Zero-Employee Architect Early access
Design the company before you automate it.
- Humans
- 3
- target 1
- Founder hours / week
- 42h
- target 23h
- Recurring workflows automated
- 46%
- target 79%
- AI & software / month
- $1.9k
- target $3.4k
- Recurring human cost / month
- $9.5k
- target $0.4k
Six decisions, made explicitly
- 01
What the founder should own
Strategy, accountability, high-risk and irreversible decisions — and nothing that recurs mechanically.
- 02
What software should automate
Deterministic, high-frequency workflows: billing, provisioning, reporting, deploys.
- 03
What AI agents can execute
Judgement-light work with clear policy: tier-1 support, drafting, research, code changes under review.
- 04
Which specialists remain necessary
Regulated or rare expertise — tax, legal, audit — bought as a service, not hired as headcount.
- 05
What should remain human
Relationships, accountability and risk. Zero employees is a constraint to optimise, not a dogma.
- 06
What the economics look like
AI and software cost, human cost, approval load and founder hours, before and after.
From capability to blueprint
Step 1
Business capability
What the company must be able to do: acquire, sell, deliver, support, bill, comply.
Step 2
Workflow
The recurring sequences that realise each capability, with frequency and volume.
Step 3
Current executor
Who or what executes each step today, and how many hours it takes.
Step 4
Human / software / agent / contractor
The cheapest reliable executor for each step under explicit risk rules.
Step 5
Target operating model
The redesigned company: what the founder owns, what is delegated, what stays human.
Step 6
Cost / risk / intervention
Economics, failure modes, approval load and expected founder intervention.
Step 7
Blueprint
A sequenced plan of reversible experiments that moves the company to target.
Current → target
Current
Founder · 42h / week
- Engineering14h
- Marketing10h
- Support8h
- Operations7h
- Sales3h
Other humans
- Support employee1.0 FTE
- Marketing freelancer0.5 FTE
Target
Founder · 23h / week
- Strategy & product8h
- Sales conversations6h
- Engineering review6h
- Approvals & exceptions3h
Delegated execution
- EngineeringAI agentCoding agent opens PRs; founder reviews and merges
- SupportAI agentTier-1 agent; escalations and refunds over $100 to founder
- MarketingAI agentContent drafts and distribution; publish approval
- OperationsSoftwareBilling, dunning, reporting run deterministically
- Tax & complianceProfessionalAccountant retained — regulated, high-risk
Every workflow, assigned and justified
| Capability | Workflow | Current | Target | Human approval | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Support | Tier-1 billing and how-to questions | Employee | AI agent | Refunds over $100 | Low |
| Support | Escalations and churn-risk accounts | Employee | Founder | — | Medium |
| Engineering | Dependency and security updates | Founder | Software | Merge on green CI | Low |
| Engineering | Feature implementation | Founder | AI agent | PR review before merge | Medium |
| Marketing | SEO articles and changelog posts | Contractor | AI agent | Publish approval | Medium |
| Finance | Invoicing, dunning, revenue reporting | Founder | Software | None (policy-bound) | Low |
| Finance | Tax filings | Professional | Professional | Founder signs | High |
| Legal | Customer contract changes | Founder | Founder | Lawyer when non-standard | High |
Illustrative · hypothetical company · not customer data
Built to be trusted with a company
- Workflows, not people
- The Architect analyses work at workflow level. It never scores individual employees.
- Reversible first
- Every change is sequenced as an experiment with a rollback, before any irreversible step.
- Read-only before execution
- Agents start by drafting and observing; autonomy is earned with measured error rates.
- Humans keep accountability
- High-risk actions keep a human approval, by design.
Start with the score. Request the analysis.
- Zero-Employee Score
- Live
- Architect analysis & blueprint
- Early access
- Portfolio Control Plane
- Research concept
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