Why One-Person Teams Win

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Before the first click, before the first form fill. That's the moment HubSpot AEO is built for. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. I want to talk about the new structure for startup teams.

So the new structure for startup teams is one person team. So let me show you what I mean by this. So Coinbase, they are talking about this concept known as the pod of one. So this is the new organization, the new org building block.

So as a Coinbase board member, this is Goku, uh, It's been a privilege to watch Brian Armstrong, which is CEO and the Coinbase team build a true AI native company. So the one thing that's worth calling out here is this, okay? He's like, I want to focus on one thing that Coinbase is testing, which is quote unquote, one person product teams, all right?

So most of the AI discourse has focused on one-person companies. The most powerful and more broadly applicable construct will likely be one-person teams inside companies. So the old product org split across three people. You had the designer for user experience.

You had the product manager held the customer in prioritization context. And then you had the engineer that held the code and systems context. Coordination was the price you paid to combine those views into one shipping decisions. Agents reduced that coordination cost.

This is interesting, Neil, because earlier we had just talked about how we're seeing a rise in product manager job postings. It went from $10,000 to a low of $4,000. Now it's up 79%. So a single high agency person can now ask agents to draft flows, write code, run QA, summarize customer feedback, generate variance, check edge cases, and produce release notes.

Here's what I want to call it, and then we can react to this. So I think this one person product team, it could be a product manager. It could be a designer. It could be a developer.

It could be any of those. If they have taste around all these areas, if you're a designer, you might have more taste around design. Okay. That's how your product team is going to look over there.

If you have, you're an engineer. Okay. You have more engineering taste, but you can do all these things together now. And this model rewards a very specific kind of builder.

They're technical enough to inspect the work. They're product money enough to choose the right problem. Very important. Tasteful enough to reject mediocre output.

Designers are good at that. Fast enough to ship before the org forms around the idea. The scarce skill is judgment. What do we think about this? I think it's great.

I have no issues with it. I like it. I also read it earlier too. You also what? I also read it earlier because I saw it right when it went live. Yeah.

So here's what I think about this. I think that, sure, one-person companies are interesting. I still think you're going to need people no matter what. If you want to build a really good company, everything around this world is based on people.

I'm sorry. It's the world we live in, right? And I do agree that scarce skill is judgment. But this is why we've been saying that AI-pilled people, this is the forming of it, right?

One-person product teams is, in fact, a super AI-pilled person. And that's why... I'm stretching our people as much as we can. Literally, our people are going through a hackathon right now.

Actually, Chris from my team is watching this as he's doing the hackathon right now on the team. So, hey, Chris. But my point is you have to, one, both Meals Company and my company, we're trying to create the conditions for success so we can have these one-person teams. That's exactly what we're trying to do.

And most people, they want to come along. You just got to set the conditions for them to be successful. And there's going to be some people that don't want to come along. So I said to Neil last week or maybe the week before, I was like, I'm counting on people to get better.

I'm also counting on some people who don't want to take the ride to not want to take the ride and kind of self-select themselves out. Right. And that's why there's so much intensity going into this right now. So.

Yeah. And when Coinbase and others talk about a one-person product team that can do a lot of stuff, I think this kind of stuff is amazing for startups and companies that are trying to iterate and just get stuff out really quickly. But no matter what, if you want to build something big, it's not going to end up being one person. You're going to have to add more people to the mix.

And yes, it can slow things down if you add too many people. But eventually, you're going to have to have more people whether it's for product or marketing or any roles you can't be uh clawed and only have one person in marketing or anthropic and one person in marketing and they can do everything if they can do everything that means you're using tons of agencies and contractors and vendors all right so let me show you something neil i had actually formed a model on this i've been working with my my um my hermes agent um

Thank you, Job. Or I don't know if I pronounce it. Job Knob. I don't know how to pronounce it. Jobay? Jobay. Always a treat jumping into a think tank with these two legends.

Thank you for that. We appreciate that. All right, Neil, check this out. So I'm literally working on this kind of new model for how we're thinking about, you know,

agency basically so the old old operating model is up here okay this is a .md file right here so uh proposed operating model uh from agency positive agent native revenue loop so this is from a services context okay so old operating model is you have a client account um

your client account up top so let's say it's like i don't know um mattel or something like that okay client account up top you have an account manager this is the agency you have a strategist and seo specialist paid media specialist content team designer developer depending on whatever services that they're paying for analytics support reporting and qa and the characteristics of the old model is work organized by function organized by function human specialists perform most production knowledge lives in people and scattered documentation Reporting is often retrospective. You do like a post-mortem, right?

Margin improves mainly through utilization and staffing leverage. Okay, that model is starting to crumble a little bit, right? The future operating model, again, you don't need all this over here. This is just like assuming it's completely built out.

You have a client revenue system. So you have an outcome owner. Okay, it's like, hey, we're going to deliver more leads for you. You have a strategic lead, the smart marketer that I think is the MVP of this or the leader.

Channel loop owner. So what a loop is, Neil, is when you have multiple parts of the process, keyword research, content production, the reviewing of the content, the linking, internal linking, backlinking, all these things. That is an entire loop. So you might have acquisition loops, conversion loops.

This is where you might have your channel specialists running these loops and then you have an agent fleet layer where you have the engineers making these agents right so my point of saying all this guys is it's time to move into the future you have work organized by business loops and outcome agents handle repeatable execution and monitoring knowledge compounds and infrastructure reporting becomes continuous insight and action margin improves through automation reuse and productized discovery so I think I don't care if you're a product company right now. I don't care if you are a services company.

This is how this stuff is going to look, and it's going to be organized in this way. And I think these one-person teams are going to be sitting in these different roles. They're just going to be doing more. That's what we've been getting at.

The one thing I would add, though, Eric has on the bottom margin improves through automation, reuse, and productized delivery. Productized delivery. Sorry, it's a little hard for me to read. Yeah.

Your margins, as they improve, I recommend that you double down and you do more and keep your margins the same, but just give more for the money because that's the way you're going to win in today's world. Because if you just try to ink out more profits, I believe someone else is just going to come in and run a similar playbook and offer to do it for cheaper. So the one who provides more value, goes above and beyond, I believe is the one who's going to win. We should talk about that, Neil.

I mean, when you think about Silicon Valley startups, for example, they raise a bunch of money. Their VCs don't want them to become profitable. They want them to grow even faster. So they want all that money to go back.

And we're like, oh my God, it's not profitable. It's losing so much money, right? The reason, I remember sitting with taxi drivers like, oh, he called me an idiot, basically, right? Like, oh, that business going out of business.

You have no idea what's going to happen, right? And it's talking down to me, basically. I'm like, okay. Yeah. yeah they're like they're not making any money they're losing money they're not profitable they're gonna go out of business i'm like okay sure so look at uber now very strong business right and you got uber eats they have all these different lines um and so my point of saying this is that neil is saying hey not necessarily you don't want to burn cash exactly like a silicon valley startup because maybe you can't afford to because you didn't raise a bunch of money but you want to maybe take elements of that thinking to say hey

What did Jeff Bezos say before? Your margin is my opportunity. Again, your margin is my opportunity. So that margin that you could be taking in for yourself right now, the profits, if you spend it more on better people on your team, right?

You grow your team out more, which will lead to more product investment, more services investment. It's going to be better for you in the long run because it's very much like we're kind of exploring in this new world right now. You want to explore as much as you can and it takes resources to be able to explore. Yeah, dude.

Again, we'll see what happens in a few years, but I think it's going to be a fun journey. Quick break. Look, I know what you're thinking. Another AI content tool, great, more garbage content on the internet.

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Yeah. So speaking of fun journey, Neil, Amazon wants to own your supply chain now. I Supply chain as a service. Everything as a service, Neil. Dog walking as a service.

Supply chain as a service. I love it. It caused FedEx and UPS's stock to go down. How much? Enough where it was on the financial sites, but I don't own UPS or FedEx stock, so I didn't pay attention.

Do you own Amazon? No comment. Okay, we'll just leave it at that. Alright, so... Any business can now move, store, and deliver anything from raw materials to finished products using the same supply chain that supports Amazon and its independent selling partners.

So here's what I'll call out. Neil and I, we use Amazon all the time, okay? When Neil gave me these beautiful yogurt gummies called Yogis, I ordered it immediately. It showed up the next day.

That is logistical magic. When he wanted Groons, he ordered it from Amazon, right? When I'm on the plane, I'm ordering from Amazon so stuff shows up back at my place already. So Amazon's logistics, I think, is second to none.

And now this is a service that's available to anybody. But when I say anybody, I'm not just saying every human. It's also available to every agent as well. Like earlier we talked about, oh, you can now buy, your agents can now purchase using Stripe, okay?

And now your agents can now buy online infrastructure. They can also leverage Amazon's logistics network to help sell stuff for you, or they can just take care of stuff themselves, right? So this part is really important. This is a physical part of the world.

And I just think this is great. This is now called... Amazon Supply Chain Services, ASCS, opening its freight distribution fulfillment and parcel shipping capabilities to businesses of all types and sizes. Leading brands, Procter & Gamble, 3M, Lens, and American Eagle Outfitters are among the first to sign up.

Look, Neil and I, we don't sell physical products, but in this type of world, maybe we will have some physical products just for the hell of it, right? Because it's pretty easy to just get going now. Yeah.

On a side note, if you want another good snack, because Eric's talking about yogis, when we were doing podcast recordings for like one or two times, I brought him this snack that my kids eat, which is just like a little bread stick, but it has like a little chocolate mushroom shape on top. So it's like a chocolate cracker that's shaped in the form of a mushroom. It's really tiny. Yeah.

So then he wanted something else the other time that was a little bit more healthier, got the yogis. But if you want another version that my kids love is go to Erwan, order Painterland Sisters yogurt, and get vanilla flavor. Vanilla bean, I believe, is the flavor. They have a lot of them in stock.

You can Uber Eats it. Get Ghirardelli chocolate chips, the baking ones, and pop them in there, mix it. It tastes like delicious ice cream that's pretty healthy for you. Neil, what a bad user experience.

You can't talk about it and not show it, okay? This is what Neil's talking about over here. These are the Meiji Choco Shrooms, okay? Choco Rooms. Chocolatey cap with a crispy cracker.

You know what, Neil? Since you said that, add to cart, okay? I'll show you. All right. So, but this, this looks pretty good. I've had some of these. I'm just like, I don't want to eat too much chocolate, but because Neil spited me, there's a chocolatey cap with a crispy cracker.

And you look at all this stuff. I like dark chocolate here and all this other stuff. And all these, you know, how many of those bags I have in my house? If you had a guess, how many do you think?

I think you probably have like six boxes of these. I have like hundreds. Hundreds. Yeah. So 24 times six. There you go. We get the bigger bags. So ours don't have 24 per box, but it's a similar sized box.

But the bags are bigger and there's more chocolates in each bag. But we have at least 100 to 200 of them sitting in the house. 100 easily, maybe 200. while we're doing this, we might as well pull up the yogis too.

So, uh, the yogis, I would just go for the strawberry on this side. Okay. Strawberry is great. These are like real fruit bites coated in creamy yogurt.

Okay. So we're, we're now sharing, we're sharing our product tastes with you all. Um, But check out Painterland Sisters. You're going to have to Google it.

Vanilla bean flavor. I'm telling you, dude, just put the Ghirardelli chocolate chips in there. It tastes better than having like a chocolate chip ice cream. And it's healthier.

A lot healthier. High protein. The Painterland Sisters yogurt. Uh-huh. They sell it in Irwan. Oh. And if you have lactose problems, it's lactose-free, so you won't have issues.

I don't like yogurt. Anyway, well, Neil, we have two more minutes here, so what do you got in two minutes? Anything fun to share that you're working on?

One project. One project that I'm working on? Okay, you'll like this one. I'm trying to figure out how to dominate China in marketing. Okay. Yeah, I'm talking to a few people who are really good with China.

Because here's the thing. China, I know a lot of people don't care for it as a market, at least people in the US. But when my mom keeps getting packages every single day from Timu, you know, like, why am I not the agency that's not only helping companies market in China, but helping these massive Chinese companies? Because there's so many of them now.

Market to other regions in Europe and Latin America and America, etc. Like, dude, some of these Chinese companies are just massive and they print cash. And it's like, this is a great market to enter into. Not only do I want to speak there at least four times a year.

If anyone's well connected with China, hit me up. And, you know, I'm trying to figure out how to build a team there over time. I love it. Well, great.

You will have a lot of experiences there. Just me saying this as a Chinese person, but I think it's a good market. You're definitely going to have a lot of experiences.

But before we change on the experience, one thing that China does, like I use Uber Eats. So typically when I go to a hotel, I find that it's easier to just order Uber Eats than it is to get room service. And it is genuinely usually cheaper to use Uber Eats and actually get the room service.

But it depends on the country. I was just in Spain. I was at the JW Marriott. Room service for four eggs and toast. I did not get a ball of water because I had free ones in the room.

It was $11. $11. $11? Yeah. At that point, I don't do Uber Eats. The cost is just amazing. And I know that this kind of stuff makes me sound cheap, but it's harder to earn money than it is to save it.

So I try to think twice before I spend my money. But in China or in a lot of hotels, when you order Uber Eats, they make you go down to get it. In China, a robot comes up and delivers it to your door and you just pull it out. And I'm like, this is great.

Yep. They're very much living in the future. I'll just leave it at that. So Neil's working on that. If you're connected in China, reach out to him. Here's what I'll show you.

I've been working on. Then we can get out of here. We should do this every now and then, Neil. We should do it at the end of every episode. What are we working on this week?

Yeah. So dude, this site, look at this single brain, right? One trusted brain for clients. So we're getting a lot of interest in this right now. And here's the thing I'll say about people looking for our revenue agents.

Um, when typically when you get on a sales call, sometimes they'll, they'll like, they'll ghost you, right? Nobody ghosts in this scenario. Okay, so this is our new singlebrain.com website. And it talks about like the marketing partner companies can't outgrow.

You know, we have this one brain, this one agent that manages the specialist fleet of, you know, revenue agents or marketing agents, whatever it is exactly. And it kind of explains the infrastructure. So Neil, I'm sure like those of you that can't see this right now, This website I created using Claude Design, and I got my OpenClaw to then deploy it on singlebrain.com, and then this logo was created by my team.

But this is pretty good. I came up with this concept known as SSR. You want your agents to be secure, stable, and reliable. SSR grade trust, right? Sock 2 compliant.

And then single grain becomes a marketing partner companies cannot outgrow by giving each client one trusted brain connected to a managed fleet of specialist agents on isolated deployments built to SSR grade trust. Dude, the typography here is good. I'd even write this stuff, Neil.

Now zoom into the logo. I can't see the logo. Did they put a brain in there? It'd be cool if they did. No, it's just a single grain logo, but a circle.

It kind of looks like a brain, no? No, I can't. It doesn't look like a brain when you zoom in, but it's too hard for me to tell on my screen. No, I also think it's smart that you kept the original single grain icon in there, so that way it ties them together.

Dude, and look at this. I was going to give up on the second page over here. I'm just like, I'm too lazy to get the second page up. And I was like, huh.

Cloud design, just make the second page done. And the cool thing is, Neil, when I deployed this, I went to my open call. I was like, hey, are we going to carry over the pixels, like the tracking pixels, the conversion stuff?

Everything flowed to the new version, and it did a smoke test first. I'm just like, dude, Neil, this would have taken us weeks to do, and now I can do this end-to-end. Isn't that crazy? What a good life.

Still, we both still recommend having human modified and fine tuning it and optimizing for conversions and stuff. But you should be using this for V1. Why not? Quick and decent.

Quick and decent. Uh-huh. What I've been pushing my team on is not just V1, keep iterating it on V2, V3, V4. And then when it gets like V5, then have a human go with it.

Dude, and now that you have slash goal with OpenAI, it literally will just continue to work. And that's when you use Codex, the app with it. And I'll leave you with one more thing before we go here.

OpenAI just came out with this thing called Symfony. Neil, remember like the Trello boards, like the Kanban boards where it's like doing, done? So you can now just give the tickets... to the ai and it'll just continue to do the tickets over time and you can continue to fill it up and so now it's becoming more and more autonomous right that's why a lot of people are switching to to codex symphony uh using 5.5 using slash goal so there's a lot of crazy stuff happening that's why you guys should stick around check us out on youtube subscribe there um now come to us over on x because we're both going to have post-roll ads for our stuff too um but that being said yeah we'll talk to you guys later bye