Bootstrapped solo, no funding, 2 years in building an “AI Operating System” instead of another app

What Zyaku actually is now

I didn’t set out to build an “AI Operating System.” I set out to build a fairer creator platform - 80% revenue share, zero follower minimum to earn, real ownership over what you create. But somewhere along the way, the problem got bigger than “creator economy.” We ended up building out identity, commerce, publishing, AI tooling, and resilient infrastructure - all connected, not bolted together.

One thing I’m genuinely proud of: we just shipped Disaster Alert - an offline-first emergency communication system. It works even when the internet doesn’t. Local broadcast queuing, biometric auth, cached safety info - built so people can still reach each other when networks fail. It’s part of a broader “Wellbeing as Infrastructure” idea I’ve been pushing internally - that platforms should protect people, not just engage them.

The honest bootstrapped-founder stuff

• No funding means every infra decision is a real tradeoff - we migrated off Replit/Neon to Railway + Cloudflare partly for cost, partly for control

• Building solo (then with 2 people) across 10 product domains sounds insane in hindsight, and some days it still does

• ~2,400 registered users so far, live creator payouts running, and real coverage from international outlets including AP News - earned the hard way, not bought

Why I’m posting this here

I’ve mostly been heads-down building. I want more honest feedback from people who’ve actually shipped things solo/bootstrapped - what worked when you tried to do “too much” at once, and how you knew when to cut scope vs push through.

Happy to answer anything about the stack (React Native/Expo, Node/Express, Postgres/Redis on Railway), the offline-first architecture, or just the mess of building solo without funding.

zyaku.com if you want to poke around.