My AI Org Chart: Reflections of a First-Time Founder
It’s almost impossible to have a discussion on AI these days without the conversation eventually taking a turn towards job displacement. We are constantly bombarded with headlines of Big Tech layoffs to autonomous taxis to AI teachers. Technology oligarchs downplay these concerns, insisting that AI will ultimately create more jobs than it will destroy. They are quick to draw convincing parallels to historical eras of disruptive technology. Just as the Industrial Revolution shifted agricultural jobs to factory work and the Internet Age gave rise to developers (and influencers!), the AI era will see similar job shifts… though I am still not sure I have heard a convincing vision for what that future will look like.
Perhaps, the future will belong to the founders - those that are brave (and foolhardy and stubborn) enough to sacrifice the comfort and structure of corporate paychecks for the freedom of building something new.
Reflecting on the first six months of Voyager, I want to paint a picture of how I have leveraged AI tools to build a company.
The Tools Behind the Solo Founder
ChatGPT is my co-founder. In writing this article, I have been rereading my conversations with the tool from earlier this year, and I am fascinated to watch the formation of Voyager: AI Learning Solutions evolve over time.
As someone who has never consistently kept a journal, it’s an eye-opening exercise to connect the dots of the founding journey through my past interactions with ChatGPT. Slowly desperate pleas for “tech jobs in Switzerland”, “help writing cover letters”, “how to write a resume to get past AI screening”, give way to more optimistic and exciting conversations: “what is the future of education”, “I want to build something new”, “how to incorporate Voyager: AI Learning Solutions".
From naming the company to reviewing the business model to researching the market and potential competitors to co-creating our company slogan to establishing the LLC in Delaware, ChatGPT was with me every step of the way.
Notion is my COO. The all-in-one workspace tracks my engineering and content to-dos, manages customer relationships, and brings clarity and structure to the interconnected ecosystem of Voyager’s videos, technology, and learning materials.
*It also has a fairly decent AI LLM to manage tasks and build dashboards with natural language!
Replit is my CTO. The vibe-coding platform has been paramount in the development of Voyager’s Online Learning Platform. As a solid 1x-er* on my good days, solo-building a full-stack web-app from scratch with user authentication, Stripe integration, and deployment pipelines was never in the cards. But now with AI-assisted coding, I feel so empowered to know that if I can formulate what I want to get done, AI can often assist in how the solution is implemented.
*A “1×-er” (pronounced one-ex-er) is a reference to a regular, average engineer — someone who gets the job done but isn’t a mythical “10× engineer” who does 10 times the work of a normal developer.
Gamma.app is my creative design team. I can’t tell you how much I dreaded making PowerPoint slides by hand at the beginning of this project. Trying to keep some kind of aesthetic harmony while trying to present useful information was a time-consuming battle. Learning to build slide decks with text and meta-prompting may be the biggest time-saver of all of these AI tools.
Loom, iMovie, and Descript are my videography team. Loom is great for screen recording and video presentation (I definitely recommend investing in an external microphone). iMovie is great for editing long-form videos and courses, while Descript specializes in social media clips and reels.
The Human Side of the Journey
While the tools are nice, it’s impossible to get the full picture without exploring the human side of the founding journey. Here are a few anecdotes (or maybe they are clichés) that have proven true through the first six months of this journey.
Founding a company is a rollercoaster
I can confidently assert that I have had more high-highs and more low-lows in the first six months of running my own business than I had in 5+ years in corporate technology roles. Sometimes the ride is exciting and rewarding, but a lot of the time I feel myself hanging on for dear life and wondering why I thought it was ever a good idea to hop on this ride in the first place!
You’ll wear many hats
I think the saying would be more accurate if it was: “You’ll wear many hats, but you’ll actually be juggling these hats while riding a unicycle and maybe there is a tornado”. It is a struggle to avoid constant context-switching and finding time for uninterrupted focus to complete the task at hand. The flip side to this is I have learned SO much in new fields such as business development, sales, marketing, social media, advertising, etc.
Relationships are king
While AI and technology have been the grease in the wheels to speed up the journey, having conversations and rekindling relationships with mentors, teachers, friends, family, and customers are the whole reason for the journey in the first place. (They can also be the jet-fuel that leads to great successes in unexpected ways).
Closing Thoughts
So if you’re considering the leap into entrepreneurship, I hope this offers an honest reflection of my first six months as a solo founder. The tools available today have the potential to expedite the process, but they won’t replace the hard work, emotional grit, and foolhardy optimism that drive startup success. I am learning a lot about business and myself along the way, and I am continually encouraged by the amount of support the endeavor has garnered from others.
As I slowly dip my toes into the world of AI-Agents, I suspect this org chart will look very different in another six months. But even with the best AI team, the human side remains the ultimate differentiator and the foundation of every success.
