In the past, if someone claimed they ran a company with annual revenue of NT$ tens of millions, yet employed no staff, most people would probably think it was either fraud or some kind of financial miracle.
After generative AI rapidly became widespread, companies like this started appearing around the world.
In the past, entrepreneurship required a team, capital, and large amounts of manpower. But as AI gradually takes over tasks like software development, customer service, operations, and marketing, the “one-person company” has shifted from being a rare case to increasingly becoming a startup trend worth paying attention to.
But everyone’s questions are remarkably consistent: Is it really true? Where are the real examples?
According to the (Wall Street Journal)’s follow-up reporting, a small business meetup compiled three representative cases of one-person companies.
Startup from the living room—projected revenue breaks 300 million yuan
Ben Broca, a 40-year-old entrepreneur, is a representative case of this wave.
At the end of 2024, he founded an AI startup, Polsia, in the living room of his home in California, U.S., creating a substitute AI team solution designed specifically for entrepreneurs. In less than a year, it accumulated more than 10,000 paying users, and it is projected that this year’s revenue will exceed $10 million (about NT$320 million).
According to the Polsia official website, the service claims it can replace most roles in day-to-day business operations—from planning product development, writing code, to running ads, managing social media, and even replying to customer messages and completing transactions. It covers nearly all core work needed for a company from product development to operations.
But until now, Polsia still has only one employee—that is, Broca himself.
In the past, work that required an entire department to complete is now mostly handled by AI. Broca focuses on product direction and major decisions, while the rest of the operational processes are almost entirely automated.
In an interview, Broca said he really enjoys this way of working. In his view, the larger the team, the more compromises and communication costs there are, while AI allows him to maintain the agility of the early startup stage.
If Broca proved that AI can support a company’s day-to-day operations, then another question worth paying attention to is: can people without an engineering background also build their own products with AI?
Related coverage: Polsia raises $30 million in funding! The company name spelled backward reads AI Slop; overseas media say it’s not a real one-person company.
People without an engineering background can also start a business solo with AI.
Claire Vo, 41, was once a senior executive at a technology company. At the end of 2023, she was suddenly inspired and used ChatGPT to help write code, developing an AI product management tool called ChatPRD. She hoped to help product managers complete product requirement documents and product planning work more quickly.
ChatPRD can quickly turn scattered ideas, meeting notes, or simple prompts (Prompts) into complete product requirement documents (PRD), technical specifications, use-case scenarios, and even a go-to-market plan—dramatically shortening the time needed for product planning and cross-department communication.
Claire shared that in the early days of her startup, she even simply “copied and pasted” the code generated by ChatGPT to complete product development. And after the product was launched at a price of $1 per month, within just a few weeks it attracted thousands of users.
In the first nine months after the company was founded, she operated entirely on her own until the product gradually grew and only then hired her first engineer. Today, ChatPRD has accumulated more than 100,000 users, and this year its profit is expected to exceed seven figures (more than $1 million).
For Claire, AI is not only a tool to help develop products—it also plays roles in marketing, customer service, and sales, enabling a one-person company to quickly complete product validation and commercialization.
Did AI truly lower the barrier to entrepreneurship?
If the previous founder showed how AI can increase a single person’s productivity in that field, then the next story reflects how AI is changing the barriers to entrepreneurship across different domains.
Troy Johnston, 40, previously worked mainly in operating e-commerce brands. At the time, because he needed to manage more than 15 personal and business credit cards at once, he decided to develop tools himself for that purpose.
So he used AI to help write code and independently developed a credit card benefits management app called StackEasy, helping users track the balances of multiple credit cards, the expiration dates for offers, and the best rewards strategy.
At present, the company still has no employees; monthly profit remains stable at around $3,000 and continues to grow.
Although the scale hasn’t reached the level of the first two cases, Johnston believes that AI is like the “sword in the stone” from myth—now everyone has a chance to pull it out and gain this powerful capability. In the past, building a product required industry background, funding, and technical barriers; but today, with good use of AI, even a solo founder has a chance to succeed.
AI became the team’s co-founder and also redefined the rules of competition.
The development of these three cases is not an uncommon exception—it's that the global startup model is changing.
According to Stripe’s analysis, among entrepreneurs who use Stripe payment services, the number of companies generating $1 million in revenue with a one-person setup is increasing rapidly. Of these, one-person companies with annual revenue over $1 million doubled from 2023 to 2025; those that surpassed $10 million in annual revenue grew nearly three times during the same period.
Stripe’s chief economist Ernie Tedeschi said in an interview with the (Wall Street Journal) that in the past, people who lacked technical backgrounds or business resources—no matter how good their ideas were—often couldn’t truly start a business. Today, AI is gradually becoming every founder’s “co-founder,” significantly lowering the barriers to product development and operations.
This change is also reflected in startup data.
According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of new companies applying in the “Information Technology” industry increased by nearly 45% over the past year, the fastest-growing category among all industries. On the other hand, the hiring intention of newly formed companies has clearly declined.
In other words, there are more people who become entrepreneurs, but there are fewer people that entrepreneurship requires.
Although AI makes one-person companies possible, Troy Johnston points out that AI not only makes it easier for oneself to start a business, but also enables everyone to build products and validate ideas faster—even to “copy” other people’s business models.
When the technical barrier is greatly lowered, the real competitive advantage will no longer come from capital or scale, but from who can build a brand faster, accumulate user trust, and continue to create differentiated value that’s difficult to replace.
This article is reprinted with authorization from: (Entrepreneurial Roundtable)
Original title: (Is a One-Person Company Really Feasible! 3 Real Cases of Building a Billion-Dollar-Level Product with AI—No Coding Needed)
Original author: Harper Chen
“Is a one-person company really feasible! 3 cases of building a billion-level product with AI without knowing how to code” was first published on “Jia Mi Cheng Shi.”