Can Startups Be a Team of One?

Welcome back to another episode of the Startup Therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan, joined as always by my friend, the founder and CEO of Startups.com, Will Schroeder. Will, two years ago, if you wanted to start a tech company, you needed at least three people. You needed the product person, a developer, a marketer. Today, you might not need any of them. Yeah. In a couple of years, you might not even be allowed to hire them, right? Yeah. And that honestly freaks me out a little bit.

The very real possibility that the future of startups is one person and a stack of AI is not as a backup plan, right? Or, or a novel thing, but, but as the default. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I love working with a team. Yeah. Some of the best moments of my career, and I know of yours, have been being locked in a room with smart people arguing about something really dumb until it became something brilliant.

So when I tell you I think the era of hiring people might be ending, I'm not trying to sell you on it, I'm processing it out loud with you here in the room, which is I guess what this episode is. It's terrifying.

And here's, here's what's interesting about our purview, right, Ryan? Like, we tend to forget- Yeah ... 'cause we do this stuff all day. We see all the startups long before they become startups. Like, even- Right ... like a venture firm doing Series A deals, Series B deals, they see startups, like, three years in. You know, depending when, when they get to that point- Yeah ... where they're raising that kind of money. Now, I'm not saying that they're not ahead of the curve.

They are, and they're paid to be. But we get to see startups when it's still an idea in their head. Like, they, they haven't even gotten to the point where the, the product is necessarily- Right you know, raising or et cetera. So we have an interesting purview of what I would say is the zeitgeist of startups and, and founders as a whole. And what we're seeing right now are founders, the conversation

going from, "Hey, I've got this great app idea. I gotta find a developer, I gotta find a marketer" to- Yeah "I don't need to find anybody." Right. "I already built it, right?" Yeah. "This weekend." Like, "I don't need those people." Now, we did an- another episode, uh, not too long ago, Ryan, where we talked about I don't need the capital. Right. And we talked about, you know, where VCs and their role is, and said, "Who cares about those guys," right?

Well, very, very linked to today's conversation, right? Right. That's what I mean. This is the precursor to that. Yeah. Y- you know, what happens when we're entering a world, and we are whether we like it or not- Yes ... where hiring people or building a team is an option, and, and, and, uh, this is... I'm gonna bury the lead on this one, maybe a downgrade, right? Like, like- Yeah ... that's actually possible. Fucking terrifying, right? I, again- Right ... you said the same thing.

You and I are like, "Whoa, dude." This is happening really fast Yeah.

I, I think that's the, the interesting thing is that, like, this, this isn't just an ideology, right? This isn't just can we do this? This is economics meeting capability. That's a great way to put it. I've never heard it put that way. That's real- really well structured. The teams didn't get worse, right? Yeah. The alternative just got dramatically better.

Uh, but the other thing I think is gonna be super interesting, and you, you just kinda hinted at it, which is, like, the way you and I are thinking about this versus, you know, somebody who's just starting out and building now.

There's a generational split coming, man. Yeah. We're, we're gonna have founders who came up with teams versus founders who never had one in the first place, right? You know, I actually- The second group's not even gonna feel that loss. It's, think about it in, in regards of, like, or relation to work from home, right? I was just gonna say the same exact shit, yep. You and I had to go through- Absolutely ... a process to get there. Right.

But there were a lot of people whose first job was an interview via Zoom, and then you- Yep ... start the next day in your new office, Zoom, right? That's it. They don't know the difference. There's folks getting damn near 30. I was gonna, sorry, I was gonna build on that. There, there are folks damn near 30 that have never stepped foot in an office and never will, in most cases. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's absolutely wild.

And, and I think anybody right now who's thinking, like, you know, "AI will never replace people," I think they're either lack the internet or they're, they're selling us something or they haven't shipped a product in, like, at least, what? 12 to 18 months. With this weird boat.

Now, I want the audience to understand this because you get, kinda like when crypto was becoming a thing, you get these zealots that talk about- Yep ... like, what the future's gonna be and, and, and they're- Yeah, yeah ... so sold on it, et cetera. I wouldn't call us critics because w- we definitely embrace the technology. I love- 100% ... the technology.

But I'm equally terrified about it because every time- Oh, yeah ... I, I ship something, I'm like, "What does that mean?" Like, you know, what does that mean for the entire ecosystem that was usually a part of that, that isn't? It's the rollercoaster feel, right? It's the r- m- meaning, like, in the, in the adrenaline sense, right? Like, every time I'm building something and it just happens to go exactly as I want to, like, there's this level of, like, real excitement.

Yeah. And then also as you, as you, as you o- go over the top of that hill, like, there is a thrill, but there's also a feeling that, like, literally and figuratively, the bottom's dropping out, right? Exactly. And you just don't know, like, where does this actually stop? And, and I gotta say, I don't just look at it as, hey, you know, this is g- this is bad for people who are in the startup ecosystem that, you know, would be employed by a startup, et cetera.

Yep. Selfishly, I'm looking at myself going, "Damn, dude, the value that I introduce to the world on a-" Yeah daily basis is getting both accelerated, because what I can do is geometric- Yes ... and eroded- It's so bizarre, isn't it? ... because what I used to do doesn't matter anymore. Like- Yeah ... I used to get paid- Yeah ... so to speak, I'm, I'm kind of u- a bit of a euphemism here, but, like, I used to get paid to tell people how to build a pitch deck, right?

Yep. Well, now there's 100 ways to find out how to build a pitch deck. I'm not gonna get paid for that- Well, yeah ... much longer. Now you can tell Claude how to build a pitch deck, and you can give that to a, a thousand other people, and Claude can tell them how to build their pitch deck. In every language, right? Yep. At every stage, in every currency. Yeah. Like, I mean, like, that's- Yep ... the geometric part, right? Can we also pick the colors? No, you cannot.

That absolutely has to be done by a human. No one could- Right ... possibly automate font color selection. Yeah. Let's start from that. Let's say that back in the day of, of, of yore, which is, like, two years ago, right? Let's acknowledge the absurdity of that for a second, right? 2023 just became... Or was that, no, 2024 just became the days of yore, right? It's absolutely mind-boggling how fast this is moving. But it really is. But I mean, but it really is.

Yeah. So, so let's timestamp that for a minute, just so the audience- Sure can say, "Okay, this is how long ago we're talking about." If you and I wanted to build a startup, we would, just like you said, I mean, I'm using tech as an example, but it, it varies per industry, uh, and we wanted to build a mobile app. Uh, we find developer and we find marketer, right? And so you've got product person, developer, marketer, just as you mentioned.

And- Yep ... you know, there's, there's different combinations, but that was typically the triumvirate that everybody wound up with. Like, back in the day when they were doing startup weekends, it was always, like, the hacker, the hustler, and what do they call the designer? I don't remember. Anyways, I'm sure it started with an H. Point is, that was it. Created a construct that everybody kind of agreed with, things like co-founders. "Hey, Ryan, you're an incredible developer. I'm a product

guy. I'm gonna give you half the, the company." Yeah. For what? To build something I can't build. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Why in the hell- Would I do that today? So stick on that, right? Because, like, we, we look back at that w- with some longing, and it's like, that three-person team wasn't a strategy, right? It was a limitation. And that's what's killing me, right. Nobody actually wanted to give up 25% equity just so they could have a chance at getting that product to market, right? Right, right.

They just, they had to. Right. The find a technical co-founder was a hell of a plot line- Yep ... for 25 years. A very long time. But it just ended. It is an entry token. Quietly. Right. And I think most people haven't even noticed yet. The developers have. Yeah. That's for sure. So just two years ago, you needed these elements as, again, your entry token to be able to get into this game. If you didn't have developer, you didn't have product. If you didn't have product, you have nothing, right?

Yeah. I would argue that soon thereafter you needed marketer to get you acquiring customers, et cetera. And depending on who the person was, they had a certain set of skills that allowed them to acquire through social or through whatever means, you know, they were good at. But your ability to both build and manage and have the domain knowledge across all of those fields simultaneously- Yeah ... w- was, by definition, usually gonna be pretty weak.

Yeah. You and I are in a, a, an unusual position in that we spent our last 30 years in our career doing tech, product, and marketing all at the same time. Yep. Like, we actually grew up in that triumvirate, if you will. That, yeah, exactly. Um, and so it's unusual for us to have all those skillsets, although I think, you know, you would agree, as time went on and technology became, you know, much deeper as far as a knowledge base, we couldn't keep up.

You know, we had to- No kind of pick our lane. I still remember, like, the last line of code I actually tried to ship and gave up in frustration and handed off to one of my devs. Like- Yeah ... I remember that moment. Yeah. I, I stopped at JavaScript. Yep. That was around the time. Yeah, it was. I think it was ColdFusion, actually. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a great product. So anyway, we're in the spot now where those people were going to get recruited.

They were going to get brought into, uh, startup teams. They were going to- Yeah ... have a meaningful, uh, seat at the table. They were going to... You know, they were, "Hey, if I don't agree with it, I'm not gonna build it. So if I don't agree- Yep ... we don't have this disagreement, things won't move forward." Now all of a sudden, like- Yeah ... Claude doesn't argue about shit. No. Like, just does what I say. So stick on that for a second, Will. Yeah.

So, so here's, here's, uh, just to keep some balance this entire conversation, I want to bring up- Yeah a, a counterpoint here, which is that, like, in some weird way we could argue that equity dilution was a bit of a forcing function for quality, right? If you had to give up real ownership to get a co-founder to build something- Yeah ... you had to actually convince him the idea was good, and you had to decide whether you wanted to give up that much equity to do that, right?

AI doesn't give a shit if your idea is good or not. It's gonna build anyways. Yeah, yeah. Which, let's be honest, isn't necessarily an entirely a win. It, mostly a win. But- But m- lacking that pushback and lacking that kind of additional friction and filter, it can, can come at a cost. There's this great quote, I think it's from Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back or something like that. Okay. And they're explaining the, what the internet is, right? Oh, yes.

And they're saying, "The internet gave everybody in the world an opportunity to use their voice, and as it turns out, they chose to use it." Yes. Like, this is AI. This is them saying, "We've given everybody the ability to build something, but we haven't decided whether it's any good." Self-publishing did the same thing. Yes. Being able to publish your own stuff on the equivalent of a- Yeah ... Spotify did the same thing. You didn't have to be good because you had the tools either way. Right.

Whereas before, there was a filter function that society kind of applied to you. Yeah. Now arguably, you could say that there was an additional filter back then that wasn't necessarily the best thing, which was the translation between the person with the idea- Yeah and the person with the technical skills to do it, right? So we've kinda traded one potential quality barrier for another. All of a sudden we get into this position where we don't have to bring those people in.

I think that's important. I think that's important- Yeah ... because-

Yeah ... have to and optional are b- are gonna be what this entire conversation turns on, right? Yeah. The startup ecosystem was largely based on need. Nobody hired 500 people because they needed more friends. Maybe somebody did. Right. Right? You've hired 500 people and created all that liability 'cause you needed all of those people. You needed it. Right? Yeah. You needed that function. I was talking to a founder the other night, and we were talking about, you know, staffing plans.

And he was saying, "Hey, you know, I'm, I'm looking to staff up to maybe a couple hundred people." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Well, I need people for, you know, it's on the ground kind of stuff." Are you starting a sports league, sir? No, he, he had a very cogent reason for it, but it wasn't- Yeah ... what it used to be. It wasn't, " I need- Isn't it funny- ... 200 developers to build anything" ... that that sounds exotic now? Yeah. Right? Right, exactly. Oh, wow, how avant-garde.

You're going to hire humans? Humans. Right? How retro. How quickly we got there. But okay, so but let me build on that. So but there's this new filter that didn't apply before- Yeah which is, has gone, is about to go the other direction, where it used to be, "Hey, I've got humans. Maybe AI might be better." Now it's, "I've got AI. Will a human be better?" Is- Right? Yeah. Is there a version of having a human that's, that, that's better than this? Yeah. And ah, dude, this gets dangerous.

This is a slippery slope. It, it's tough, man.

I mean, let's, let's throw a couple things out there. Yeah. The pricing, you can't argue with that part. Right. You just can't. Right. $200 a month for output that used to cost us 200K a year in salary. The, the math doesn't care about your feelings at all, right? Yeah. Like, the math is the math, and the math is clearly in favor of the AI side of the equation. Yeah, and, and so we look at, okay, how many things are gonna go away from a have to have human, okay?

Yeah. Let's start from where two years got us, so 2024 to 2026 when we're recording this. In two years, I can build an MVP of just about anything. Yep. Right? I'm not saying it'll scale. I know there's a whole argument as like w- Take a breath, it will, right? Like- Yep ... but even that, which, Ryan, how many startups were raising money or looking for co-founder or whatever for just- Just to try to stand up a basic website. Yes, yes.

Kills me to know, like, this isn't a fair comparison, but it's like when you see the medication come out when it's too late to have saved some people, right? It's like- That's an interesting... Yeah ... how many startups withered on the vine that wouldn't have simply because they couldn't get access to the basic necessities of just being able to kinda show what this thing might do- Right ... in a way that could have allowed it to get some traction that would now be completely possible.

That's interesting, man. I would- There's an entire project around just going back to the old startup graveyards and being like, "What could we refire with some AI?" Everything, right? And, and look- Yeah. And this isn't to say that just applying AI makes things good or feasible or whatever. No. It's the fact that it's even an option. Now, now- Yes ... I wanna take this back. What we're talking about isn't necessarily, "Hey, let's take a 200-person organization and make it a one-person

organization." Correct. That happens. But what we're talking about right now is the one-person organization that doesn't need to grow past- Correct ... a one-person organization, not because they chose not to, but because they don't have to. Well- And that's what's crazy to me ... take that a step even further.

Yeah. It's the one-person organization that wasn't ever going to grow past that person, that wasn't ever going to release the website, that wasn't ever gonna get enough traction to be able to attract dollar one of investment or- Yep ... team member number two, right? Right, right. There were so many of those out there because they were stuck too far behind the idea curve. Now they don't have to be.

Here's where I was saying earlier that, like, you know, as a founder, I'm looking both directions. I'm looking at the world in front of me and the world behind me, right? Yeah. And when I look at the world behind me, like basically, like, like where is the ground falling from below my feet, it's huh.

Like a couple years ago, if Ryan and I spent years and years and years building a bespoke platform with a phenomenal amount of knowledge around it called startups.com- ... that was a moat that we had created that people couldn't cross. Yep. Like, you know, our competitors couldn't do the same thing, and so we did it well. Yeah. And now I'm like, well, shit, now, like, literally anybody could do that. Now- Who's that sitting at my desk? Yeah. Oh, hi, Claude. Yeah. Exactly, right?

Now, again, it's not quite that simple. I, I think when people say- Yeah ... "Oh, like AI is gonna rebuild salesforce.com," it'll rebuild some stuff. Salesforce.com- Right ... will probably be okay. But again, I'm looking at it from the, shit, because everybody can do stuff or get access to what I charged for five seconds ago, they will. And how do I stay two steps ahead of them?

Now, I look at this and I say, if we're talking about the future of a one-person startup, what is clearly gonna get taken off the table, being stuff that you're gonna pay money for?

Some things that come to mind, Ryan, uh, customer support. Yeah. I think customer support's deader than dead. Right? Don't get me wrong, I think it's valuable to talk to a human upon escalation. Yeah. But I think an AI- But one ... that can do 90% of the job, it can respond immediately, it can take you to where you need to be, it can do- Yeah uh, low-level resolution, et cetera, there's n- like, a, a human is vastly inferior on that one.

Yeah. Talking to a human was better than not talking to a human when there was no other option than talking to a human. Exactly. Right? It, sitting in a, in, in a queue to wait to talk to me on the phone sucks, right? We don't wanna talk to anybody. We don't wanna fix the problem. We never wanted to have the problem in the first place, so the faster you remove whatever my issue is, whatever way that you need to do that, is the best outcome for me as the user.

Y- My 45-minute calls to Dell customer support- Oh my God never ended in- You remember the days ... man, I hope this doesn't go away. Oh. Right? My 45- Yeah ... minute wait on the IRS queue- Yeah ... to be able to get some stupid piece of information that I needed, right? Yep. I was never like, "Man, I hope they don't speed this up." Yeah. Boy, I hope Bob answers the call again. Yeah. It's really nice talking to him.

The state of the union is so incredibly bad that, like, a- anything is an improvement. But the reason I'm bringing this one up is because those were absolute givens that what we were gonna staff for, right? Yeah. We have more customers, we have more support, one for one. Yep. The other great thing about that, about that mechanism, was that it was an on-ramp for an awful lot of people, right? Yeah. There was an awful lot of people that maybe didn't...

They weren't a developer, they weren't a designer or whatever, but they could show up at a startup, get work right away- Yeah ... just because they were smart enough and they were cool enough, right? You know? Yep. They, they could answer questions. They could, yep. Ton of value to that, by the way. They could check the boxes. There is something to that, too, which is, like, when we look back at, like, startup hiring as a whole, it is very, very interesting, right?

In the sense that there were definitely people that got shots that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten, and that grew well outside that. But there's also, like, the, the kind of the dirtier secret side of it, which is that a lot of early-stage employees aren't great. Yeah. Right? That's not why they got hired. For the long game. They got hired because they were available. AI's not out there just replacing A players left and right, right? It's, it's replacing- That's actually my point.

Yeah. I, I'm saying for an awful lot of people that, that were C+ players- Yep ... there was always a home for them- Yep ... because there was always work that the A+ players didn't wanna do. The minor minor leagues. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. And, and- Yeah ... I look at that, and again, I wanna point out, I look at that and going, "Damn, that's a problem for an awful lot of people."

You know, I, I, I have- Yeah ... friends that are in that space, you know, that, that are kind of like at risk at that level, and I'm like, "I have no idea what they're gonna do." And again, that concerns me. This is, again, this is- Yeah ... this is a very nuanced discussion because on the one hand we're saying, "Holy shit, this is gonna be incredible, like, we're gonna enable so many people." I'm like, and this is the nature of AI, at the expense of an awful lot of people.

I think I'm still, and maybe I'm wearing super thick rose-colored glasses right now, but I think I'm trying to take the view that we said the same thing when the internet happened, and e-commerce happened, and, and, and. That, a- and yes, it did. There was, there was plenty of disruption. It wasn't at the scale that anybody expected it to be. It didn't create, you know, mass pandemonium. There w- definitely was some upset. I'm not saying people didn't get hurt, people did.

But then we recovered, and we grew well beyond where we were at that point. I'm still hopeful that this does the same thing. Now, do I think there's a higher likelihood and a better chance, more opportunity for there to be harm and damage done just in terms of, like, humans not having jobs? Yes, because that's literally what this is aimed at doing. No doubt. But o- on the other hand, like most things, it's gonna create new problems. Who solves problems?

People solve problems, startups solve problems, and so it's gonna create this entire new ecosystem that we're gonna have to go figure out, right? If no one has income, what do we do? Well, we gotta solve that, right? Otherwise, the people who replace all the jobs with AI have no economy to sell to anyways, right? So it, it can only go so far before it breaks itself. You know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new.

Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a thousand times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it, but that's okay. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all day long at groups.startups.com. So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do. Let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it. Yeah, 100%.

Uh, i- it'll create as much demand as it will supply. I do believe that. But, but damn, it's, it's gnarly right now.

But going back to our point of this solo founder forever. Yeah. The reason we're talking about this stuff, about, you know, how it's get, about to get geometrically worse or better depending on how you look at it, is this is the first time in history that not hiring for any of these roles, support, developer, whatever, was even an option.

Yeah. And what I'm saying is the rate that the technology is improving, it gets to the point where, like, I can't fathom in a year or two why you would hire a small business accountant, right? Yeah. Given the fact that, uh, accounting, and I've been a, a CFO for 25 years, so I understand a little about it, but I'm by no means teaching courses on it.

But accounting is really comes down to I have raw transactions, they're sitting in, in my bank account or credit card statements or whatever, invoice system, and I have some corpus of knowledge that understands- Mm-hmm ... how to process raw transactions, right? Yeah. And turn them into pro forma income statements or tax statements or anything like that. The corpus of knowledge is well documented, right? Yes. There's, there's nothing new there, right?

Like, how numbers... It's literally a named standard, right? Kind of figured that one out. And how to process yours isn't that complex. It's complex to you 'cause you don't know it. I, I went through this process. My point is that's a giant, like, bucket that everyone's subscribed to. Yep. Like, even if you didn't hire your own developer, you had somebody giving you counsel on accounting 'cause, 'cause it's something- Yeah ... you didn't know and you needed help with.

Yep ... or payroll, or legal, or like, there was a lot of places where it was a given that you were gonna talk to a human, employ that person on a contract- Yeah or one-off basis, and that's where your money was gonna go. And now I'm like, uh- Yeah. There were so many of these industries that were literally predicated on knowledge that was gatekept. Not that it was unachievable knowledge. It wasn't that it was unachievable knowledge.

Yeah. It just wasn't worth quite enough to go and learn it rather than just pay to have it done. Yep. Well, that just got flipped on its head.

It's crazy. And so we could probably agree, if it's 2026 now, that... And now I'm going way into the future, like four years from now. That by 2030- Whoa ... nearly every single thing that you would've paid somebody to do right now mechanically, there will be- Yeah ... an AI equivalent that is, is as good, and, and, and I'm gonna use as... We'll come back to as good in a second. But in many cases, better. I'll go to the customer support thing. Yeah. This isn't a quality thing.

This AI customer support is available 24/7, seven days a week, and can process 1,000 people simultaneously, right? Yeah. There's no human equivalent that could possibly do that. Right. It knows every single thing that has ever been said to your company. It knows every single outcome. Period. It knows every single product. It can run decisioning rules perfectly every single time, like no call center on the planet could do. And there will be no better human version of that, right? It sucks.

Uh, again, this isn't me saying- Yeah ... yay. I'm saying shit. But it's, it's kind of unavoidable. And the thing is, by the time somebody uses it as a competitive advantage, everybody else has to start to use it. It becomes a hygiene factor- 100% ... really, really quickly, so you don't really have the choice. And so like, even if you're like, "Nope, we're gonna stick with humans.

We're gonna stick with humans for a while." J- I was just picturing somebody pitching an investor in, in this, in your future of 2030 and saying like, "And we're aiming for 12 employees." They're gonna look at you like you just said, "And we're gonna try to get 12 horses," right? Like what- Right. ... the fuck are you talking about? So we get into this new world where we look at hiring a person in the not too distant future, and even a little bit now- Yeah ... as a can versus I should. Uh-huh.

I could hire this person. Let's say, like money wasn't the issue, and it's always the issue, but let's pretend it wasn't. Will they add more than I could get with a tool that does the same thing? Now, obviously it depends on- Yeah ... on what the role is, right?

But it brings us to the next point of this discussion, which would be where is human value intrinsic? You know- Yeah ... what are the things that startups will reengage with humans? I sound so... I feel like E- Elon Musk talking about, "We're engaging with humans," right? Um, will reengage with humans. I'm interfacing with flesh again. Here's what I would say at a high level. There are certain things that are fundamentally human that we as humans are particularly good at.

Yeah. Communication, leadership, creativity, innovation, et cetera, right? These are things that are, uh, fundamentally and, and authentically human. And I think when you get more people in the room that can kind of use the tool- But use those capabilities with the tool. Yeah. You wanna have the humans, you know, with those tools versus l- you know, letting AI run amok. Uh, where do you see it?

I think that there's all those little micro interactions, right? The, the micro decisions, the discussions, the arguments. I'm a different person with other people in the room, right? It brings out skillsets and capabilities that I don't have when I'm just sitting around by myself. There's a whole lot of things that don't manifest. But I think that, like, at, just even at the, the most basic level, a solo founder plus an AI doesn't get any of that other voice introduced.

It... There's no micro decisions. There's no pushback. You get the decision maker and a yes machine, right? Yeah. Uh, uh, which, look, I'm, I'm sure at some point they will, they will help to fix that within AI, and I think some people are worried that, you know, AI won't be as, as clever as a human, or won't be as attentive as a human, or won't be as, as aware as a human. That's not the risk that I see, right? Yeah. I, I don't think that the risk is that AI is wrong.

I think the risk is actually that AI is just super agreeable, right? A team disagrees with you, and that's actually the feature of the team, right? Yeah, right. That's, a big part of it is having that pushback to kinda metal test the, the, the stuff that you're thinking through, right? Let me build on that, Ryan. Yeah. So pushback and disagree would be one of them, but the other part of it is just refine. So it's not like, "Hey, I don't agree with what you're saying."

"Hey, that's a really cool idea. What if we also did this, this, and this?" I'm using disagree in that- Right? No, I know. I know ... in that same way, right? Which is like more so just like, yeah, the refinement, the inputs that w- don't come from an AI, right? Whenever we go down this path, whenever we talk about, like, you know, w- where that human intuition and everything is, is more valuable, there is a part of me in the back of my mind that's being like, "Nah, that's an algorithm," right?

Like, I'm like- Yeah. And, and again, I, again, I turn into, like, Elon Musk all of a sudden, right? But, like- ... I look at that and I think to myself, "I get it. I understand that I can run an algorithm that replicates what Will might say, but it just still isn't Will." And again, I know this is the, the, the fundamental question of humanity in, in AI. Yeah. But when it comes to building a startup, I get the sense that the solo f- founder will feel like they're missing something.

There's just, one, it's lonely as hell to do this, right? Yeah. But I also think, like, here, actually, you know, never really thought about this until just now. All day long, I have exactly two screens on my monitor. On the left I have Claude. Yeah. On the right I have Slack, right? Yeah. computer, human. And they're both prompts, right? They're both literally text boxes that I type into to get answers.

I'm not, you know, trying to dumb our conversations between us, uh- Yep ... down, but, like, just the form factor- They're both text inputs looks awfully identical. Yep Right? Your, your, your, your command line in both case. Yeah. Exactly. But l- let me stick with that, 'cause again, I, I... until I just said it, it didn't really occur to me, like, how parallel those universes are. When I talk to Claude, and I'm building software, and I'm doing all that's good stuff, right?

I know Claude is gonna come back to me with domain knowledge, but not really an opinion. Now, it may come back with a recommendation- Yeah ... right? Like, "Hey- Right ... the structure should be tailwind versus something else." Okay, sure, whatever, right? You probably know better than I do. But it's not gonna come back and saying, "This would look way cooler," right? Yeah. Now, it could. It'd be making that up. It'd be, you know, whatever.

But when I talk to you or I talk to our creative director, I talk to our CTO, whatever, and they have that response, like, "Oh, damn, that would be really sweet," I know it's true. Yeah. Does that make sense? It does. Uh, like, even, uh, think about little pieces of feedback like, I'm gonna go to the negative side of feedback, where it was like, "Yeah, there's something a little off. I'm not exactly sure what it is," right?

That's exactly the kind of thing, where it's like there's an intuition there. There's a feeling that AI's never gonna be able to catch. I can go back to moments in time where, like, those little feelings were like, "Ah, something feels off," or, "Hmm, you know, I don't like that and I don't, can't really, you know, tell you why now, but I'm gonna keep thinking about it and we'll eventually come up with it." Those, those moments are really important.

Let's build on that, because I, again, I think that's the core of what we're saying. Let's back up and say if you were a purist on the AI side, you would say- Yeah ... humans are an algorithm. Humans are fundamentally a computer that, that, uh, are pre-programmed with memories and everything else like that. Yep. A- and they're running the algorithm. Which is true, and it's called personality. Yeah. Right? If it can be computed, it will be computed, and it will be replicated, right?

That there is cyber Will, there's cyber Ryan, and that will exist. And I- Right ... 100% believe that, right? I, I actually do believe that.

However, without going, like, too Terminator on this, I do think there, there's a human side that, number one, and this is important, that we are all going to gravitate toward in the same way we're feeling this right now with work from home, uh, having displaced- Yep ... the interactions you were having at work. I don't ever- Yeah wanna go into the office again, but I really miss my friends. You know what's funny? Just for two seconds.

Yeah. I just read something today that said- is the work from home era over? Yeah. And I was thinking, do they just mean is work over? Because who the hell is going back to an office if they're letting everyone go? Like, what office are you going back to or with, with which job? I was like, did I accidentally hit somebody's archive from eight years ago? Like, what is this? I just couldn't believe that was somebody's question today. Like, that, yes, uh, sure, fine.

And I'm sure there's places where it does, but I think it touches on a core point. I think as we strip away our humanity, we feel empty. I've yet to hear anybody say- Yeah ... Tinder is so much better because I don't have to talk to people. You know what I'm saying? Like, like you have to talk through messages or whatever. Yeah. Everyone always says the same thing, whether it's Tinder or Zoom or, like, whatever technology abstract- social media that abstracts us- Yeah from humans.

It always starts with the same premise, which is you're gonna have so much more access to a potential mate or to social media- Yeah ... you know, to news, whatever, and it always ends the same, which is you're- Yeah ... lonely and depressed. More isolation. Yeah, yeah. Right. A- a- and I think- Yeah ... that's the human condition. I think that, you know, if we look at a generation coming up to the workforce now that are 20 to 30, and there's this general malaise.

Now, it's been exacerbated because they've taken the humanity out of every aspect of their lives- Yeah ... you know, through social media and everything else like that. So fast-forward 10 years. Does it become a thing whereas like, "Who's that behind you on the, in the camera?" He's like, "Oh, that's Bob." "Oh, what's Bob do there?" "He's our person." Yeah. He's like a dog. We just have him around 'cause he makes us feel better, right? Yeah. I notice when he's around my heart rate goes down.

You know, it's like all the things that a pet does for you. Where like at some point, like how many years out is hiring an employee- My emotional support human ... yeah, my emotional support human.

But when does it become a status symbol, right? Like buying a mechanical watch, uh, an expensive mechanical watch when you know your phone can tell time better. When does an employee become the status symbol thing? They're like, "Yeah, we hired a, we hired a, a, a, a- I think, so this is, this a little off track, but I think it, uh, ties in. I genuinely believe that over the next few years, and you're already starting to see it, organic, meaning human, will be- Yeah ... a luxury item.

And I think in the same way that you have a concierge at a hotel that, like, you know, like, makes you feel welcome, I think- Yeah people will reintroduce and repromote. We're doing it now by the way- 100% ... at startups.com. Stay at Hilton, now featuring human-answered telephones. No, I'm telling you, man. They're like, "Hello." I think we're gonna see it. I think you're gonna see a massive swing at an emotional level of people going back to, "This is all bullshit, man."

Like, I can say this now. I will spend, not today, but on a given day, 14 hours straight on some days- Yep ... in front of my monitor, and thank God I have a wife and kids that are in my house, right? That will, like, like, make me have human interaction, because if they were not here, I would go days without seeing- Yeah a human, right? Human. Yeah. Like, in a couple hours, uh, I'm gonna go see a bunch of my friends. We've got a founder dinner. You, you've been to the, uh, this one before.

Nice. And they're great folks. Actually, it's a bunch of folks that listen to this show, so guys, I'll see you in a minute. I have to go to that, and I mean that in the right way because- Like, that is a scheduled time where I see humans. How fucking sad is that, right? Yeah. I mean, like, if you look at- Yeah ... like the trajectory, that used to be my every day, and now it's a scheduled event. I'm telling you, man, this thing's gonna rubber band. It kinda sorta has to, right?

At some point we do have to go back- Yeah ... to the other direction. I mean, just think about how often we see this, Will. Just our little microcosm. Think how often we see this, which is just founders coming to us wanting a co-founder, and when we really dig into why- Yep ... it wasn't a technology need, it wasn't funding, it wasn't... It w- they were just lonely and scared of being alone while building this thing. Oh, yeah. They just wanted another person there.

I always used to say the same thing about marriage. And, and again, I'm, I'm not knocking marriage. You and I have been married to our spouses- Yep ... for almost the same period of time, over 15 years. I would say that if it wasn't for loneliness, most marriages wouldn't exist, right? Yeah. Like, the fundamental of companionship is what drives marriage. And I always think marriage is hilarious as an institution because there's no version of it. There's one version. Right.

You're married, and that's it. Yeah. There's no, like, lease to own or, you know, a kind of- You can't correct ... alternate option. Yeah. Right? There's no three-year contract or something. Probably should be, but there isn't. And, and I say that because we're willing to, to sign up for the only contract without much consideration of, of any other option 'cause we're lonely, man. We love somebody, and that's wonderful.

But I think for a lot of people, you see people who've stayed married for a long time, you know, they've fallen out of love, but they don't wanna be lonely. And I think that's a strong statement, man. I think that this is fundamentally a lonely journey even when there's 200 people in the building. Now there's no one in the building. That's for sure. No, it's, it's unimaginable, right? Yeah. A- a- and we're starting to see s- we're starting to see some of it already.

Like, y- you know, there's people who are out there building and building and building and building and building, and their, their heads are like... To me, the pre-seed space has gotten kind of bizarre all of a sudden. Like, it's really quiet. Not in the sense that nobody's doing anything. People are doing a lot of stuff, but there's not much noise around it, right?

The, the s- pre-seed used to kick up a ton of dust 'cause they were out trying to get any kind of attention they could so they could get a little bit of money so they could start to build stuff so they could start to cobble together the resource to build something. Now they're just heads down in a room by themselves cranking stuff out. Which, on one hand, I love, and on the other hand, we sort of kinda know what the costs of some of that stuff are in the long term, right?

Losing humanity in this entire thing is definitely not where we want it to go. But on the other hand, like, we can't pretend we still need teams when we don't. That's what's messing with me.

So, like, think about it like this. In the not too distant future, we're gonna be able to say, "Hey, this person would be a great addition to my team, but here's person and here's AI." Now, when we stack the two next to each other, AI costs next to nothing, so that's never gonna be taken off the table, right? Right. There's no version where a human's gonna go down to $400 a month, right? Or less, right? Not in this country, or not, not in the United States, but, uh- Yeah ... regardless, right?

The second part of it is AI is going to run without management. I don't mean management from the standpoint that I don't have to oversee it and make sure it's, it's running rules. I mean, it's not just angry today. It's not bitter about the decisions we've been making lately or, you know, all this, you know, emotional, uh, baggage that comes with every person you hire. Th- there's no question mark as to what AI's gonna give me.

Now, a couple things- Yeah ... you know, like the output could be a little bit of a black box, but when you hire somebody, uh, well, you're going off a resume, right? That means nothing. Everybody's resume's fake, right? Yeah. Like, I mean, I don't know how hard this person's actually gonna work. I don't know what they actually know. I don't know how agreeable they're gonna be. These are all things that I just used to have to deal with, right? Now I don't have to deal with any of them.

Don't have to. No. Now here's the point. Here's the setup. But I have to agree that all of those question marks and cost and everything else like that, and limitations- Yeah ... are worth more than doing it through AI. That's a tough sell, man. That's a tough sell. I'm saying even if I wanted the human, the math, I don't just mean numerically, probably won't check out more often than not, which makes it very- Yeah difficult to build a team.

Yeah. And I think, again, like, as you start to look around and you see everybody else starting to race to the bottom and try to create competitive advantage from this, at least in the short term you don't really have that much of a choice, if you wanna stay competitive, right, if you want to be able to continue to exist. And so I, I think that's the other thing that's, that's really bizarre about this is it isn't really a choice. It isn't really. Like, it looks like a choice.

Like, oh, I'll just, I choose to keep hiring people. You're also probably kinda choosing to not be around long enough to pay them very meaningful salaries, right? Like, well- Right ... here is your third paycheck, and with that, we're out of money, and so w- we're done. And so it leaves founders in a really weird position where it's not really a choice.

I mean, the choice is do I want to have a chance at succeeding or not, and if I- Right ... and if I do, I have to think about head count in a very, very different way. It's also typically your biggest expense by far, and consequentially your biggest liability, right? Yeah. So it's not like, oh, by the way, I'm gonna get Netflix and Hulu and, and both costs don't matter and, like, you know, whatever. This is, like, the number one thing that makes or breaks every single company, right?

Like, there's very few companies, unless you're, like, a manufacturer or something like that, that have a part of, of, of their income statement that's bigger than salaries. So the weight- of this decision is massive. And again, unlike we're gonna lease four more vans for our delivery service, right? Yeah. Vans are just vans. These are people. They've got emotions, they've got families, they've got lives, they've got opinions.

What you're bringing on isn't just a unit of production, it's a unit of frustration, like you call what it is, right? Think about, you know, we've been around for 15 years as a company. Think about all the characters we've had over the years. I know. You immediately laugh, right? And long-term friends that would fit into this, it's, you know, it's all over the map, but they're all characters, right? Yeah. Here's what I'm saying. We hired for the function, but that's not all that we got.

Yeah, correct. We hired a salesperson, but that's not all we got. Yeah. We got a person that could sell, but the amount of weight that came with that, the amount of baggage- Yeah ... the amount of headache, the amount of distraction, the amount of everything. That we also played some hockey with some of them, you know, there's, there's- Yeah, yeah. No, and, and look, this isn't a knock on anyone.

I, you know, I- Yeah ... I would put myself at the top of that category of personality to deal with and the weight and everything. I get it. I get it. It's nature of humans. But what I'm saying is that baggage, you know, those personalities, the quirks, the complaints, the, like, everything else like that, when you don't have to have it... Here's an example. Ryan, how many times have you committed a line of code so far and no one complained about what, the decision you made? All of them.

Like- All of them. Yeah ... 100% of the time, right? What version are you like, "You know what I'd really like? Is somebody to bitch and moan about this the entire time." Yeah. I need that. Come on, man. That, that is actually, that is the fuel of my soul. Yeah, right, right.

And so, at some point, if you're growing up on I ship code and no one complains- Yeah ... and all of a sudden you bring someone on and now they're complaining while doing the same thing you were doing five minutes ago- Yeah there's no version where you're like, "Man, I'm glad I'm paying 200 times what I w- I was paying yesterday for that- Right ... same outcome," right? And it makes it difficult. Here's what I would say.

You know, if we're looking at pros and cons, the pros, this is, uh, as it relates to, you know, uh, building up staff, whatever, is that you build some culture, you build some fabric. I would argue you're paying a massive premium for it, but those things do matter. If I look back at the things that I miss from work from home, and I'm sure you would agree, I miss being around my friends. I miss it.

Yeah. And while we do Zooms, and chats, and whatever, that's the equivalent of knowing- Quite the same people on social media. You post updates and quips, but it's not the same thing. We have kind of a unique situation there too, Will, which is that we started in person, right? Right. Like, most of our team has been with us long enough that they were in an office with us at some point. Correct. Right?

Right. And so I think that is exacerbated even worse, and so, like, we're talking from kind of with a half a deck of cards here because we haven't even fully experienced what that's like, right? When it's a remote interaction with a person you have literally never met in person- You bet ... your entire life. That's very different. You bet. And there's a trust that's built and things like that. Yeah. Right?

So I think that the human element is gonna transform from a, "I'm here because I have a capability you couldn't have five minutes ago," and it's- Yeah "I'm here because as a human I offer a dynamic, a vector that's missing, that you feel- Yeah ... that you need more of." And dude, it might just be companionship. Might be the same reason people get married, right? It might be. That's what I was saying, Bob the office pet, right? Right, right.

And while that's weird, I don't think it's that inconceivable. I'll take it back to the, the work from home. Sure. There's a lot of people, uh, managers- Yeah ... that insist on keeping everyone in the office, not because they actually believe the work can't get done, 'cause they don't wanna go home, right? Yeah. I mean, dude, I don't wanna undersell this for a second. I know an awful lot of CEOs, right?

Because that's just my job, and I have a awful lot of very candid conversations, and the ones that are all stalwarts about you have to come into the office all have a very specific situation that makes it- Yeah ... so there's a reason they wanna come into the office. They want to be in the office. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, I'm not saying it's bad necessarily. Right. I'm saying it's not out of nowhere. Like, I have an- Yeah ... amazing home life. Like, my wife and kids are just freaking amazing.

Zero friction. But if that were not the case, if my wife were up my ass all the time and my kids were just- Yeah ... uh, psychopaths, I'd wanna get the fuck out, right? I'd be like, "Hell yeah, we're having an office, and everybody has to come because I do," right? So I guess what I'm saying is I think that what's gonna push people outside, you know, the, the army of one, the team of one, is going to be a thirst for humanity, like that lack of connection. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's gonna take some time because I think- Yeah that's one of those hungers that has to build up a little bit. I- it's one of those things where we can say that now and we can intellectualize it, but I think until we've actually experienced it and gone like, "Damn, yeah, this is really, really lonely. Yeah, I am now shipping stuff all by myself, haven't had to talk to a human in, in two weeks, and oh my God, I haven't talked to a human in two weeks," right?

At some point- People all the time now. Yeah ... that, that bill starts to come due. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how long that actually takes. And I gotta say this, like personally, I think a startup that's made up of lots of people, lots of voices, lots of personality is really what a startup is meant to be in the same way I feel like that's what a community is meant to be, what a family- Yeah is meant to be, et cetera. It's this fabric and this tapestry of all these voices.

But the truth is not all those voices that used to get grandfathered in in the past just because they were the only person that could write code or the only person who knew accounting are getting an automatic Willy Wonka ticket to the table anymore. Right. And I think for a lot of startups, for a lot of founders, we're gonna be in a position f- for the first time that team of one is the default. Team of one, like, is how people build companies.

Yeah. And it will be a, both a luxury and a hard decision to add humans to this community, to this tapestry. I think that's a difficult future, but I don't think there's any question whatsoever that that is the future that we're all looking at right now. Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone? You don't have to, and honestly, you shouldn't, because instead, you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes.

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