OPC is the new startup

Researching a market, developing an application, preparing a campaign, analyzing information and organizing processes. Activities that used to require different professionals are starting to fit within a much smaller operation. That does not mean anyone can do everything well. It means some limitations that seemed natural are no longer so definitive.

This leads me to a provocative idea: OPC is the new startup. Not because startups will disappear, but because we are changing what one person can get up and running before needing to build a larger structure.

Each generation lowered a barrier

Starting a business alone is nothing new. Independent professionals and individual businesses have existed for a long time. What is changing is the set of resources available to someone starting out.

The internet expanded access to markets. The cloud made it possible to buy infrastructure as needed, without putting all the physical infrastructure in place before testing an idea. The launch of Amazon S3 in 2006 is one milestone in this infrastructure-as-a-service approach. The original AWS announcement already presented storage with usage-based pricing.

Then APIs, subscription software and automation tools made it possible to combine ready-made services. A company no longer needed to develop every component of its own operation.

Startup culture also helped establish a different order of execution: test a hypothesis, put an initial version into use, listen to the customer and adjust before investing in a larger structure. Lean digital businesses and MicroSaaS expanded the possibility of solving a specific problem, generating revenue and keeping an operation small by choice.

These models coexist. There is no mandatory sequence in which every new development replaces the previous one. But there is a common direction: reducing the resources needed to start. Artificial intelligence adds another layer because, beyond providing tools, it can take part in executing the work.

From operating tools to coordinating work

For a long time, becoming more productive meant using better software. Someone was still needed to feed the system, interpret the information and perform the next step. With agents, some of those steps can be connected. The technology can find information, use tools, produce a deliverable and send it for review.

When different agents divide up roles, the discussion moves beyond simply speeding up a task. It becomes about organizing a workflow, with planning, execution and review. This change helps explain the OPC: one person coordinating greater delivery capacity than they could directly execute themselves.

During the Alibaba visit, an example was described that helps visualize this change: connecting requests received by email to supplier research, proposal preparation and sending responses to customers. What matters is looking at the entire sequence, rather than just the speed of writing a message.

That commercial account, on its own, does not establish how much time was saved or whether quality was maintained. But it makes the discussion more concrete: activities usually distributed across different people and systems can be coordinated in a single workflow. Someone still needs to define the selection criteria, check the proposal and authorize what will reach the customer.

The vision of agents interacting with those of other businesses, called agent-to-agent or A2A, expands this possibility. Challenges around integration, trust, authorization and responsibility remain. Commercial autonomy is not fully resolved. The conversation about the solution presented itself revealed limits on direct payments and compliance requirements still under development.

The data shows a shift, but calls for care

According to Carta, the share of companies with a single founder in its database rose from 23.7% in 2019 to 36.3% in the first half of 2025. The survey uses data from tens of thousands of companies in the United States; it does not represent entrepreneurship worldwide. The figures appear in the Solo Founders Report 2025.

It is a significant shift. But a solo founder does not mean a company without employees. The same report shows that companies with a single founder hire their first employee earlier than companies with multiple founders: the median was 399 days, compared with 480 days.

So we cannot use those figures as proof that we are heading toward companies without teams. Nor can we attribute all of this change to AI. What they show is that starting with a single founder has become more common. The decision to expand the team still exists.

There is also evidence of increased individual capability. An experiment with 791 Procter & Gamble professionals, published in Organization Science in 2026, compared people working individually or in pairs, with and without AI, on product innovation challenges. Individuals using AI achieved performance similar to pairs without AI. The published version of The Cybernetic Teammate details the results.

The study does not demonstrate that one person can run any company alone. It evaluated specific tasks, rather than an entire business operation. Even so, it helps explain why activities that once required complementary skills can already be performed differently. The gain lies not only in doing things faster, but also in accessing knowledge that improves the quality of the result.

In China, the individual company is also a collective discussion

One interesting aspect of this conversation here in China is that OPC already appears in entrepreneurship support initiatives. In April 2026, Xinhua described local programs involving communities, computing capacity and support services. The report cited targets in Guangdong to create ten model communities that year and one hundred by 2028. These are announced goals, rather than results already achieved. The overview of OPCs published by Xinhua helps put this movement in context.

A one-person company does not mean a person working in isolation from the world. It depends on AI models, infrastructure, suppliers, payment methods, distribution channels and relationships with other people. Some of the capability that previously had to sit inside the company can now be accessed outside it.

This perspective especially interests me because of my work building an ecosystem at NewHack. The more capability an individual gains, the more important the environment that lets them turn that capability into a business may become. Technology reduces some dependencies. It does not eliminate the need for connection.

Another example from the visit was 1688, presented by the team as a B2B platform connecting buyers and suppliers. They cited cases of factories with products in stock and small orders, without that being a universal condition for every supplier. This complements the OPC discussion: the ability to build also depends on access to the supply chain, not just software.

Building has become more accessible. Finding a market is still hard.

This is where I would be careful with the enthusiasm. A working application is not necessarily a business. A generated campaign is not distribution. An agent responding does not mean the customer was well served.

As building becomes more accessible, differentiation needs to appear elsewhere. Knowing a sector deeply, having access to customers, earning trust and understanding an operation become even more consequential. The advantage may lie less in being able to develop a feature and more in knowing which feature deserves to exist.

This creates room for people who know a problem very well but previously lacked the resources to turn that knowledge into a product. At the same time, it increases competition. If I can launch a solution quickly using tools available to everyone, other people can too.

And the economics of the operation need to work. AI has usage costs, can make mistakes and requires supervision. An interesting demonstration can become an expensive or unreliable service when real customers arrive. The calculation needs to consider the result accepted by the customer, including review and rework.

There is also the risk of building a company where everything still depends on the founder. If every new customer requires a few more hours from the same person, perhaps the constraint has simply moved. Having several agents does not automatically solve this. You need to observe what they deliver and what happens when a step fails.

OPC can be a starting point, not an obligation to stay alone

Startup and OPC describe different things. In Paul Graham's definition, a startup is a company designed to grow quickly. OPC, in this discussion, concerns how work is organized. A company can have both characteristics. This distinction draws on Startup = Growth, published in 2012.

It can start with one person and hire later. It can remain small and profitable. It can seek investment or grow through its own revenue. I do not see this as a competition to discover who can hire fewer people. I see it as an expansion of choices.

Hire because there is a clear need. Seek capital to accelerate something that has demonstrated value. Build a structure that follows the business, rather than needing to assemble that entire structure to discover whether the business makes sense.

For entrepreneurs in Brazil, this possibility deserves attention. People with market knowledge, operational experience and access to real problems may find new paths to build. OPC is the new startup is a provocative idea about this change, rather than a prediction that every company will have the same form.

For a long time, someone wanting to start a business would ask: what team and how much money do I need to begin? Now, in a growing number of businesses, we can ask another question: how much can I learn, build and validate before needing that structure?

The company can start smaller. The ambition does not have to.