How solopreneurs will use AI to rival mid-sized companies |
Through the end of the 2010s, people were a company’s infrastructure. Large workforces provided the scaffold upon which a business could build capacity for complexity: hire more people, take on more work.
Artificial intelligence has upended this relationship, decoupling a company’s potential productivity from its headcount and redefining which businesses will fare best.
As a result, America’s mid-sized companies are disappearing: the number of businesses with between 250 and 499 employees has fallen by 22.5% since 2020. Meanwhile, the independent professional economy is quickly growing to take their place: 30.4 million U.S. solopreneurs (businesses with a single employee) now collectively generate over $1.75 trillion in output, rivaling that of larger firms.
As mid-size companies dwindle, their economic role will be replaced by individuals using AI as their infrastructure. The next five years will see the rise of an entirely new model of work, one in which savvy service professionals—from lawyers to plumbers—will operate at a scale previously possible only for mid-sized or even larger companies.
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EXPANDING SOLO WORK
When surveyed, entrepreneurs note that they spend 36% of their working hours on administrative tasks, leaving little capacity to think about business growth or transformation.
Single process automations have historically helped to free up some of this brain space, but AI does this on an entirely different level. Pearl’s proprietary research shows 50% of white-collar workers believe AI could handle over half of their job responsibilities in the next five years. For a new crop of solopreneurs, AI will completely assume their burdensome administrative work.
But AI won’t be just another “force multiplier” akin to digitizing invoices in QuickBooks or tracking a customer’s status in Salesforce. For solopreneurs, AI will add entirely new forces, equipping them with super agents to expand their business to the heft of a mid-sized firm while leaving them room to focus on mastering their craft.
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