Because of 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 is able to have been an unfathomably robust activity, as a result of abilities and assets required, not solely to scale a product but additionally to develop and keep a sufficiently bountiful buyer base. However AI brokers may 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 could be assigned duties, and so they could make choices with various levels of autonomy. A number of AI brokers may even collaborate on complementary duties, paving the best way for getting some actual work performed solely 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 pals, 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 traders 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
Current historical past reveals a slew of svelte billion-dollar firms. 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 expertise has already generated large firms 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 type of one-person companies that AI will most certainly assist hit the massive time are these the place the product is basically self-serve.
“I feel 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 feel go to market is definitely one of many locations the place it’s going to be tough to automate all of those relationships with different folks.”
With regards to producing gross sales, it’s not at all times the higher product that wins out; it’s the folks behind the product which have performed a greater job of constructing belief with clients. So if it’s worthwhile to proactively promote your product, you continue to would possibly must employees up.
“That human-to-human belief, I feel, remains to be very mandatory and essential,” 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 feel we’re dwelling in one of the crucial thrilling areas to be constructing firms,” Liu mentioned at Davos. “We’ve got PhD-level intelligence in our pockets, and we’re starting to see AI programs do the work of total groups. I feel in that world, AI-native firms have a fairly important benefit.”
Nevertheless, 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 right down to the human situation that values relationships.
“The potential to get there’s sooner than folks suppose,” Liu mentioned. “My view is that it’s gonna take a very long time, as a result of being an entrepreneur is type of a lonely journey, and also you need a co-founder. Corporations are nonetheless began by people. I feel you want some folks to share the journey with.”
So the fact is, we’d truly find yourself in a spot the place firms have at all times began out: a founding crew with complementary talent units. However relatively than scaling via 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 practice will disrupt the workforce in a giant means.
“The period of AI workers”
If this nonetheless all appears hypothetical, suppose once more. Agentic AI is already getting into the workforce within the type of attorneys like Harvey or software program engineers corresponding to Cognition’s Devin.
AI gross sales brokers are additionally booming, with VC-backed firms corresponding to Artisan boasting that it needs to exchange the human workforce — as its dystopian billboard advert in San Francisco demonstrates.
Loads of different firms are additionally laying the muse for agentic AI to flourish.
Lattice, an HR and “folks administration” platform final valued at $3 billion, goes additional by giving “digital employees” official worker information, which means that its clients’ AI brokers truly present up within the organizational chart, replete with profile picture and a supervisor assigned to them.
Sarah Franklin, who joined Lattice as CEO final 12 months, known 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 similarly to people, to foster transparency and accountability.
“We need to prioritize the success of individuals as the first, and while 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 establish the place AI is. As AI speaks on behalf of manufacturers and folks, makes choices on behalf of manufacturers and folks, and integrates with different programs, we want to have the ability to observe that.”
But when firms can function at scale with none important human workforce, what does this imply for society? Folks must earn cash; they want objective — wouldn’t society simply implode on itself if folks aren’t in a position to work?
As with earlier industrial revolutions, a typical chorus across the AI revolution is that new jobs will crop up in the long run — we simply don’t know what they’re but.
“There’s going to be a variety of job creation, too,” Mitchell Inexperienced, founding father of funding agency Lead Edge Capital, mentioned at Davos. “If you concentrate on when the iPhone got here out in 2007 — Uber and Airbnb at the moment are $100 billion firms. [They] couldn’t have existed earlier than this. The place the alternatives could be are the businesses that we’re not even eager about but — they’ll be these subsequent big companies.”
That doesn’t imply there received’t be an entire heap of ache within the brief time period, although. And as we’re already seeing with Chinese language AI sensation DeepSeek, the speed of AI’s advance is important by way of 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 shortly sufficient.
“I do suppose there’s so much to speak about by way of retraining and upskilling,” Liu mentioned. “However there’s one thing fairly distinctive in regards to the tempo of developments and the way shortly these fashions are getting higher, particularly the place we’re seeing these AI programs do the work of total groups.”
“Supervisor of AIs”
There was a normal consensus among the many panel that whatever the price of change, everybody must study not solely to dwell with AI, but additionally learn to use it to thrive within the office.
With You.com, for instance, firms can entry its API to convey real-time net search to any massive language mannequin (LLM). Whereas it affords its personal suite of brokers for particular duties, firms may also 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 era that manages folks and AI,” You.com CEO Richard Socher mentioned at Davos. “However I feel probably the most fascinating change right here is definitely that each particular person contributor, each worker, goes to change into a supervisor of AIs. And in that sense, everybody goes to change into type of an entrepreneur.”
So the jury remains to be very a lot out on whether or not we’ll ever see a real one-person unicorn firm. Nevertheless, the precept behind the sentiment has already type 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 appropriate kind of firm, and the appropriate execution, it’s tough to see how AI received’t nudge these greenback figures north because the headcount heads south. However in all probability, it’ll simply come down as to if 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 shall be able to deal with that is a wholly completely different query.
