
The outcome is true if by the end of 2030 a public company achieves the market cap of 1 billion dollars while having only one funder and employee. Or a one-person private company raises enough money that places it at a valuation above 1B, reported in a reputable news source.
https://fortune.com/2024/02/04/sam-altman-one-person-unicorn-silicon-valley-founder-myth/
For the purpose of this market and to ensure that the company is not just a scam,with "enough money" we mean over 10$ million.
Update 2025-08-12 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - Employee is meant in the legal sense.
External consultants/contractors are allowed and do not count as employees.
Only one actual employee is permitted; additional employees are not allowed.
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Does anybody know what the current highest value company like this is?
The description says “one employee”, is this in the legal sense or the general sense?
For instance, could this company hire external consultants for some period of time?
If no, then where is the line drawn between AI tools and consultants, if the AI tools are an external company’s service, then how does that differ from consultants? What if the solo founder doesn’t have visibility over whether the consultants are AI or people?
I think I’ve gone too far with these questions, but it would be helpful to get this clarified.
Perhaps it’s a solo shareholder that’s the differentiator? But then investors are out of the question which would make this very unlikely.
@KeithManning i think they could totally hire consultants and contractors. Just actual employees are not allowed
@Thomas42 regarding gaming post-money valuations, such a company has already existed! https://youtu.be/iHfJRON3b-w?si=ul5UiLAMDlKGO-u1
@SimoneRomeo I would say publicly announced raising at least X million at a valuation above 1B, reported in a reputable news source, or something like that.
@SimoneRomeo imo "enough money" is still ambiguous, since you can raise $1 at a $1B valuation. I would decide on some amount, e.g. $1M or $10M.
@Thomas42 got it. Should be alright now. I was not familiar with how valuations work. It was cool to understand more about it
@SimoneRomeo The tricky thing about this criteria is that the solo unicorn would need to want to raise money. Companies usually raise money to hire. A solo unicorn might not be interested in hiring. There's also the "raise money for A LOT of additional compute" path, and the "founder with so much clout they immediately get a unicorn seed round with no product". But the bootstrap unicorn isn't covered by the criteria.
@GustavoMafra I don't see a better way to define the market without fundamentally change it, so I'd keep like this. I'd also assume the money raised would easily go into infrastructure (eg. GPUs) rather than talent