After nearly a decade away, Amr El Fangary has revived WonderBooks, a digital reading platform that now offers more than 2,000 illustrated books across 12 libraries and a dozen languages. The solo founder says advances in artificial intelligence have made it possible to build what would previously have required a large studio, years of work and millions of dollars.
In this edition of TechMoran’s CEO Weekends, El Fangary explains why the original app struggled to scale, how he rebuilt the platform using AI, its international readership and his ambition to make reading accessible while building a sustainable membership business.
What made you revive WonderBooks after 10 years?
The idea never changed. What changed is that it finally became buildable. Everything that made WonderBooks impossible in 2016 was a cost-and-time problem, not an idea problem. Work that would have taken a year and a full studio now takes days. If I had tried to build what exists today back then, I could not have reached even a thousandth of it, not slowly or expensively, but simply not at all.
Why did the original app fail to scale despite strong ratings and downloads?
It was never short of validation. It had a rating above 4.5 across 976 ratings, more than 100,000 downloads and reviews in 11 languages over nine years. What it had was 18 stories.
Turning that into a real library meant thousands of illustrated pages and every word narrated in a dozen languages. That required illustrators, voice actors, translators and editors, potentially a studio of around 40 people, years of payroll and millions of dollars. The app itself also needed a much better experience because readers will not stay for content alone if the product is difficult to use. Demand was proven, but there was no viable route to execution.
What changed in 2026 that made the idea possible?
The turning point was understanding that AI could build an entire project, not just help me write code. It could support the development of the app and website, the database, hosting, infrastructure, marketing and analytics. Each of those used to require a different specialist, which is precisely why it used to require a company. Now one person can work across all of it.
How did you build more than 2,000 stories as a solo founder?
They did not appear overnight, and the volume is not the interesting part. Most of the work went into building the foundations: effectively, a studio with rules for direction, camera angles, character placement, reactions and what is allowed or never allowed. Those choices must match the material because a documentary subject is not framed like an action scene, and neither is framed like a family story. Even the narration voice must suit the content and its audience.
Once that structure was in place, including how stories are written, what they are meant to achieve and how to keep them enjoyable, the catalogue followed. We are still refining it every day.
What role has AI played in building the product?
AI is the execution layer. The vision, editorial standards, direction, design decisions and judgments about what makes a good page or what we refuse to publish are mine. That is where the time goes.
AI has removed much of the gap between deciding something should exist and being able to make it. The result is what I would rather be judged on: 12 libraries, more than 2,000 illustrated books, every page painted and every story narrated across a dozen languages.
Who are your main users today, and where are they based?
We already have readers in roughly 150 countries, even though we have not officially launched. Our strongest readership is across Africa and South Asia, with a steady and growing audience in Europe and the United States. Almost all usage has been on Android so far because that is where we are fully live.
All 12 libraries are available on Google Play. On Apple’s App Store, four have been approved and released, while the remaining eight are still under review. The full launch will follow once those approvals come through.
How does WonderBooks make money?
The principle is that nobody should be stopped from reading. Reading will be free up to a daily limit, while a membership removes that limit. One membership covers all 12 libraries rather than charging readers separately for each one.
Readers who join at launch will receive a founding-member price that will not be offered again. We will continue adding features and value to the membership rather than treating it as a finished product.
Can a solo founder really build a billion-dollar company today?
Yes, and I would expect it to come from outside software. Someone is sitting in a room right now building something remarkable, and they may be a doctor, chemist, mechanic or engineer rather than a developer. A few years ago, that person had no clear route to execution because explaining an idea to the people capable of building it was an enormous challenge. That gap has essentially closed.
Creativity was never the thing in short supply. The ability to execute it was.
My personal opinion, and plenty will disagree, is that working alone is now often faster and more efficient for building something than working with a team. If you know exactly how something should start and end, every additional person can become another translation layer between the idea and the result. Selling, meeting people and doing business in the world still require others. Building does not necessarily have to.
AI is a little like Aladdin’s lamp. You can ask for something you were certain could not be done, and it can be done.
