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Published on September 23, 2026
"What if we could find the next billion-dollar company?" That was the thought behind Zoom's first-of-its-kind Solopreneur 50 national recognition and grant program, when we set out to celebrate 50 exceptional solo founders building businesses entirely on their own terms.
But somewhere between the thousands of applications and the final 50, the mission shifted. Because what we found wasn't a future unicorn. It was something better: 50 people building companies around what mattered most to them: passions they refused to put on hold, missions they wanted to advance, families they wanted to spend more time with, communities they wanted to serve, and the impact they wanted to make.
As Zoom CMO Kimberly Storin puts it: "We were looking out across the industry and saw an opportunity to focus on the solo founder, and even help enable the next billion-dollar solopreneur. What we found was something so much more incredible. These people and their business are deeply personal, and their stories deserved more than a press release."
To bring these stories to life, we brought in a documentary filmmaking team, Moonshiner Media, stepped out of the way, and let them make something real: the unfiltered truth of what it takes to build something alone. The result is a 10-part docuseries — part intimate portrait, part playbook for today's solopreneur.
Watch the trailer for a sneak peek into the solopreneur stories featured in the docuseries. You'll see snippets of the real stories of solo founders who said yes to their ideas despite uncertainty and limited resources, and how Zoom is providing a framework of support to help them on their solo journeys.
Start Watching Chapter 1: The Movement
The Solopreneur 50 is designed to provide more than a one-time honor.
A jury of leaders from business and academia reviewed thousands of applications and selected 50 honorees, not based on company size alone, but on originality, performance, impact, authenticity, and influence. Five honorees also received $30,000 grants to fuel the next stage of their businesses.
But recognition was only the beginning. The program also created an ongoing community. Through monthly roundtables, honorees exchange practical advice, challenge one another's thinking, and learn from peers navigating similar decisions. They also receive access to Zoom products and support, resources designed for the realities of building without a traditional team.
Finally, Zoom gave honorees a broader platform for their work and perspectives. Through the docuseries, customer stories, and other storytelling opportunities, their businesses can reach new audiences.
Get notified when applications open for Solopreneur 50 2027.
We are entering a new era of entrepreneurship. According to MBO Partners, 72.9 million Americans worked independently in 2025.
For years, the dominant entrepreneurship story centered on venture capital, hypergrowth, large teams, and overnight success. But technology has changed what one person can build. AI and digital tools now give solopreneurs leverage that was once available only to well-funded companies.
One person can reach a global audience, translate content, manage customer relationships, automate routine work, and grow a business by amplifying what they're already great at — without the traditional overhead of building a large team from scratch.
Zoom is built for the way solopreneurs work. Our AI-first system of action helps connect conversation to completion, helping capture the context of a meeting, identify decisions and next steps, create follow-ups, and can help complete work.
In practice, this means solo founders can spend less time retracing conversations and organizing next steps, and more time focused on what they do best and enjoy the most.
When it came time to turn the Solopreneur 50 into a docuseries, the goal wasn't to create a polished brand narrative. We wanted to make space for the people behind the businesses to tell their own stories—their motivations, sacrifices, doubts, routines, and reasons for building on their own terms.
Zoom made a deliberate choice: instead of working with a brand agency or corporate production house, we hired Moonshiner Media and the documentary production team behind FX's Welcome to Wrexham, Netflix's Chef's Table and The Playbook, and Apple TV+'s Dear... – filmmakers known for powerful storytelling. We didn't give them a brief or prewritten brand narrative. We asked them to just follow their filmmaking philosophy: get close, stay quiet, let the subject lead. No scripts. No lengthy pre-interviews. Just cameras in real kitchens, real workshops, and real home offices, rolling while real life happened.
As Kimberly Storin shares: "Rather than centering the docuseries around Zoom products, we made the solopreneur community the cast and ripped up the script. What emerged was proof of a movement that went beyond a recognition program."
What really set this production team apart wasn't their credits — it was that they'd lived the story themselves. Both the director and executive producer are solopreneurs. They've made the same bets, felt the same uncertainty, and understood the weight of building something alone. That's the difference between a production crew documenting a subject and filmmakers who genuinely recognize themselves in it.
As director Adam Goldberg put it: "When I go into a project already feeling a sense of connection to the people I'm filming, I feel many steps ahead from the very beginning. I understand what it's like to be a freelancer, a business owner, a solopreneur."
Executive producer John Henion adds: "I watched the submission videos from all 50 applicants, and I identified with their journeys — the decisions they've struggled with, the leaps they've taken. Because I could relate, I felt like I had something real to contribute."
Across 10 episodes, the series moves between close-up profiles of the five grant recipients and roundtable conversations among some of the 50 honorees. All of the founders talk openly about their businesses, finances, emotions, lifestyles, and the decisions that led to their first leap.
The result is not a formula for success. It is a look at what happens when one person is responsible for the vision, the operations, the customer relationships, and the next decision.
Here are three of the founders you will meet:
Zero clients. No safety net. A mission she couldn't walk away from.
Dana spent years in the corporate sports world, working with Madison Square Garden, the PGA Tour, NASCAR, and Fox Sports. She loved it. But she kept feeling pulled toward the nonprofit space and the impact she could make there.
In 2017, she told her boss she was leaving to start her own business. Her boss asked what clients she had. The answer was none. She left anyway.
Today, Positive Equation has helped nonprofits raise millions through monthly giving, and Dana's annual summit draws 5,000 attendees from 60 countries. She had never accepted outside funding — until the Solopreneur 50 grant changed that.
"It would have been easy to stop at any given point, but I love what I do, and the impact of what I've been able to do, and just the relationships that I've been able to build."
A musician, a mother's words, and a platform he built from scratch.
Music was Michael's first career, a life of stretching dollars, chasing gigs, and learning to treat rejection as practice for perseverance.
During the pandemic, he tried to learn his family's native language, Igbo, through YouTube. It didn't work. His mother told him, "If you cannot find the solution, you should create it."
That advice became NKENNE, a language-learning and AI-translation platform for African languages. Michael funded the company with his music income until the business could support itself. The name means "of the mother" in Igbo, which also happens to be his mother's middle name.
"Launching a tech company was completely foreign to me, but I was passionate about it. I saw the need, and so I decided to take the leap."
No plan. No credit. Just her hands and a reason to keep going.
Angela did not start with a business plan or a line of credit. She started with her hands.
Growing up without easy access to resources, she learned to create her own tools and techniques. For years, she made cakes for free, not because the work had no value, but because she was building the craft, the community, and her confidence around it all.
What began as a hobby in her studio became a product design and manufacturing business, Cakes by Angela Morrison. Her decorating tools now reach customers around the world, and her mission has grown beyond the products themselves: she wants other women to see her story and believe they can follow their passions too.
"I was able to build something from nothing, from absolutely nothing."
You will also meet Cierra Gross of Worklution and Derek McCracken of The Owl's Nest, whose businesses show more ways founders can scale expertise and impact without a traditional team.
Watch the Solopreneuer 50 Docuseries on YouTube
We asked the filmmakers what they hope solopreneurs take away from the series. Their answer wasn't a specific formula. It was the permission to keep learning, to treat a wrong turn as information rather than a verdict, and to trust that the willingness to adapt is more valuable than a perfect plan.
As executive producer John Henion puts it: "You have to be comfortable with being wrong sometimes, and then pivot. That's the real message of this series."
Director Adam Goldberg echoes this: "You learn more from losing than from winning. And if you give up, that's the only way you certainly will never win."
The series isn't promising that every leap will work. It shows what happens when people keep adapting, stay close to the people they serve, and continue building around what matters to them.
The Solopreneur 50 captures a moment in time, but these stories are still unfolding. Not a highlight reel of wins, but an honest look at what it takes to keep going when nobody else is clocking in beside you. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube, so be sure to subscribe to be notified when each new episode is live.
If you watch one and think, "That sounds like me," — it probably is. And if it makes you want to be part of what comes next, applications for the 2027 Solopreneur 50 are opening soon.
