The One Person Company
What we gain and risk by building solo
We’re at an interesting moment where building a one-person company is not only possible but slowly becoming a compelling option. Technology and AI enable us to do more things on our own and more efficiently, but at what cost?
The creator economy was version one of this shift. Social media made the world reachable, and platforms like Patreon and Substack made it easier to monetize attention. But the next wave goes far beyond audience-building. Soon, the average person will be able to build an app and deploy AI agents to complete tasks, without needing much capital, time, or even traditional skills. Some of the biggest barriers to starting a business are quietly dissolving. This is the most significant shift in modern work since computers and the internet entered the mainstream and integrated into our daily lives.
It unlocks a kind of creative and entrepreneurial potential we haven’t fully reckoned with yet, and it completely rattles our inherited assumptions about work, jobs, and building companies. But it disrupts more than work—it reshapes our economy, impacts our social health, and determines who gets to build and who may get left behind.
30 years from now, the concept of ‘going to work’ or ‘having a job’ might be irrelevant to younger generations, who will likely have several streams of income from various sources, and approach their career as more of a ‘choose your own adventure’ game than a ladder to climb. I wrote about this in the future of work. But what will happen to those who can’t keep up with accelerated change? Those who might not have the capacity to adapt?
The one-person company is both a response to and a product of the anxiety and curiosity surrounding the future of work. It emerges from the same technologies that are automating us out of jobs, but instead of being displaced by machines, some people are learning how to build with them. This shift not only changes the trajectory of modern ambition but also challenges the very premise of education, which mainly focuses on preparing people to become cogs in established industries. But the new world demands something traditional education rarely teaches—entrepreneurship not as a career path, but as a core life skill.
The rise and potential of the one-person company is the undercurrent that signals a tidal shift in how we live, work, and create.
The implication is clear—if you want to future-proof your career, you have to learn how to build. Entrepreneurship is no longer a niche pursuit reserved for those who want to start a business. It’s becoming a baseline competency for anyone who wants to practice agency in their life.
Agency in the new ambition
As machines become more capable of doing the work, what remains uniquely human is how we approach it. While AI might soon be able to sell your product for you, what it can’t replace is the mindset. The lived experience, the creativity, the grit, the foresight, the taste. Entrepreneurship, in this context, is less about selling and more about shaping your perspective, time, output, and relationship to risk, freedom, and responsibility.
The question isn’t whether work will change, it’s how we will change in response.
Macro-level shifts have always forced us to adapt. A lot of human ingenuity has come from necessity vs inspiration. A thousand years ago, that looked like hunting and gathering. Now, it looks like learning to code, building a niche service, or creating scalable value through platforms. Yes, there’s a version of the future where we don’t have to work at all. But I’m not betting on that. Even with something like UBI, people will still choose some version of work, not because they have to, but because contribution gives us meaning. Growth, mastery, and service are deeply human desires.
The rise of the one-person company is a signal that our relationship to work, identity, and ambition is evolving. We want agency. We want flexibility. We’re tired of choosing between time and money—we want both. We’re seeing through the illusion of job security. And even those of us building right now have to ask: Is what I’m creating future-proof? Will my product still be relevant in five years? Maybe. But maybe not.
There’s an inevitable humility forming around ambition. We don’t feel the need to build empires, but we’re ambitious in a different way. We realize we have access to the same tools that used to be reserved for teams of ten or a hundred, or people and companies with access to funding. Creation and distribution have been democratized to an extent. The gatekeepers aren’t gone, but they’ve lost some power. While we work for the algorithm in new ways, we also get to build directly for people, without permission.
Entrepreneurship has always promised a deeper kind of freedom—the one-person company even more so. Real personal freedom includes freedom over your time and income. It’s hard to feel free, or to even know what you’re capable of, if you don’t have agency over how your days are spent or what your work is worth. The one-person company offers that potential. And if it scales, it challenges everything we know about growth.
The new infrastructure of work
As someone building a platform and working closely with founders building products, I’m constantly thinking about when to raise capital, when to hire full-time, and whether those moves are even necessary. That line of questioning led me to pull the thread on the one-person company. What would it look like to build something meaningful without raising money or building a team? What do we gain, and do we lose in the process?
I’ve built one-person businesses before. The tools that exist now didn’t exist then. You couldn’t automate workflows, use AI agents, or build a landing page in an hour. You could only do so much without software, a cash injection, or additional human power. When I did hire people, I spent a lot of time managing them. I wore every hat. I worked all the time. The benefit was that I learned how to do a lot of things well. The downside was that I eventually ran out of energy. It was exhausting. It was isolating. And it wasn’t sustainable.
But the game has changed. It’s actually possible to build a business in a month, go to market, and automate your backend, all without compromising your sanity. That opens the door for more people to be innovative, to share their genius, and to build a life on their terms, with enough time and money to live comfortably and creatively. At least that’s my hope.
The flip side is that entire industries will be disrupted. Mass groups of people may lose jobs and be forced to reskill—fast—without the time, money, or support to do it well. Not everyone has a monetizable idea, and not everyone is good with tech.
The rise of the one-person company isn’t just a trend. It’s the beginning of a new kind of economic and creative infrastructure. This shift has huge implications for the economy. Historically, founders built companies, and those companies created jobs. Now, one person can build a company, generate millions (or billions) in revenue, and employ no one. Value still gets created, but the traditional job market doesn’t benefit. The most dominant companies scale by hiring. Amazon went from five employees in 1994 to over 1.5 million by 2023. But what happens when companies generate billions without hiring a single human? What happens to all those potential roles—marketing, ops, product—that no longer exist? Some of those people may start companies of their own. Others may find project-based work, fractional work, or create entirely new roles.
But many will be left out—unless we start preparing now, not just with skills, but with new systems of support.
The people most at risk will be those with manual labour backgrounds, older generations who’re not tech savvy, folks who’ve never built a business and feel overwhelmed by the idea. Thos most likely to thrive are people who can adapt. People with ideas, IP, creative instincts, technical fluency, or at least a little bit of financial runway to experiment before needing to turn a profit.
Still, the one-person company makes a lot possible. You can prototype faster, learn faster, and grow something real without navigating endless meetings, seeking consensus, or managing a team. It grants creative control, agility, and space. You’re no longer building something outside your life. You’re building something that integrates with your life. That’s a significant shift. The old idea of ‘work/life balance’ doesn’t apply here. It’s one ecosystem, not two. And because failure is cheaper, you can take more risks and keep moving. It’s not just a different way of working, it’s a fundamentally different way of being.
Freedom, but at what cost?
The one-person company model demands a different kind of founder. You have to be an exceptional generalist. Someone who can hold the vision and execute, who can innovate and operate. Bigger companies get the benefit of diverse perspectives baked into the system. But when you’re building solo, it’s just you. That means you have to work twice as hard to make sure what you’re creating isn’t one-dimensional or missing the mark. You need systems for gathering feedback, spotting signals, and adjusting quickly. If you want to scale without a team, you need to know how to reach your customers and deliver value consistently, without burning out. You also need to build something that isn’t easily replicated. Something with soul. That might be a strong brand, a loyal community, or IP that resonates. And because everything traces back to you, your reputation becomes the backbone of the business. There’s no one else to hide behind, so operating with integrity isn’t optional.
AI changes what one person can do in profound ways. Beyond automating repetitive tasks, it can be a thought partner, a strategist, even a co-founder. You can train agents to understand your systems, your growth strategy, and your tone and voice. But there’s a tradeoff. We lose the depth that comes from real human collaboration—the serendipity, the shared struggle, the co-creation of meaning. There’s something irreplaceable about problem-solving with another person, celebrating a win together, and building something side by side. AI will help us move faster, maybe even better—but speed doesn’t always equal substance. The depth, the texture, the poetry of building with humans might be harder to recreate than we think.
To build and sustain a one-person company, you still need support. Not necessarily in the form of full-time hires, but in the form of community, accountability, and mentorship. You need somewhere to go, someone to turn to. Tools like no-code platforms and AI agents are important, but they can’t replace the human need for connection. The more we work with machines, the more we’ll crave relationships that remind us we’re still human. This model makes space for autonomy, but it doesn’t have to mean isolation. Creators and solopreneurs have figured out pieces of this, but what we’re talking about now is something else—people building companies with billion-dollar potential without hiring a single full-time employee. That requires a completely new playbook.
Just because something has the potential to generate millions or billions doesn’t mean it should. I’m not advocating for more billionaires. But we do need to reckon with scale, not just in terms of growth, but in terms of its ripple effects on the economy, the environment, and our collective well-being. The irony of the one-person company is that the word ‘company’ comes from the Latin com (together) and panis (bread)—it literally means a group of people who break bread together. It implies shared risk, shared reward, and genuine relationships. An interdependence that contributes to more than innovation and progress—it helps us grow as people and evolve as a species.
The one-person company challenges that idea. It assumes we might not need each other—that we can automate ourselves out of collaboration. That’s not necessarily wrong, but we don’t yet realize its consequences. It’s part of the roadmap whether we like it or not. But should it be? Building together has its challenges, so does building alone, but building companies at scale without hiring a single human employee could be a threat to society.
Governments may need to step in and design policies that limit how much a company can scale without employing actual people. ‘Tax the rich’ could take on an entirely new meaning. However, if the current loopholes are any indication, I’m not holding my breath.
It may be founders and builders themselves who come together to reimagine what ethical entrepreneurship looks like in the new world. It’s not a naive vision. A few years ago, I met someone at a friend’s place who was trying to create a social contract for abolishing billionaires—basically getting entrepreneurs to commit to never becoming one. It’s brilliant, possible, and may be our next frontier.
Whatever happens, the potential is exponential, and so are its consequences. Should you build a one-person company and scale to billions?
The real question is, why would you want to?