I shipped 61 AI products this year. 26 are MCP servers. 61 npm packages. 0 employees.
Here is the actual math.
The Pipeline
Idea to MCP server scaffold to npm publish to Smithery listing to Stripe payment link to ship. Each step automated via AI ops engineer. Time per product: ~90 seconds.
The Revenue Stack
Every MCP server ships with free tier (base server, always free) + Pro tier ($19/mo) + Unlimited ($99/mo). No ads. No data selling. Just: here is the tool, pay if you want more.
The Cost Side
Running 61 products costs $12-41/month total. DeepSeek API ~$2/mo. Stepfun plan $10-29/mo. Cloudflare free tier. GitHub free. npm free. Stripe 2.9% + 30p per transaction.
Break-even: one Pro subscriber at $19/mo.
The Multiplier
- 26 MCP servers monetized via Stripe subscriptions
- 16 Chrome extensions with one-time payments
- 19 free npm packages funneling users to paid servers
Each free npm package acts as discovery for a paid MCP server. @rumblingb/email-verify-mcp got 11 downloads first week, driving traffic to Stripe checkout.
Why This Works
- Platform leverage: npm, GitHub, Smithery, Cloudflare all free tiers
- AI as labor multiplier: one agent handles deploy, monitor, publish, revenue
- Zero marginal cost per server: ~$0.03 in LLM tokens to scaffold, pure margin after
The Next 100
At 90 seconds per product, 40 per hour. Bottleneck is discovery, not development.
1% conversion at $19/mo: 1000 users = $190 MRR. 100K users = $19K MRR. All by 2 founders, 1 AI agent.
Browse: smithery.ai/servers/vishar-rumbling
npm: npmjs.com/~rumblingb
Follow: @rumblingboya
Building in public at AgentPay Labs. 61 products. 26 MCP servers. 0 employees. The math works.