Agency Is Eating the World: How AI and Action-Driven Founders Are Changing Startups Forever
Forget credentials. In the AI era, the real advantage is speed, leverage, and unstoppable personal agency. Here’s how a new generation of founders is outbuilding entire companies.
In 2023, Sam Altman predicted:
"Soon, a single person will build a billion-dollar company."
Two years later, it’s no longer a prediction — it’s happening.
If you're waiting for permission, you're already too late.
A new breed of startup founder is emerging:
Lean, unconventional, unstoppable — fueled by AI leverage and personal agency.
The critical dividing line is no longer skills, degrees, or pedigree.
It's agency:
The internal drive to act without waiting for instructions.
Why Agency Is the Ultimate Edge
For decades, we lived in the Age of Specialization.
Get good at one thing.
Climb the corporate ladder.
Obey gatekeepers and get certified.
Today, specialization still matters — but only when you choose to be specialized, not because you have to be.
High-agency founders don’t wait to be certified.
They don’t ask: "Am I allowed?"
They ask: "How fast can I ship?"
In the AI economy, the ability to move, adapt, and build beats almost everything else.
Specialists Are Out, Speed Is In
In the old world:
Founders needed huge teams to build anything meaningful.
Today:
A solo founder armed with AI tools can outmaneuver a 50-person startup.
🛠 MVP development: Replit, GPT-4, Claude, Midjourney
📈 Customer acquisition: AI ad platforms, automated SEO tools
📊 Analytics and iteration: AI data assistants
What took $1M and 12 months now takes $1K and 4 weeks.
Example:
A founder builds a SaaS MVP with Replit in 2 weeks.
Launches a no-code website on Webflow in 2 days.
Deploys an AI ad campaign to find first users the same week.
No meetings. No VC permission. No HR department.
Just action.
Solo Empires
This isn’t theory anymore.
We're seeing real-world proof:
Midjourney: 40 employees, $500M+ annual revenue
Super.com: $150M ARR, built by a radically lean team
Replit: Reached millions of users with an ultra-small core team early on
Stability.ai: Hugely influential despite tiny headcount compared to Big Tech
Even individual operators like Henri Shi (ex-super.com) are chasing the dream of one-person billion-dollar companies, publicly tracking $2.8M revenue per employee.
This is no longer a sideshow.
It’s the beginning of a massive shift.
Forget Skills — Do You Have the Will?
The game has changed.
Today’s real advantage isn’t about:
Where you went to school.
What your GPA was.
Which tech giant you interned at.
It’s about:
Can you move faster than anyone else?
Can you ship even when you're not ready?
Can you figure it out without waiting for validation?
The winners in this new world will be the ones who refuse to sit still.
Not the smartest.
Not the most credentialed.
The most agentic.
Where Credentials Still Matter (and Where They Don’t)
Let’s be clear:
Not every industry gets flattened overnight.
Where credentials and specialization still dominate:
Healthcare (regulation, risk)
Defense (trust, critical security)
Aerospace (life-critical engineering)
Biotechnology (deep scientific validation)
But everywhere else?
If you're willing to move fast, experiment wildly, and accept some risk...
You can win big without a traditional background.
Industries most vulnerable to high-agency disruption:
Software
Education
Media and entertainment
Consumer apps
SaaS tools
Fintech
E-commerce
AI-enabled services
Wherever the cost of a mistake is recoverable, agency and speed crush pedigree.
The New Playbook for High-Agency Founders
If you want to win in this new world:
Bias to Action:
Spend 80% of your time building and testing, not theorizing.Use AI as Leverage:
Treat AI not as a threat, but as an extension of your will.Architect > Implementer:
Understand systems and workflows. Execution details can be augmented.Ignore Traditional Gatekeepers:
Credentials, awards, publications — they're nice-to-haves. Not requirements.Fail Fast and Rebuild Faster:
Speed of iteration beats correctness of iteration.
The new competitive edge is simple:
Out-ship. Out-learn. Outlast.
A Framework: The 3 Levers of the High-Agency Founder
1. Leverage:
Use technology (AI, no-code, automation) to multiply output.
2. Speed:
Shorten every feedback loop. Launch, learn, and relaunch faster than anyone else.
3. Psychological Flexibility:
Detach from sunk costs. Kill bad ideas quickly. Follow momentum.
This simple 3-part model explains almost every breakout startup story emerging today.
Case Studies: High-Agency in Action
Wilbur and Orville Wright
No degrees in engineering. Built the first airplane because they refused to believe it was impossible.
Midjourney
Tiny team. Outsized results. An entire AI image generation revolution — launched and scaled with ruthless speed.
Super.com (Henri Shi)
Built a $150M ARR business by operating faster and leaner than incumbents with 10x headcount.
James Cameron
Trucked by day, photocopied USC film dissertations by night — taught himself enough to create "Avatar" and "Titanic."
FAQ: Agency, AI, and High-Agency Startups
What does "agency" mean in startups?
In startups, agency is the internal ability to act without waiting for permission, validation, or perfect conditions.
High-agency founders don’t ask "Is this allowed?" — they ask "How fast can I make this happen?"
They take action, solve problems creatively, build products rapidly, and move forward even when facing uncertainty.
In today’s AI-driven startup environment, personal agency is often a bigger advantage than education, experience, or funding.
Can one person really build a billion-dollar company?
Yes — and it's happening faster than expected.
Thanks to powerful AI tools, no-code platforms, and scalable cloud services, solo founders can now create, launch, and grow companies that once required dozens (or even hundreds) of employees.
Examples like Midjourney, super.com, and early-stage Replit prove that lean, high-agency teams can generate massive revenue and impact.
AI dramatically lowers the cost of execution — making the dream of the one-person billion-dollar company increasingly realistic.
How does AI specifically empower high-agency founders?
AI acts as a force multiplier for founders by automating tasks that used to require multiple specialized roles:
Building products: AI coding agents like Replit and GPT-4 accelerate software development.
Design and branding: AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E create high-quality visuals instantly.
Marketing and growth: AI ad platforms automate customer acquisition, A/B testing, and content generation.
Operations and analytics: AI assistants manage workflows, analyze data, and optimize business processes.
In short, AI gives founders the ability to build faster, cheaper, and with fewer barriers — letting personal agency become the primary driver of success.
Which industries are most impacted by high-agency founders and AI?
Industries where speed, creativity, and iteration matter most are being disrupted the fastest:
Software and SaaS: Fast MVPs, AI-driven feature development
Education technology: AI tutors, online learning platforms
Consumer technology and mobile apps: Solo founders launching viral apps
Marketing and media: AI-generated ads, content, social media growth
E-commerce: Personalized AI storefronts, automated customer service
Industries where specialization still matters (for now):
Healthcare (due to regulation and critical safety standards)
Defense and aerospace
Biotechnology and advanced research fields
In these regulated sectors, expertise and credentialism will remain important — but even here, AI is starting to make inroads.
How can I develop more agency as a founder?
If you want to become a high-agency founder, focus on building these habits:
Ship faster: Launch prototypes, MVPs, and experiments instead of overplanning.
Trust your judgment: Stop waiting for external validation before acting.
Leverage AI tools: Automate tasks and build faster using AI copilots.
Ignore traditional gatekeepers: Don’t wait for VCs, press, or institutions to give you permission.
Act before you feel ready: Progress compounds when you operate with urgency.
Agency is like a muscle — the more you practice fast, independent action, the stronger it becomes.
What are examples of high-agency companies built with AI leverage?
Here are some standout examples of companies that reflect high-agency principles:
Midjourney: AI image generation leader with only ~40 employees and $500M+ in annual revenue.
Replit: AI coding platform helping millions of users build apps with minimal technical friction.
Stability AI: An open-source AI company built rapidly outside traditional corporate models.
super.com: Scaled to $150M+ ARR by operating faster and leaner than traditional startups.
Hugging Face: Became a central AI platform for developers and researchers with a scrappy, product-first approach.
New solo-founder startups using GPT-4, Claude, and open-source AI frameworks are emerging daily — often reaching thousands (or millions) of users with minimal headcount.
Why is agency becoming more important than education or experience in startups?
Because AI has commoditized specialized skills.
A founder can now build a working app without knowing how to code.
A marketing campaign can be launched without hiring an agency.
A full business model can be designed, tested, and iterated in weeks — not years.
This shift means the bottleneck is no longer knowledge.
The bottleneck is action.
Those who move first, adapt quickly, and learn in public will dominate — regardless of degrees, résumés, or credentials.
I'm genuinely happy that you've inspired by my work, but it would be classy to at least quote it, no? https://www.piratewires.com/p/agency-is-eating-the-world
I think you forgot to add this part:
"This article is heavily inspired by George Mack’s incredible piece on High Agency, which you should absolutely read here: https://www.highagency.com/. He spent 7 months developing it."
Worth giving credit where it's due, especially when promoting agency.