The autonomous company

One way to think about it is to try to imagine what an autonomous company would look like.

Take two examples: the ancient windmill and Instagram. The mill is a partially autonomous company. It runs one workflow, milling, on autopilot. Its engine is simple and comprehensible to a skilled human.

Instagram is also a partially autonomous company. Its engine serves content and ads, collects feedback, and auto-adjusts. This engine is so complex that humans have no way to fully understand or directly control what it does: what content or ads each user sees. They can only rely on top-level metrics and some narrow quality checks. They can influence it only indirectly, by tweaking the algorithm and fine-tuning the underlying AI models.

Certain behaviors of the engine must be restricted, such as serving illegal content, so humans set up guardrails. The key here is that they are simple enough that it's easy to understand their effects. And they sit outside the engine, so it can't alter them.

Now we have the building blocks of the autonomous company: code defining the deterministic actions, AI running the intelligent ones, metrics for visibility, and guardrails for control. The whole organization is one integrated engine, running 24/7, turning inputs into outputs, interconnected with other engines.

What about humans? Humans make autonomous companies unique. Humans define purpose (the 'why' and 'what') and set taste (what's considered good). No two teams share the same purpose or taste, so no two organizations will be alike.

Every autonomous company has a collaboration medium, a 'desk', for humans to participate in the work if they want to. It allows people to review the company's work products, communicate with the company in a human-native way, and make manual contributions.

Building and running these complex engines used to be expensive and required a lot of highly skilled engineers. Firms like Palantir have been doing this, but only the biggest organizations could afford it.

People also build relationships with one another, both with customers and with colleagues at other autonomous companies.

Another way to think about the autonomous company is as a living organism:

• it is highly adaptable to changes in the environment
• it learns from experience and gets better over time
• humans steer it at a high level and let it self-adjust at the tactical level

A day inside an autonomous company

It's a sunny morning. You wake up to a daily brief outlining key metrics and your top priorities. Your calendar is organized. Time is blocked off for your most important creative work. Client meetings are scheduled, with prep notes ready. In 5 minutes you're up to speed.

You have your daily sync with your team. Your company's AI avatar, Ally, is there as well, actively participating, taking notes, updating tasks for the team, keeping things organized. Your autonomous company constantly analyzes its own operations and identifies optimizations. Ally reports on what it has already improved and which proposed changes await your team's approval.

The autonomous company always has its ear to the ground. You learn through conversations with other humans, on calls, at events, in private chats. The company continuously monitors online signals: published data, research, online discussions, and other signs of change. It also communicates with other autonomous companies and compares notes. All this information feeds the improvement loop.

You get to work. Ally is always there supporting you, like a superstar chief of staff.

Later, it’s time for the monthly strategy review. Ally has pulled together the intel the company has gathered, and drafted some ideas on how to move the business forward. You discuss priorities with your team and decide what to focus on. Ally records the decisions, and the company adjusts its work accordingly.

All the knowledge the company accumulates over time is collected and organized for people and AI to draw on whenever they need it. This is your organizational memory, no longer siloed and fragmented. The company keeps it clean and organized.

It's time to wrap up the day. Ally sends you your evening brief, asks for a couple of details about those meetings that weren't captured automatically, and helps you think through a thorny issue that's been on your mind lately. You ask it to do some in-depth research on the options and wish it good night. You look forward to picking this up tomorrow.

Advances in AI unlock our ability to build and run autonomous companies. AI agents' resourcefulness and flexibility enable autonomy. AI coding accelerates the setup. We can now make companies autonomous at the scale of the whole economy.