Introduction
Dozens of unicorns—startups valued at $1 billion before going public—have already been created by the AI revolution. This might now give rise to a completely new category of startups: one-person unicorns in Silicon Valley.
Even Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, gave the concept his blessing. Having a conversation during an interview Sam Altman added that he frequently makes predictions about when the first founder would achieve a billion-dollar value without even recruiting a single person in collaboration with Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian.
Ohanian was informed by Sam Altman, “There’s this betting pool for the first year that there is a one-person billion-dollar company in my little group chat with my tech CEO friends.” “Which, in the absence of AI, would have been unthinkable and will now occur.”
Ohanian was thrilled about the prospect as well. He informed Sam Altman, “This is a radical idea,” during their interview at a conference in September.
A one-person unicorn would challenge the accepted belief that an organization can only expand by hiring more staff members. CEOs and founders will be “excited to get up and go to work with much smaller, much more performant, much more culturally strong teams,” according to Ohanian, who predicted a new phenomenon.
For many, the question is not if it will happen, but rather when. James Currier, a partner at the venture financing firm NFX, says, “I don’t know many people who don’t believe this.”
This innovative concept comes at a moment when digital unicorns have to face reality. Numerous have gone belly up and these unicorns left investors, staff, and founders in the dark. Investors take a bath, and former startup employees find themselves unemployed.
In light of this, the idea of a one-person unicorn would be the epitome of the spirit of entrepreneurship that the IT sector values most. The pinnacle of the IT industry would be a one-man operation employing technology to create a business worth over $1 billion.
Founder Mathy This was used to build Silicon Valley, or believe it was When Stanford friends David Packard and Bill Hewlett created their first product in the 1930s in the famed Hape garage which gave grasses a folkloric status From the legendary competition between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates during the inception of personal computing,
to individuals such as Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google or Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook who devised the algorithms that governed the internet era, the technology sector has consistently glorified the notion of innovative founders who imposed significant technological advancements on society purely by sheer determination.
This approach makes sense in terms of AI enabling a one-person unicorn, and the idea is gaining traction in Silicon Valley. Managing director of Javelin Venture Partners Alex Gurevich states, “We are entering a new ‘golden age’ of start-ups.”
The technology is waiting for us’ Sam Altman
AI has the potential to automate numerous tasks that formerly required additional personnel, which would only serve to strengthen the ingenuity that startups are known for.
“The ability of a start-up to move quickly, experiment more quickly, make data-driven decisions, and test through a multitude of different hypotheses on their way to product market fit is an inherent advantage over an incumbent,” according to Gurevich. “GenAI amplifies these natural advantages.”
According to Currier, the proper founder is all that is needed for the tools, which are already at hand. The technology is currently waiting for us, according to Currier. Therefore, rather than improving technology, we just need to learn how to use it.
Numerous AI firms have already emerged, specializing in developing solutions for particular business purposes, and they range from marketing to legal work to writing code According to Gurevich, all of which would enable a business to test thousands of alternative product concepts, catchphrases, and pricing scenarios in a far shorter amount of time and manpower.
During a July blog post, Currier compared an AI-powered startup to a plate-spinning trick, in which the performer only needs to spin the plates once and sometimes push them to keep them balanced on their fingers. The act was named “The 3-Person Unicorn Startup.”
The CEO of a one-person unicorn would probably be a salesperson, according to Dan Sutera, cofounder and chief product officer of the website design startup Muse. This is one aspect of running a business that still requires a human touch.
He does, however, issue a warning that some “one-person unicorns” might obtain that status by engaging non-employee contractors to handle design and coding tasks that the AI is incapable of performing.
Sutera remarks, “Although it is still very impressive, I’d put an asterisk next to someone who reached the one-man unicorn threshold record this way.” Someone who truly operates as a one-man operation will cross the line. That person, in my opinion, deserves the reward.
Founders may decide not to allow AI to perform a task merely because it is capable of doing it. Researchers on confidence in AI systems at NYU Vasant Dhar say that most entrepreneurs won’t give AI the most important jobs where there could be a very large chance of error.
Dhar provides an example of evaluating a lengthy legal document, like a transaction sheet from an investor or a contract with a significant client. A miscalculation in those high-stakes situations might mean startup death.
“Will artificial intelligence be less dangerous and more efficient?” he queries.
AI-made software will eat the world
Very few startups have historically achieved enormous valuations. Notably, Instagram only had 13 employees until it was purchased by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion. Markus Frind, the founder of Plenty of Fish, was the sole employee in 2008, despite producing $10 million in profit a unique characteristic for expanding startups.
Even Frind, the quintessential bootstrapper, employed over 75 people by the time he sold plenty of fish to the avalanche of internet dating match groups for $575 million.
These businesses have one thing in common besides having few employees: they are consumer software companies. According to Gurevich and Currier, the first one-person unicorns are probably startups producing those kinds of goods.
Like Currier’s plate-spinning analogy, a software product can be designed once, perhaps with the assistance of an AI copilot, and then updated regularly. The majority of the labor that remains when it is finished is finding new users.
Conventional businesses lack the luxury, particularly those that produce tangible items. “If you’re a Ford Motor Currier states, “Company, you have eight different buildings for eight different functions: manufacturing, sales, dealerships, and marketing.”
You don’t with these [software] goods. You do away with a large number of those business divisions, so you are left with an empty workforce. Then artificial intelligence (AI) steps in to assist you with everything you need to perform.
Even though they are similar, enterprise software products would need to be handled more manually, which would make them less suitable for the automation required to become a unicorn run by one person.
According to Gurevich, the businesses buying the software would probably have higher expectations for cybersecurity and regular customer support.
A direct-to-consumer e-commerce firm is another great contender to become the first unicorn run by one person, according to Gurevich. According to him, a firm like this would leverage AI for market research, advertising, and concept generation.
Ironically, an AI corporation run by one person is unlikely to exist. “This one-person unicorn will be world-class at leveraging GenAI internally to turbocharge the start-up advantage, but they may not be building a native GenAI product themselves,” according to Gurevich.
Founders still need to be visionaries
However, this doesn’t mean that these startups of the future won’t still need to work hard because something that was once only a pipe dream suddenly appears feasible, or at least conceivable. exceptional founders The majority of unicorns do.
Currier thinks the founder of the three-person unicorn will have the same inspiring ideas that drive the most successful founder Sam Altman.
According to his blog article, “Founders of the three-person unicorns will need to be prone to a stroke of genius, and unafraid of acting on these impulses.” “You must be able to see things that others cannot, and you must possess the aggression, bravery, or disagreeableness to act.”
A “words person” and a “numbers person” will make up the other two members. They must also possess extraordinary talent. According to Currier, “It will take very special talent among the three people to pull off a three-person unicorn.” “Very few teams will possess the diverse abilities needed to make it work.”
Sutera, a former vice president of products at unicorn Yext, asserts that engineering, sales, and design are a startup’s three essential components. The “holy trinity” of cofounders with expertise in each respective subject was the norm in the past.
However, according to Sutera, a single founder might suddenly possess all three abilities together, “augmented by AI superpowers.”
Soft talents are one thing that will always be in high demand. According to Sutera, AI software cannot select the ideal product design or complete a deal with a large client.
Currier concurs. According to Currier, “the defensibility of hard skills declines over time for the information work that we’re concerned with.”
Currier is a strong proponent of a three-person unicorn with AI-powered productivity over a one-person model for another important reason. He claims that it’s just inhumane—people require companionship. He states, “You end up being lonely if you just do it by yourself.” “You wind up making poor decisions and not enjoying what you’re doing.”