Thanks to the appearance of cloud computing and distributed digital infrastructure, the one-person micro-enterprise is way from a novel idea. Cheap 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.
But what about scaling that one-person enterprise into one thing meatier — an enterprise of unicorn proportions?
Historically, this could have been an unfathomably robust activity, because of the expertise and assets required, not solely to scale a product but additionally to develop and preserve a sufficiently bountiful buyer base. But 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. Agents might be assigned duties, they usually could make choices with various levels of autonomy. Multiple AI brokers might even collaborate on complementary duties, paving the way in which for getting some actual work carried out totally 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 buddies, there’s this betting pool for the primary 12 months that there’s a one-person billion-dollar firm,” Altman mentioned. “Which would have been unimaginable with out AI — and now [it] will occur.”
In a dialogue on the World Economic Forum’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 may imply for the way forward for employment.
In people we belief
Recent 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 staff. Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion when the messaging app maker had simply 55 staff. Two years earlier than that, Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion with simply 13 staff in its ranks.
This proves that web expertise has already generated big firms with minimal headcount. But 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 form 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 giant go-to-market groups,” Qiu defined throughout 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.”
When it involves producing gross sales, it’s not at all times the higher product that wins out; it’s the folks behind the product which have carried out a greater job of constructing belief with prospects. So if you might want to proactively promote your product, you continue to may must workers up.
“That human-to-human belief, I feel, remains to be very crucial 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 feel we’re residing in one of the vital thrilling areas to be constructing firms,” Liu mentioned at Davos. “We have PhD-level intelligence in our pockets, and we’re starting to see AI programs do the work of complete groups. I feel in that world, AI-native firms have a fairly important benefit.”
However, Liu echoed Qiu’s sentiments: Though the potential for one-person mega-businesses is actual, it may not really 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 folks assume,” Liu mentioned. “My view is that it’s gonna take a very long time, as a result of being an entrepreneur is form of a lonely journey, and also you need a co-founder. Companies are nonetheless began by people. I feel you will have some folks to share the journey with.”
So the truth is, we’d really find yourself in a spot the place firms have at all times began out: a founding crew with complementary ability units. But moderately than scaling by means of incremental hiring, they preserve that preliminary slenderness with AI brokers plugging the hole.
But 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 manner.
“The period of AI staff”
If this nonetheless all appears hypothetical, assume once more. Agentic AI is already getting into the workforce within the type of attorneys like Harvey or software program engineers equivalent to Cognition’s Devin.
AI gross sales brokers are additionally booming, with VC-backed firms equivalent to Artisan boasting that it desires to exchange the human workforce — as its dystopian billboard advert in San Francisco demonstrates.
Plenty 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 staff” official worker information, that means that its prospects’ AI brokers really 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, 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 wish to prioritize the success of individuals as the first, and if you’re working with AI brokers, it’s essential 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 folks, makes choices on behalf of manufacturers and folks, and integrates with different programs, we’d like to have the ability to monitor that.”
But if firms can function at scale with none important human workforce, what does this imply for society? People must earn cash; they want goal — wouldn’t society simply implode on itself if folks 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 plenty of job creation, too,” Mitchell Green, 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 firms. [They] couldn’t have existed earlier than this. Where the alternatives might be are the businesses that we’re not even serious about but — they’re going to be these subsequent large 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 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 may not be capable of adapt rapidly sufficient.
“I do assume there’s plenty of speak about when it comes to retraining and upskilling,” Liu mentioned. “But 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 complete groups.”
“Manager of AIs”
There was a common consensus among the many panel that whatever the charge of change, everybody should be taught 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 carry real-time net search to any giant language mannequin (LLM). While it presents its personal suite of brokers for particular duties, firms can even create their very own customized brokers, selecting their most popular AI mannequin and giving it directions based mostly on no matter sources of information they should join.
“We, as CEOs, are going to be the primary technology that manages folks and AI,” You.com CEO Richard Socher mentioned at Davos. “But I feel essentially the most attention-grabbing change right here is definitely that each particular person contributor, each worker, goes to turn into a supervisor of AIs. And in that sense, everybody goes to turn into form 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. However, the precept behind the sentiment has already form 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 Facebook purchased it.
Even Nvidia, with a market cap of greater than $3 trillion, has a comparatively slender workforce of fewer than 30,000 staff — that’s the equal of round $100 million in worth per worker.
With the precise sort of firm, and the precise execution, it’s tough to see how AI received’t nudge these greenback figures north because the headcount heads south. But in all probability, it can simply come down as to whether there’s a need for one particular person to construct alone, with sufficient entrepreneurial information to embed a powerful, defensible enterprise mannequin that another person can’t simply replicate on the drop of a hat.
But whether or not society will likely be able to deal with that is a completely totally different query.
