[paxys]

Meta "bought" Alex Wang for $14.3B.

Ilya Sutskever's "business" (really his skillset/personal brand) was worth $1B+ the minute he stepped away from OpenAI.

Joe Rogan could fire all his staff and there would still be companies lining up around the block to buy his podcast for $1B+.

There are many such examples of a person having something or being something that is worth a lot to someone else, to the tune of billions.

So by that metric a one-person billion dollar company has already been achieved. What remains are the technicalities (does it need to be incorporated, does it need to have revenue, does it need to operate as a traditional business).

[pradn]

I'm sure we're already there with musicians as well. If you take Taylor Swift's annual revenue and multiply it by 5-10, you'll easily cross a billion. But she does require tons of staff for the stadium shows that provide the bulk of the revenue, etc. Not literally one person, but it's a company with a bus factor of one.

[throw576543]

Lebron James reportedly signed a billion dollar lifetime deal with Nike.

[paxys]

And I'm willing to bet all that staff is contracted. Her personal employees (people she pays a regular fixed salary to) is probably in the single digits, or possibly even 0.

[jedberg]

> Joe Rogan could fire all his staff

I think the premise is that it is only ever one person.

> Meta "bought" Alex Wang for $14.3B.

> Ilya Sutskever's "business" (really his skillset/personal brand) was worth $1B+ the minute he stepped away from OpenAI.

And that we're not talking about a personal brand, but a real company with real ongoing revenue.

Basically it's a shortcut for the belief that all those other people that founders hire could be replaced with AI.