Due to the appearance of cloud computing and distributed digital infrastructure, the one-person micro-enterprise is way from a novel idea. Low-cost on-demand compute, distant collaboration, cost processing APIs, social media, and e-commerce marketplaces have all made it simpler to “go it alone” as an entrepreneur.
However what about scaling that one-person enterprise into one thing meatier — an enterprise of unicorn proportions?
Traditionally, this might have been an unfathomably robust activity, because of the abilities and assets required, not solely to scale a product but in addition to develop and keep a sufficiently bountiful buyer base. However AI brokers might unshackle the would-be solo-preneurs of the world.
AI brokers are all about embedding human workflows into software program, liberating the human to do extra in much less time. Brokers might be assigned duties, they usually could make choices with various levels of autonomy. A number of AI brokers might even collaborate on complementary duties, paving the best way for getting some actual work finished completely autonomously.
In an interview final 12 months with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, OpenAI’s Sam Altman predicted this precise state of affairs.
“In my little group chat with my tech CEO mates, there’s this betting pool for the primary 12 months that there’s a one-person billion-dollar firm,” Altman mentioned. “Which might have been unimaginable with out AI — and now [it] will occur.”
In a dialogue on the World Financial Discussion board’s annual assembly in Davos final week, a panel of entrepreneurs and buyers additionally mentioned the prospect of the single-person billion-dollar enterprise — and, extra importantly, what this would possibly imply for the way forward for employment.
In people we belief
Latest historical past reveals a slew of svelte billion-dollar corporations. Microsoft doled out $2.5 billion for Minecraft maker Mojang, which had a reported 40 workers. Fb acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion when the messaging app maker had simply 55 workers. Two years earlier than that, Fb purchased Instagram for $1 billion with simply 13 workers in its ranks.
This proves that web know-how has already generated big corporations with minimal headcount. However this isn’t the identical as a one-person unicorn.
Kanjun Qiu, CEO of AI analysis lab Imbue, which is constructing brokers able to reasoning and coding, reckons that the sort of one-person companies that AI will most probably assist hit the large time are these the place the product is essentially self-serve.
“I believe the locations the place it’ll be best, and first, are ‘bottoms up’ — both client or prosumer — merchandise that don’t require massive go-to-market groups,” Qiu defined through the panel dialogue. “I believe go to market is definitely one of many locations the place it’s going to be troublesome to automate all of those relationships with different individuals.”
With regards to producing gross sales, it’s not all the time the higher product that wins out; it’s the individuals behind the product which have finished a greater job of constructing belief with prospects. So if that you must proactively promote your product, you continue to would possibly have to employees up.
“That human-to-human belief, I believe, continues to be very needed and crucial,” Qiu added.
Benjamine Liu, CEO of AI drug growth firm Formation Bio, is bullish on the rising position that AI is having in his firm and past.
“I believe we’re dwelling in some of the thrilling areas to be constructing corporations,” Liu mentioned at Davos. “We now have PhD-level intelligence in our pockets, and we’re starting to see AI programs do the work of whole groups. I believe in that world, AI-native corporations have a reasonably important benefit.”
Nonetheless, Liu echoed Qiu’s sentiments: Although the potential for one-person mega-businesses is actual, it may not truly make sense from a enterprise or entrepreneurial perspective — and all of it comes all the way down to the human situation that values relationships.
“The potential to get there’s sooner than individuals assume,” Liu mentioned. “My view is that it’s gonna take a very long time, as a result of being an entrepreneur is sort of a lonely journey, and also you desire a co-founder. Corporations are nonetheless began by people. I believe you will have some individuals to share the journey with.”
So the truth is, we would truly find yourself in a spot the place corporations have all the time began out: a founding group with complementary talent units. However somewhat than scaling by incremental hiring, they keep that preliminary slenderness with AI brokers plugging the hole.
However even when the fabled one-person unicorn by no means occurs, there’s little query that the oncoming agentic AI freight prepare will disrupt the workforce in an enormous means.
“The period of AI workers”
If this nonetheless all appears hypothetical, assume once more. Agentic AI is already coming into the workforce within the type of attorneys like Harvey or software program engineers reminiscent of Cognition’s Devin.
AI gross sales brokers are additionally booming, with VC-backed corporations reminiscent of Artisan boasting that it desires to interchange the human workforce — as its dystopian billboard advert in San Francisco demonstrates.
Loads of different corporations are additionally laying the muse for agentic AI to flourish.
Lattice, an HR and “individuals administration” platform final valued at $3 billion, goes additional by giving “digital staff” official worker information, that means that its prospects’ AI brokers truly present up within the organizational chart, replete with profile photograph and a supervisor assigned to them.
Sarah Franklin, who joined Lattice as CEO final 12 months, referred to as this transition a “nice new age of collaboration,” the place people and AI brokers work facet by facet. And what this implies is managing these brokers in a similar way to people, to foster transparency and accountability.
“We wish to prioritize the success of individuals as the first, and once you’re working with AI brokers, it’s vital to know what they’re assigned to be doing,” Franklin defined at Davos. “It’s not saying that AI is human; it’s extra that we have to clearly determine the place AI is. As AI speaks on behalf of manufacturers and other people, makes choices on behalf of manufacturers and other people, and integrates with different programs, we’d like to have the ability to monitor that.”
But when corporations can function at scale with none important human workforce, what does this imply for society? Individuals have to earn cash; they want objective — wouldn’t society simply implode on itself if individuals aren’t capable of work?
As with earlier industrial revolutions, a standard chorus across the AI revolution is that new jobs will crop up in the long term — we simply don’t know what they’re but.
“There’s going to be loads of job creation, too,” Mitchell Inexperienced, founding father of funding agency Lead Edge Capital, mentioned at Davos. “If you consider when the iPhone got here out in 2007 — Uber and Airbnb at the moment are $100 billion corporations. [They] couldn’t have existed earlier than this. The place the alternatives might be are the businesses that we’re not even fascinated about but — they will be these subsequent large companies.”
That doesn’t imply there received’t be an entire heap of ache within the quick time period, although. And as we’re already seeing with Chinese language AI sensation DeepSeek, the speed of AI’s advance is critical when it comes to cost-to-performance ratio of AI fashions. And this might be a key differentiator versus earlier industrial and technological revolutions: We’d not have the ability to adapt rapidly sufficient.
“I do assume there’s loads to speak about when it comes to retraining and upskilling,” Liu mentioned. “However there’s one thing fairly distinctive concerning the tempo of developments and the way rapidly these fashions are getting higher, particularly the place we’re seeing these AI programs do the work of whole groups.”
“Supervisor of AIs”
There was a normal consensus among the many panel that whatever the charge of change, everybody should be taught not solely to stay with AI, but in addition learn to use it to thrive within the office.
With You.com, for instance, corporations can entry its API to convey real-time internet search to any massive language mannequin (LLM). Whereas it provides its personal suite of brokers for particular duties, corporations may create their very own customized brokers, selecting their most well-liked AI mannequin and giving it directions based mostly on no matter sources of knowledge they should join.
“We, as CEOs, are going to be the primary technology that manages individuals and AI,” You.com CEO Richard Socher mentioned at Davos. “However I believe essentially the most attention-grabbing change right here is definitely that each particular person contributor, each worker, goes to develop into a supervisor of AIs. And in that sense, everybody goes to develop into sort of an entrepreneur.”
So the jury continues to be very a lot out on whether or not we’ll ever see a real one-person unicorn firm. Nonetheless, the precept behind the sentiment has already sort of been confirmed, as we’ve seen with the insanely excessive value-to-headcount ratio of WhatsApp, which labored out at $345 million for every worker on the time Fb purchased it.
Even Nvidia, with a market cap of greater than $3 trillion, has a comparatively slender workforce of fewer than 30,000 workers — that’s the equal of round $100 million in worth per worker.
With the correct kind of firm, and the correct execution, it’s troublesome to see how AI received’t nudge these greenback figures north because the headcount heads south. However in all probability, it’s going to simply come down as to whether there’s a need for one particular person to construct alone, with sufficient entrepreneurial data to embed a robust, defensible enterprise mannequin that another person can’t simply replicate on the drop of a hat.
However whether or not society will probably be able to deal with that is a wholly completely different query.
