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The startup playbook that built Uber, Airbnb, and DoorDash is becoming obsolete in real-time. As AI compresses jobs that once required hundreds of employees into algorithms, we’re witnessing the birth of a new company archetypecapital-efficient, immediately profitable, and surprisingly small. With a variety of software to use for all aspects of building a businessfrom Shopify for e-commerce to Stripe for paymentsand low operating costs, innovation just keeps making everything that much more efficient. Advancements in AI are turbocharging this even further. Now, companies not only need less software and less capital for solutions to get off the ground, but they also simply need fewer people. From marketing to design to data management, AI can perform and accelerate many processes that take place in a growing company. Whether its automating website copy and social posts, assisting with interface and ad design, or even processing data sets to inform strategic decisions, many are already using AI to do this and more. This means it now takes the least amount of money it ever has to grow and scale a company. As a result, revenue scale is being achieved with the fewest number of employees ever and profitability is soon to follow suit. Acquisitions and IPOs are out of date Starting a company the old way was coming up with an innovative idea, followed by creating a minimal viable product and getting users. Raising venture capital to fund additional growth was the traditional next step, with ownership of the company being diluted every step of the way as new and necessary capital came in in which was needed to reach true scale. An ideal outcome would then be an exit through an acquisition or an IPO, but the odds are actually often against the company in that instance. In fact, only 11.5 percent of companies actually reach a good exit within the first five years. And when they do exit, the teams ownership has often been so diluted that their stake in a $100M sale could be less than if they raised just a few million and sold for $25M. Sometimes, consistently batting singles and doubles is better than trying to swing for home runs. The $100M company with one employee More and more stories like this are surfacing. Companies are reevaluating the need for venture capital and how much, if any, money to raise. Theres a lot of talk about the first $100M revenue company with just one employee because of AI, and were getting closer to that every day. In general, companies utilizing AI to its maximum potential are proving to be extremely efficient in terms of revenue per employee, because there is less needed to achieve the same growth trajectories. The best case study for this may be Midjourney, a company which has raised no outside capital at all but was last projected to be valued at more than $10B, in 2023, if they were to go out and fundraisea number that is likely even higher now given the companys continued growth. Because its easier than its ever been to start, grow, scale, and become profitable, the question now is, How much money companies should be raising? When theres so many more viable options, some have begun to wonder why raise money at all. New forms of financing All of this raises another fundamental question: What does this mean for the future of the tech ecosystem? The new normal may become financing through debt. If companies can turn a profit sooner than ever and the ability to get there requires far fewer employees, there are a lot more financing options for EBITDA-positive companies, including raising debt from banks, which is relatively inexpensive, or securing financing using revenue as the collateral. Because raising money from VCs requires diluting ownership and answering to shareholders, it is far and away the most expensive capital a company can find. If theres a world where capital can just come from debt, companies will get the best of both worlds: scaling the business on their terms while retaining ownership the entire way. This is likely going to be one of the most popular options in the AI-first era. Disrupting the conventional VC model VCs, meanwhile, will have to adapt their approach to adjust for a world in which their capital is simply less interesting to a company. Traditionally, their model is to get outsized returns from a handful of investments, which offsets the losses from the majority of the investments that dont return anything. VCs usually do this by investing and gaining significant ownership stakes in companies over time, reinvesting in round after round of the winners in their portfolio. These companies historically have come back for more capital because that was the way it was always done. That looks a lot different now when the companies they want to invest in only need to raise very little capital and in turn they dont get the ownership stake they need to generate those outsized returns. To keep up, VCs can look to new models and find companies outside of their normal view. It may look a bit less like software, and more like service-based companies that they previously avoided. These businesses are still ripe for disruption and have the potential to experience a dramatic lift from incorporating new technologyspecifically AIinto the mix. Investing in these types of businesses gives VCs the chance to capture the traditional types of returns over time, even if it starts to look more like private equity. The model becomes less about picking a handful of big winners, and more about ensuring that the majority of the companies they invest in are successful, even if just modestly. An existential question The next decade won’t just transform what startups build, but it will fundamentally reinvent how they’re built. The companies that thrive won’t necessarily be the ones with the most capital, but those that strategically deploy technology to maximize impact with minimal overhead. For companies and investors alike, adapting isn’t optionalit’s existential.
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E-Commerce
The first 27 satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday, kicking off the long-delayed deployment of an internet-from-space network that will rival SpaceX’s Starlink. The satellites are the first of 3,236 that Amazon plans to send into low-Earth orbit for Project Kuiper, a $10 billion effort unveiled in 2019 to beam broadband internet globally for consumers, businesses and governmentscustomers that SpaceX has courted for years with its powerful Starlink business. Sitting atop an Atlas V rocket from the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint-venture United Launch Alliance, the batch of 27 satellites was lofted into space at 7 p.m. EDT pm from the rocket company’s launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Bad weather scrubbed an initial launch attempt on April 9. Kuiper is arguably Amazon’s biggest bet under way, pitting it against Starlink as well as global telecommunications providers like AT&T and T-Mobile. The company has positioned the service as a boon to rural areas where connectivity is sparse or nonexistent. The mission to deploy the first operational satellites has been delayed more than a yearAmazon once hoped it could launch the inaugural batch in early 2024. The company faces a deadline set by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to deploy half its constellation, 1,618 satellites, by mid-2026, but its slower start means Amazon is likely to seek an extension, analysts say. Hours or possibly days after the launch, Amazon is expected to publicly confirm initial contact with all of the satellites from its mission operations center in Redmond, Washington. If all goes as planned, the company said it expects to “begin delivering service to customers later this year.” ULA could launch up to five more Kuiper missions this year, ULA CEO Tory Bruno told Reuters in an interview this month. Amazon said in a 2020 FCC filing that it could begin service in some northern and southern regions at 578 satellites, with coverage expanding toward Earth’s equator as the company launches more satellites. The Web services and e-commerce giant’s Project Kuiper is an ambitious foray into space, with a late start in a market dominated by SpaceX. But Amazon executives see the company’s deep consumer product experience and established cloud computing business that Kuiper will connect with as an edge over Starlink. Amazon launched two prototype satellites in 2023 in tests it said were successful, before de-orbiting them in 2024. It had been relatively quiet about the program’s development until announcing its first Kuiper launch plans earlier this month. ‘ROOM FOR LOTS OF WINNERS’ Elon Musk’s SpaceX, with a unique edge as both a satellite operator and launch company with its reusable Falcon 9, has put more than 8,000 Starlink satellites in orbit since 2019, marking its 250th dedicated Starlink launch on Monday. Its deployment pace has hastened to at least one Starlink mission per week, each rocket with roughly two-dozen satellites on board to expand the network’s bandwidth and replace outdated satellites. That quick pace has helped Musk’s company amass more than 5 million internet users across 125 countries, upend the global satellite communications market and woo military and intelligence agencies that have sought to use Starlink and its manufacturing line for sensitive national security programs. Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos has voiced confidence that Kuiper can compete with Starlink, telling Reuters in a January interview “there’s insatiable demand” for internet. “There’s room for lots of winners there. I predict Starlink will continue to be successful, and I predict Kuiper will be successful as well,” he said. “It will be a primarily commercial system, but there will be defense uses for these LEO constellations, no doubt,” he added, referring to low-Earth orbit. Amazon in 2023 revealed its Kuiper consumer terminals, an LP vinyl record-sized antenna that communicates with Kuiper satellites overhead, as well as a smaller terminal whose size it compares to its e-book Kindle device. The company expects to make tens of millions of the devices for under $400 each. Amazon in 2022 booked 83 rocket launches from ULA, France’s Arianespace and Blue Origin, Bezos’ space company, snagging the industry’s biggest-ever launch deal as it prepared to begin Kuiper deployment. Joey Roulette, Reuters
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E-Commerce
As a kid, Matt Stevens and his neighbor used to hunker down and get set up for a game of flick football. Stevens was always the Cowboys. His neighbor was always the Steelers. Only problem was, they barely ever got to finish the game itself. We would oftentimes run out of time, because I would spend so long making the poster for the game, Stevens says. The North Carolina-based independent designer has long had a knack for using his creative skills to bring fictive worlds to life based on real-world IPand, well, it tracks that if anyone was going to make an idea as random as Good Movies as Old Books work, it would be him. [Photo: Chronicle Books] MID-CENTURY MASH-UP Stevenss new bookin which he delivers exactly what the title promises across 200-plus fake vintage book coversis out today. And it works delightfully. As for how he found himself turning the book-to-screen paradigm on its head in the first place, around 2020, he was helping his friend, former NFL player turned entertainment producer Ryan Kalil, pitch a project. Seeking a way to give a potential film project a unique visual spin, Stevens designed an image of it as an old linen-bound book. I’ve always loved the whole mash-up culture, he says. Putting something in a new context and seeing it differently has always been very interesting to me. [Photo: Chronicle Books] After losing his father when he was young, Stevens says cinema offered a cathartic outlet, and he developed a lifelong passion for it. So after creating that first film as book for the pitch, he realized he had stumbled upon a new side project combining the things he lovesand he kept going. He began putting his initial creations on social media, and they resonated. Having initially experimented with early 1900s cover aesthetics, he discovered his sweet spot in mid-century book cover design (he particularly loves Penguins work during the era). Anything where the idea is reduced down to its bare essentials is really satisfying for me, he says. And I think a lot of that just showed up in the mid-century stuff where they’re printing in very limited colors, and they’re paring it down to the most bare-bones details. [Photo: Chronicle Books] His chameleonic ability to design across styles and eras is a testament to the small shops and agencies where he worked over the years, where every member of a nimble team was responsible for, well, everything. In the book, that manifests in a Saul Basstinged spin on Cameron Crowes Say Anything; a veritable Push Pin Studios take on Mad Max: Fury Road; a Terminator cover that feels almost as if its a lost paperback history of the Roman empire. At first, he was hesitant to touch IP that had a deep legacy of specific imagery associated with it. But he eventually embraced the thrill of itsuch as in the case of, say, his unexpected take on Ghostbusters. Breaking the title typographically immediately sets it on new ground, and the ominous silhouetted figures set against the limerick green background offer a fresh look at a beloved, well-worn property. It was exciting to me to go, Okay, everybody knows that there are a million iconic images of this thing. How do I come up with something that’s different? [Photo: Chronicle Books] KICK-STARTING A COLLECTION Designing a fake book for a very real movie is not unlike designing an actual cover for a very real book. I love the medium of book design, Stevens says. To me, it’s one of the purest andmost satisfying challenges in the way that a poster is. Sometimes he starts with the idea he wants to explore, and sometimes he starts with a style that he wants to play within. Either way, when he sets out to design a fake cover for a flick, he rewatches ita process that can reveal the film to him in all-new ways. [Photo: Chronicle Books] It’s just a different way of watching [movies]. You’re looking at themes and iconic images, he says. I think it just deepened my love for some of them. As for his subjects, he says hes not out to create a Best Of cinematic list. Rather, he goes with the films he loves, the films that inspired him, or films that seem fertile ground for a fresh spin. He says the latter is often what resonates with viewers the most, such as his cover for Mad Max: Fury Road. After he reached 100 books, in 2020 he launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce a book of them, which brought in $57,000, nearly doubling its initial goal. When he designed 100 more, he Kickstarted a second volume. A literary agent, meanwhile, had been gifted one of Stevenss prints, and hung it on her wall. Someone in her office asked if she liked Stevenss bookbut the agent had no idea one even existed. So she reached out to him, and thats why Chronicle is now publishing a new volume collecting the best of his first two, with an additional 60 new covers (and an accompanying box set of 100 postcards). [Photo: Chronicle Books] The ironic thing? Designing fake book covers has led Stevens to gigs designing real ones. For the moment, he has taken a break from his fictive jacketsbut when someone lands on such a curious mix of passion and side-project success, can they ever really give it up? I just saw Sinners this weekend, and it’s like, Oh, I’d love to work on that, he says with a laugh. So who knows?
Category:
E-Commerce
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