Preparation and Outlook for the Era of Solo Entrepreneurship: A Narrative Review and Conceptual Framework for Artificial Intelligence Service–Centered Startups

The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) now enables individuals to develop and operate services that formerly required the resources of entire organizations, creating a distinct wave of solo entrepreneurship centered on AI services.This study defines AI-based solo entrepreneurship as venture creation in which one founder, without cofounders or employees, designs, builds, and operates a market offering by embedding AI tools as core productive capacity rather than peripheral aids.It analyzes how this transformation unfolds and identifies the capabilities and challenges founders must prepare for.Drawing on an integrative review of domestic and international literature and a structured, criteria-based analysis of documented AI-based solo-venture cases, the study distinguishes success determinants from the barriers founders commonly encounter.The analysis identifies three capabilities most associated with success-proficiency with AI tools, digital marketing capability, and a disposition toward continuous learning-and recurrent barriers of psychological resistance to technology, funding difficulty, weak marketing and sales capability, and isolation and burnout from working alone.Building on these findings, the study proposes an integrated analytical model that cross-examines success factors and barriers across four dimensions-capability, resources, market, and psychology-and derives a four-stage strategy (preparation, execution, growth, and scale-up) with policy tasks in education, institutions, and finance.Because the model is conceptually derived rather than empirically validated, it is advanced as a set of testable propositions rather than confirmed results.This study contributes by specifying concretely the preparations required of individuals, firms, and government and situating its integrated model against established entrepreneurship frameworks to assess its distinct contribution.