The Rise of the Million-Dollar, One-Person Company
AI tools make it easier for entrepreneurs to start companies alone, and many continue to operate them that way even as they grow.
Ben Brocca founded a company last December that offers AI tools for entrepreneurs. Since then, he has already added 10,000 paying customers, and he is on track for $10 million in revenue this year. There is only one thing he has not yet added: more employees.
Brocca, 40, belongs to a new generation of entrepreneurs who start companies and often manage them alone. AI tools answer his emails, assist in writing and debugging code, handle customer inquiries, register new subscribers, and issue refunds when problems arise.
Brocca enjoys the ability to make every decision himself, often from the sun-drenched living room of his home in Sausalito, California. "I think compromises lead to mediocre results," he says.
Once, managing a company that reached a certain size required a team of employees. Today, artificial intelligence is turning that assumption on its head, and more and more entrepreneurs are choosing to go it alone.
An analysis by the payment company Stripe shows that thousands of independent entrepreneurs operate on its platform, generating more than $1 million in revenue, and their number doubled between 2023 and 2025. The number of those who crossed the $10 million revenue threshold almost tripled in that same period.
In the past, people who did not have business connections or special experience might not have known how to turn their ideas into a business, says Arnie Tedeschi, Stripe's chief economist. "Today, AI can serve as a built-in business partner," he says.
The ability of AI to perform a variety of administrative tasks makes it a tool that may help in starting one-person businesses in many fields. And its ability to perform key tasks in the technology sector, such as writing code, makes this industry a particularly prominent hub of activity.
"It has never been easier"
An analysis of US Census Bureau data conducted by Taylor Bully, an economist at the Bank of America Research Institute, shows that of all sectors, the information sector recorded the sharpest increase in the number of applications for new business formation, almost 45% in the last year. At the same time, the rate of applicants in the information sector who indicated that they intend to hire employees recorded the sharpest decline among all sectors examined.
The Census Bureau's database does not track businesses operated by one person. However, the data generally indicate, both in the technology sector and in other industries, that the number of applications for businesses expected to hire employees remains stable, while in other types of businesses it is on an upward trend. Economists say this is a clear sign that the number of businesses operated by one person is on the rise.
"It has never been easier to get started," says Julian Weisser, who runs an accelerator for solo tech entrepreneurs in San Francisco. The accelerator, which provides entrepreneurs with seed funding and professional guidance in exchange for equity in the company, received 4,500 applications for only 10 spots in its last cohort, almost five times the number of applicants who registered when it launched in May of last year.
Not always cheap
However, starting a business based on AI and managing it alone can still be surprisingly expensive. Brocca said he lost money on many of his customer accounts because he had to pay for the use of Anthropic's Claude to process their requests. Anthropic, like other companies in the field, charges based on usage volume. Since then, he has switched to using free, open-source AI models from China.
Brocca also said he raised $30 million from investors, while at the same time saving millions of dollars in payroll costs because he did not need a team of software engineers.
Another risk is that if it is easy for one entrepreneur to start an AI-based business, it is also easy to copy it. This fear worries entrepreneurs like Troy Johnston, who operates an AI-based business alone in Orlando, Florida.
"Everyone has a sword now, and we all have the ability to pull out Excalibur," says Johnston, 40, who used AI to write code for an app that helps people maximize the benefits offered by their credit cards. The company generates a profit of about $3,000 a month, with no employees, and continues to grow.
How will the labor market be affected?
It is still unclear how one-person businesses will affect the labor market. Surveys show that many Americans fear that AI will replace employees, and leading economists are also grappling with this possibility. However, AI also creates many new jobs, and entrepreneurs working alone demonstrate how technology can simultaneously open up new opportunities, but also reduce employment options.
"If everyone is hiring fewer employees, but the number of companies has grown fourfold, what does that mean in terms of the number of employees?" says Rembrandt Koning, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who studies entrepreneurship. He was a co-author of a recently published study that found that among the 50,000 startups examined, those that focused on AI operated with 25% fewer employees on average.
Koning also believes that a weak labor market, which left many people stuck in prolonged job searches, encouraged more of them to try their hand at starting businesses.
Some founders point to other motives. "It's a combination of burnout after the COVID period, a re-examination of life priorities, the boom in AI, and the feeling that everything is possible," says Samir Ahmed, 39, who lives in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania.
Two years ago, Ahmed decided to leave his job at Verizon, where he had worked for almost two decades, and start a coaching and consulting business alone. According to him, he was exposed on social media to posts praising the simplicity and benefits of AI, and he used it to formulate a business plan and assist with marketing. "It was like my chief of staff, the number two in the organization," he says.
However, within a few months, the business faded, and today Ahmed is back to a full-time job at an infrastructure services company.
For Claire Wu, 41, AI helped turn a momentary impulse into a business. At the end of 2023, while working full-time as a manager at a tech company, she used AI to write the code for an app that helps manage documentation and the planning process for new products. Her clients include companies in the financial services and healthcare sectors.
"I copied and pasted from ChatGPT," said Wu, who lives in San Francisco.
Wu uploaded the app to the web, and within a few weeks, it was downloaded thousands of times. Almost three years later, Wu's company, which was managed by her alone for nine months before she hired an engineer, already has 100,000 users and is expected to record a profit of more than $1 million this year. AI manages the company's marketing, sales, and customer service.
According to Wu, although AI is a shortcut, the network of connections and the reputation she built in the industry were key factors in her success. "I think people tend to overestimate the value that AI provides, and underestimate everything I did to get to this point," she says.
