The First 1-Person $1 Billion Company

0:00Have you heard of the first one person, one billion dollar company? no but I don't know of anyone who's built a one person billion dollar company it's coming soon this company is called Rocketable it's building the first one person one billion dollar company the plan is simple the plan is to buy up software companies fire all the employees and replace them with AI agents literally the most AGI pilled idea I've heard this came from a YC guy so and by the way they're not building a one billion dollar company they're using money to try to buy their way to a billion yeah yeah They're buying it to a billion and replacing all of the agents.

0:33This is YC backed, by the way. Rocket Bowl Inc. Y Combinator Winter 2025. I don't think this is going to be, I think we're going to see a lot more of these happen. And I think the first few will probably not work out as well, but eventually it'll become commonplace. Yes. Yeah. And I think people need to learn to crawl before they walk or even run. A great example of this is, is it Justin Khan who created Twitch? Yeah. He then created a legal company. Yeah. I forgot what the name was. Atrium. Atrium. And he was trying to automate everything and reduce back office and scale it up. Someone told me the story about what happened there.

1:12Yeah, the problem is they tried doing all that stuff instead of just getting the revenue and then slowly introducing automation and AI and efficiencies. Have you read the book? You probably haven't because you don't read books, but probably not. The book's called Thinking and Systems. Have you heard of it? Uh-uh. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to, I'm going to, here's a little lesson for everyone here. So this is a, I got a water bottle I'm holding up over here. A Yeti. Blue Yeti. Blue Yeti, guys. Great water bottle. So the way it works is this is a stock. Okay. So what you have in a system is you have inflows and you have outflows.

1:43So when I drink it, I take out of the stock, right? Are you following me so far? Yeah. But when you first said stock, I thought you meant like a financial ticker symbol. Of course you did. Of course you did. So, okay. In a system like my, my water filter at home, I can't just call on filtered water when I want. It's actually stored, right? So there's inflows and there's outflows. So where I'm trying to go with this is I completely forgot. Okay, so the Yeti, you're holding up a Yeti. What was I talking about before? It has stock and there's inflows and outflows. We're talking about Atrium and then we're transitioning to the Yeti.

2:12Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's the problem. Thank you for that. So the problem is when a company raises too much money, their stock is filled with so much cash. You have so much cash, right? You actually don't have many inflows at all, to your point. You don't have inflows of revenues coming in. It's just all like artificial. So what happens with a lot of these venture-backed companies? They end up overspending, and then they think they have inflows coming in. They actually don't, and they end up becoming really bloated, and they end up focusing on the wrong things. And what ends up happening is, oh, guess what?

2:40The stock is all gone. The company has to go bankrupt. Yeah, a better or easier way for everyone is— It's not better. Why is it better? Think of a fire hydrant. A fire hydrant is tapping water from someone. But if you're using water faster than what's flowing back in to refill the fire hydrant, eventually it's going to run empty. That is no different than my water bottle example. Yeah, but you're using stock and all these words and making it complex. No, but the fire hydrant, that is a stock as well. The reservoir is a stock. You get what I mean? And so I didn't understand before because in Bitcoin there's this guy that talks about the stock to flow model.

3:11I'm like, what is he talking about? I started reading this book. I was like, oh. And then you realize everything in your company is just stocks and flows. I'll give you the book after. I think you would enjoy it. I just don't think most people would use the word stock for this. No, you wouldn't. But then I started reading it. I was like, okay, it makes sense. I'll give it to you. It'll be good. It'll be a good read. But I won't read it. I'll get the books on tape version. Okay, fine. All right. I'm not a, Eric's a fan of reading books and it's worked out well for him. I should be reading more books.

3:37Neil's a fan of calling and it works out for him. Uh-huh. And I love reading articles. So like I'll read articles all day long. I'll say need an article on it. But I'm like, I don't want to read a two, 300 page book. I'm like, give me the books on tape version or the, you know, 20 page PDF version. Here, let's go to a related one here. You remember, Chris Saka. Tim Ferriss tweeted this. It says, Chris Saka's grand theory of AI. We are super fucked. Alright. Here. It spits out the code. And then I've literally said, hey, by the way, I haven't coded since basic. What do I do with this? And it's like, oh, no problem.

4:09Go here, download this, open this Python thing, and then shove it in here and then do this. And it just talks you through it. And now it'll be agentic. An agent's going to do all that for you. Just don't need to fucking do it anymore. Would you... it's pretty much i i saw the video clips on x i think this is the the one that i showed last time um but i think that's okay here's what i truly think about this i don't think humans are super effed at all i think what and i explained it to a friend yesterday i think what's going to happen is in the next five to ten years people you and i have already realized this you can say we've woken up but the whole theory that oh you should just go retire on the beach everyone will quickly realize once everything's really good that, oh, that's actually not what you're looking for.

4:51What you're looking for is being useful and doing creative work. And so I think that's going to enable that. And whoever wants to work, you and I will probably still continue to work. But I think the vast majority of humanity, they're going to wake up and realize, oh, we've been taught wrong the whole time. So my co-founder calls me the other day, Mike, and he's just like, we're talking about AI. And he's like, do you think AI is going to replace a lot of our software solutions. And I'm like, no. And he's like, why not? Because you can just code them so fast. And I'm like, yeah, but what makes our software solutions good, in my opinion, and why we have a lot of paying customers is they pay for the data.

5:29So you can go tell some AI software and with the help of an agent, just go and create you this software solution. But if you don't have the data to feed people, you pretty much got a useless, pretty looking software that no one's going to use. And I'm not saying that's the case for all software, but a lot of solutions out there can't just be quickly replicated with AI and produce the same output that people are expecting. I just think, I wrote this earlier today, I just think if you're an explorer and you're a tinkerer, the next decade plus is going to be really exciting for you. I think if you're a settler and you're used to doing things just status quo, you're going to be in trouble.

6:11But again, I think those people will wake up and those people will, because there's so many agents and tutorials and all these things that would train them. And I think we'll be able to just insert chips into our minds and just instantly download things. Yeah. I think net productivity is going to skyrocket. It is. I'm just worried about all the people that get unemployed from this because I do think there is going to be casual. I think it's temporary. I think like there's always been an unemployment, right? We're talking about the industrial age and all that stuff. Right. So I think it'll be short-term pain, but long-term it'll be good for us.

6:40And like, I don't think anybody of us can, any of us can doubt that the world has gotten better over time. Like, would you rather be a king 500 years ago or be just like a regular person on the street today? A king 500 years ago. No, you wouldn't. You can't. Okay. Have you seen, you haven't seen these YouTube videos where how it is to live in a palace. Okay. It smells really bad. Okay. But the way the toilets are like, the toilets are like, literally there's no toilets. It all goes into one tube, right? And when it gets really humid, really hot, what happens? It's a shitty castle, okay? So you don't want to live like all the disease and all these things.

7:17You can't even look at your phone. You can't do these things. You'd rather be a regular person today, right, Brad? I'd rather be the king still. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah, I would do some fun stuff if I was a king. Oh, my gosh. All right, whatever, guys. I've already been the normal person. I want to be the king now. We are basically kings in today's world. I'm not a king. I don't know where you're getting this from. When I say we're kings in today's world, you can do virtually anything you want. You're free to say what you want in this country. You didn't have air conditioner back then. You didn't have the internet back then.

7:51Again, you couldn't flush your toilet back then. So what happens? Dude, back then, you didn't even have to walk. People just lift you up and take you wherever you want to go. I can't do that right now you become a fat king alright I want to test that out I haven't experienced that yet yeah but a driver is not the same you got to walk to your car as a king people just pick you up hey guys let us know in the comments what you think about you can say whatever you want and do whatever you want you can say whatever you want you just might get cancelled or you may get thrown in jail depends on where you live as a king you can say whatever you want and it's very rare that you're going to get thrown in jail.

8:31But when you're the king, people come for you. That's true. Yeah. See? And if you come for the king, Brad, you better not miss. But if you're not the king, sometimes life is tough and you're shed out of luck and you don't have money to pay bills and all this kind of stuff. You don't usually have to worry about those problems when you're the king. There's pros and cons, I'm telling you. Life was also simpler in many ways. Let's ask ChatGBT. I don't care what ChatGBT has to say. I would be a king. Why wouldn't you want to be a king? Just like to test it out. You can't test it out. It's a choice.

9:02You can't test it out. There's no go back. You go back, you go back. I'm okay. I'll take the king. Oh my God. See, I don't believe you for a second. I'll try it. You can't try it. I'll try it and be seconded for a while. Okay. See, guys, and then we'll move on from this. This is entertainment. Okay. Would you rather be a king 500 years ago or a regular human today? A regular human today, no question. Being a king 500 years ago might sound appealing. Absolute power, wealth, influence, but it also comes with constant threats. assassination, disease, poor medical care, and the lack of basic comforts we take for granted.

9:34Even the wealthiest kings had no electricity, modern medicine, or internet. Today, the average person has better healthcare, more knowledge, greater personal freedom than even the most powerful rulers of the past. Plus with technology and modern comforts, life expectancy and quality of life are significantly better. What about you? I'll still be the king because I think my quality of life would be amazing as a kid. I would rather be the king. Am I an idiot? I think the person who's 80 is the one asking Chad GPT this question. Come on. Who would want to be a king? It says not at all. If it means you value power, influence, and control over comfort and convenience, it has its perks.

10:08But as a king, you would have some sort of comfort and convenience. All right. We're going to move on. Brad, which one would you be? King. You can only pick one. I actually would take a simpler life. I mean, I agree with you. Gun to head. You'd be the king. Yeah, I think so. Wow. Okay. guys let us know what you think of the comments it's okay it's a democracy see nobody gets their head cut off yeah okay let's pick one of your other ones here so um what do we do when we lose an opportunity um eric and i get leads all the time we're in b2b we pitch companies and we don't win them all i don't know what your success rate is is when you're pitching but you know i'm guessing it's less than 30 40 percent right you're not going to win everything if you're winning at 100 percent there's something wrong with what you're doing like underpricing or you know giving all your time away yes yeah in in general i don't know what you guys do but we usually have um little huddles because when we pitch it usually takes a lot of different people's times within the organization because we do a lot of team selling we do huddles and we're like why did we lose this deal what can we learn from it and how do we improve so we don't make the same mistakes again Yeah.

11:25And what we found is a good chunk of the time, call it 30, 40 % of the time, we find things we can improve upon. The remaining portion of the time, we find that we're just overpriced compared to a cheaper solution they may have. And we can't offer it for the price they're willing to pay because they won't get the quality that they're looking for. And then they'll be going back to the market a year later, trying to find a company to do it the right way. They come back, yes. Another portion of the time, we lose deals because people are just using us and others to negotiate with their existing vendor who they're happy with to just do it for cheaper.

12:06And sometimes their existing vendor will do it not just cheaper, but sometimes at a loss because they may be making$10 million from that company from a different department. So they want to lose half a million dollars because they're making$10 million somewhere else in revenue. And on that half a million, they may have done it for 300 grand, but their cost on it is 350 or 400 grand. They don't care about the 50 to 100 grand when they're making 20 % on the 10 million bucks. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work.

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14:24Animations, responsive layouts, search optimization, and all the things that matter. Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at framer.com and use code MS to get your first month of pro on the house. That's Framer.com, promo code MS, Framer.com, promo code MS, rules and restrictions may apply. So for us, what we do when we lose an opportunity, on one end, we do do the postmortems, but we have a lot of the calls, I'm sure you do too, recorded in a sales intelligence tool, such as a gong. And we take a lot of those transcripts now and we take all the transcripts and we combine them.

14:58It's like, hey, this person, so-and-so, these are the titles. Okay, what could they have done better with these pitches, right? and then you give it as much context as you can about your company. And it actually gives really good feedback. Here's how I rate this call one through 10. Here's what Neil could have done better on this call. Here's what Eric could have done better. Here's what they did well. And you see if it aligns with what you guys are talking about in the postmortem. And oftentimes when you send them the AI feedback, a lot of the defensiveness that might come out when you give them feedback, it's gone because it's a computer that gave them feedback.

15:30So usually you lead with a computer giving feedback first and then you say, oh yeah, I kind of agree with that. Or I don't agree. So you kind of blame it on the computer. The other thing too, and I'm sure you guys do this as well, is John Maxwell used to say, what? The fortune is in the follow-up. And so for us, we don't really give up on somebody until they tell us the F off. And it usually might be a year later, right? So in some cases, let's say we lost the deal. We might not follow up and maybe for another three months or so. Three months later, we'll say, hey, how are things going, right?

15:57Maybe another three months after that. Hey, circling back, hey, based on what? Not just checking in. ideally what you're doing is you're personalizing it. Let's say they wanted X, Y, and Z before you're saying, Hey, we did, here's some new content X, Y, and Z over here. Here's what we think you can do. You know, if it makes sense to circle back, we can circle back. And you're just constantly like circling back, circling back, circling back. Right. And you, nobody, there's only one time in my life. I don't know about you. There's only one time in my life. Someone's told me to F off. And that was when I was way younger.

16:22I don't know about you. Yeah, we do follow up and we actually even follow up and ask the client or potential client why they pick someone else over us. And we recently lost a big deal that we were pitching for in Latin America. It would have been a multi-million dollar deal in fees just for us in USD, which is a lot of money when you consider the currency exchange and the buying power down there. And I remember talking to one of my managing directors. He's like, oh, you know, we went through this process of procurement. they'll tell us why we lost they have to i'm like they don't have to tell you crap i'm like go call them i'm like they're not going to tell you the real reason and he's like no no they will when we put in months into something they're supposed to because you put all of them like dude this is what you think there's no requirement or law that yeah exactly that says they owe you crap right so he's like oh i'm gonna call him up i follow up with him a week later i'm like what'd you get from i bet you jack crap and he's just like well you know they're saying this and then i'm like cool so you learn nothing from it and he's just like well there's probably some other people i'm like dude when you ask someone why you didn't win a deal most people even if you tell them it won't hurt your feelings and it's okay to be up front and all those kind of things most people don't like being confrontational and just telling you why and they usually make up some excuse like we lost a deal in europe i think it was france or one of those markets and the person told us yeah and they actually even told us before you know it came to decision they're like you got it we're gonna select you and that person should have never said that right and when we followed up for feedback there's like you know we just felt you guys were too big for us and i'm like cool what a real valid reason you're a multi multi multi billion dollar organization in market cap They probably do well into the billions in revenue.

18:20I actually believe they do well into the billions in revenue. The issue that we're too big is a bullshit reason. That is not why you didn't choose this. You didn't choose this for another reason. And I always tell my team, yes, you should ask why. But you got to really dig in and analyze and try to think, what did you do wrong? Where they go cold on you? Where the communications start breaking down? Because typically, if you lose a deal, they start going silent on you. When did they start going silent on you? You could feel it immediately. Once that pattern starts, it's like, oh, okay. Exactly.

18:53Like I was in Europe a few months ago and I gave this speech at a really large corporation. It's a global corporation. Funny enough, I gave a speech to a lot of corporations that week. And it's one of the things I do when we travel because it's a great way to pick up business. And I remember, you know, that person being like, I think we got the deal. I think we got the deal. And I was like, dude, they haven't followed up with you in a month. You know, fast forward today. I'm like, I don't think you got the deal. Because if they really wanted to select you, they would have followed up with you and communicated and negotiated the contract.

19:29And they're like, no, no, I still think we have a good shop. And I don't like discouraging my leaders. So I don't want to keep badgering and be the negative Nancy. Instead, I'm like, cool, we'll do whatever you can to try to close it. Because there could always be a slim chance that you do get it. And to be fair, it is a slim chance, but sometimes they still do get it. Yeah, and the way I look at things is if the potential customer isn't following up with you on a regular basis trying to work through a potential contract or proposal, you usually have lost a deal and they're going with someone else.

19:58And the other thing too is they might have been really communicative with you in the past and you might think you would have wanted there. And you'll say, oh, this is when you start to say, oh, I think we want it. We want it. But then the communication starts to slow down. What used to be every day becomes like every five days. Then it becomes every two weeks or so. By that time, it's over. Yeah. Udu, we had an RFP with one of the largest beverage companies in the world. And I don't know how many agencies they included. We'd have to fly a lot of people from all over the world to that location for the pitch.

20:28And, you know, we're prepping up and all this kind of stuff. We didn't even start the pitch. We didn't even, you know, we did the first intro call and we're gearing up. and they're like, yeah, we want to meet everyone in person by this day, so we're figuring out. We were coordinating, but we didn't book any of the flights because they kept delaying and delaying them right away. I was like, oh, they're going with someone else? And we didn't even get a chance to pitch. And what we found out was they didn't choose any agency. They were just using it as a negotiation tactic to get their existing vendor to reduce their pricing.

20:58And I think this episode is actually worth re-listening to because this is huge. A lot of people just kind of take it for face value, especially if you're the founder of the company, you have people on sales. It's like, oh yeah, we lost it. Oh, price was too much, whatever. But when you start to really dig in on it and you guys start to really talk about it, then you start to see the real patterns. And then a lot of people, you're not going to be able to improve if you don't actually address these issues, right? Because the same patterns will continue to repeat. Yeah, and it's the same thing with my team.

21:26When we're included in an RFP, but someone's just using us and all the other 10 people in the RFP to get their existing vendor to charge less, I don't really look at that as a loss. I look at that as it really wasn't an opportunity in the first place. So why did we take the opportunity? Why did we talk to them, right? Yes, but with some of these you never know and they're not going to tell you. It's just a numbers game and you just have to play the game, sadly. But if we're talking 20 agencies and RFP, I'm probably not going to play that game. Maybe you guys might, if it's a multi, multi, multi, like huge deal.

21:56We play the game, even if it's 10 or 20 or 30, we'll go for it. Yeah, I think it just depends. Okay. To go back on it really quickly, I look at it as a cost of sale. And we already have the people and they're going to be spending time on trying to close business anyways. You're not going to win them all. I think there's a caveat here. So the caveat is if you're targeting mostly enterprise, which you are, right? I think if you're a smaller agency, you probably shouldn't bother with RFPs at all. And you're probably not going to get RFPs either. Sometimes if you're smaller, you might get these RFPs.

22:29But just know that they need safety and they need scale. and you're too risky to them. Correct. And so even if you've built a brand for yourself or whatever, it just doesn't matter. Oh, you have this team of consultants. Doesn't matter. Yeah, no one really cares. Yeah. All right, that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association to grow faster. And we'll see you tomorrow.

23:02Thank you.