Marketing Automation With AI in 2026 (Real Stack)
The honest marketing automation stack I run on 500k.io and The Kreators AI. 9 tools, $300-500/mo, and the 5 workflows that produce 80% of the leverage.
AI MONEY
Premium Newsletter Tier Pricing: The Real Math
Most newsletter founders price the premium tier wrong. Here's the math from running The 500K Brief and the 4 questions that determine whether $9 or $29 is right for you.
THE DISPATCH · DAILY · EARLY ACCESS
Get tomorrow's playbook in your inbox.
One email a day. The exact tactic, tool or skill I'm using to grow 500k.io. Plus the Solo Founder's Playbook PDF (41 pages) within 60 seconds of signing up.
~/subscribe.sh
The 41-page Playbook PDF · instant
1-click unsubscribe · always
No tracking · no upsells · no spam
ROADMAP
Public milestones. All of them.
- DAY 0 · MAY 2026
Site live, day 0 of 365.
Astro + Cloudflare. 5-cluster architecture. Schema.org graph wired. SEO 96/100 baseline.
shipped - DAY 1-30 · NOW
50 articles, the Stack v1, the PDF.
1-5 articles a day, ramping. The 47-tool Stack page. The $500K AI Stack PDF as the first lead magnet.
building - DAY 30-90
Newsletter at 1K subs. First $1 of MRR.
Beehiiv migration locked. Stack-builder quiz live. First paid product — TBD between course, prompt pack, or membership.
next - DAY 90-365
$500K ARR run-rate.
Compound the Stack + Skills Bank into a single-operator content engine. Every milestone published the day it lands.
future
FAQ
The honest questions.
What is 500k.io?
A 12-month public experiment to take this site from $0 to $500K ARR using AI as the only employee. The site is the playbook (daily articles), the stack (13 ranked tools), and the skills bank (200+ Claude / Code / MCP skills). One solo founder, $200/mo budget cap, every metric public. Built with Claude Code on Astro and Cloudflare. No team, no funding.
Who is behind 500k.io?
Maxime Le Morillon — 10 years founder, 4 deep in AI, 2 prior exits. Co-founder of The Kreators AI ($45M Meta Ads agency, $10M personal spend). Founded Synapse Circle (community for AI builders) and built The Kreators AI Hub in Lisbon. Active on X (@theKreators_ai) for the agency brand. Additional reach across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Telegram (handles in transition). 500k.io is the playbook he wishes he had when he started.
Is the newsletter really one email a day?
Yes. One short, tactical email per day with the playbook, tool, or skill being used to grow 500k.io. Subscribers get the $500K AI Stack PDF (30 pages) within 60 seconds of joining. 1-click unsubscribe in every email, no tracking pixels, no upsell ladders. The cadence ramps from 1 to 5 articles a day over the first quarter — never the other way around.
How is 500k.io different from an AI content farm?
AI content farms publish hundreds of thin articles a week with no author, no opinion, no receipts. 500k.io publishes 1-5 articles a day, every one signed by Maxime, with a real number behind every claim, on a $200/mo budget cap. The Stack page lists tools by ROI per dollar (not by affiliate kickback). The dashboard publishes MRR, costs, subscriber count — even when the numbers are zero.
What is The $500K AI Stack?
The 13 tools Maxime actually pays for to run 500k.io, ranked by ROI per dollar. Total stack runs around $565/mo (over the $200 personal soft cap — decision pending whether to lift the cap or trim). Includes Claude Code, Beehiiv, Supabase, Skool, AdsPy, Loom, Google Workspace, plus the infra (Cloudflare, Resend, Namecheap, WaveSpeed). Affiliate disclosure on every tool that pays a commission. Updated when tiers change.
Do you accept guest posts or sponsorships?
No guest posts. Every article is written by Maxime, often with Claude Code as a research and drafting partner — never ghost-written. Sponsorships open at the dispatch level once the newsletter crosses 1K subscribers (target: day 30-90). Until then, the site is funded entirely by The Kreators AI agency. Affiliate links are disclosed inline on every recommended tool.