The 1 person unicorn dream - Myth or Reality?
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Hey All,
The thesis of a 1-person Unicorn has been going around since the emergence of LLMs and Agents. While I certainly see how an engineer can now do the work of 10, maybe 20 engineers, I'm still not able to see the path to a $1B company.
Being a founder of a venture backed startup, I can see how we can grow Mozart AI to $100m+ with < 10 employees. But given the way VC backed companies move in the AI world, it becomes increasingly harder to build without insane execution speed, for which talent is needed.
The recent $80M Acquisition of Base44 by Wix seems to sort of validate the argument, but $80m is quite far away from $1B!
What are your thoughts?
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Slightly different take: I can't think of anything worse than having such a valuable company as a single person.
That's a lot of responsibility. It's, inevitably, a lot of "other jobs" I'd have to do. It's a lot of pressure, admin, attention, stress.
Life's short.
I'd much rather make my living costs + some humble buffer, know my customers by name, and gradually create value that never gets anywhere close to the 1-person $1B company level.
But to the question: I can't see it happening. I think the sorts of problems that accrue as any company reaches that level of interest leads to the need for more than 1 person to be involved, if only to keep one's mental health alive and well.
@martin_rue Absolutely agree!
Agree with you! I don't see 1-person unicorns as possible. I think people are not counting freelancers engaged by that 1 person. Would be good to see how it pans out in future. That said, Base44 example still says its possible or in good-enough range.
While one person may generate millions of dollars they inevitably will have to consider support, branding, compliance, any kind of governance which is simply not feasible for one person. So except you are creating the next flabby bird which requires none of that I don't see it possible for a single person to encompass it all.
We live in a world where 1-person unicorn is a possibility. But - it'd be just too risky to use their product, services or rely on them for anything serious.