I am going to confess something to you.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a billionaire, before I turned 30… but I had absolutely no idea how to do it.
You may find this crazy or megalomaniacal, but about a dozen years ago, with the experience I had accumulated, my skills, my profile, my network and above all a much more precise understanding of certain economic and entrepreneurial mechanisms, I finally understood what I had to do and how to carry it out to give myself what I considered a reasonable chance of reaching that goal within 5 to 10 years.
I am obviously not talking about a magic recipe, because there is no path that guarantees becoming a billionaire, but about a strategy and a way of carrying it out that seemed credible enough, suited to my abilities and realistic enough for me to seriously consider putting them into practice.
And it was precisely when I understood what to do and how to do it that I decided to give it up.
Why?
Do not read this as some grand philosophical decision about money, power or the meaning of life, or a sudden epiphany that revealed to me that money does not buy happiness. The reason was much simpler and more pragmatic: I now knew the price of carrying it out, and I was quite simply not ready to pay it.
Not the financial price, of course, but the human price.
I knew exactly what this kind of path would demand in time, energy, stress, mental bandwidth, risk-taking, hiring, management, organization, constant trade-offs, travel and, more generally, the ability to put this project before everything else for years on end.
I was already earning a good enough living to live comfortably, do the things I loved, spend time with the people I love and hold on to the freedom I had spent years building in the first place.
I no longer saw any rational reason to trade such a substantial part of my life, my most precious asset, for a few extra zeros, even a lot of zeros.
I had understood how to reach the goal, but I had also understood what it would cost me, and the benefit/cost ratio was too unfavorable.
Then came these past three years.
Gradually, month after month, I began to see things that demanded enormous human or financial resources become simpler, faster and more accessible.
First with large language models, then with the tools capable of using those models, and finally with the arrival of agentic systems capable of more than simply answering a question or producing content: they could actually link tasks together, reason about an objective, develop, test, analyze, search, document, supervise or coordinate part of their own work.
And since February 2026, my latest experiments have seriously shaken that conviction.
My ambition has not changed, but what has changed is the cost of carrying it out!
For a long time, there was an almost mechanical relationship between a company's capacity for execution and the size of the human organization required to produce it. Even though I have always been good at doing more with less, a glass ceiling was still there.
If you wanted to multiply your capacity for production, development, research, operations or support, you had to hire more people, then hire or promote other people to coordinate those people, create processes, hierarchical levels, communication tools, control mechanisms, meetings, reporting systems and all that organizational machinery I hate, and which inevitably ends up consuming a substantial share of the energy it was supposed to multiply.
Beyond a certain scale, you no longer spend your time building products, services, solving problems or understanding your clients. You spend your time building and maintaining the organization that builds the product, solves the problems and understands the clients.
And it was precisely for that part that I had no desire to sacrifice ten years of my life… Yet agentic systems are clearly breaking (smashing) that relationship.
For the first time, execution capacity is no longer limited by the human factor. It may seem trivial put that way, but in economic terms, it is enormous!
A very small company can now have a capacity for development, research, analysis, automation and operations that would have required hundreds of people barely a year ago.
And given the current speed at which these systems are evolving, I think it would be extremely unwise to assume that we are close to a ceiling. Even without further evolution, the current capacity of the tools has just abolished that limit.
I am not talking here about using artificial intelligence to "be more productive" or more effective, but about the possibility of changing the economics of building a company far more fundamentally.
Real execution capacity can now grow much faster than the number of humans required to produce it. The consequence? The organizational constraints that historically imposed a certain minimum size in order to reach a certain economic scale are being vaporized.
Does that mean it is becoming easy to build a company worth several billion? *no*!
You still have to find or create a large enough market, build something that really delivers value, know how to distribute it, have a sufficiently lasting competitive advantage, take risks, make the right decisions at the critical moments, avoid a few very bad decisions and, because it is a variable that many entrepreneurs sometimes like to forget when they tell their story in hindsight… also have a measure of luck!
Artificial intelligence does not eliminate competition, economics or chance, but it eliminates a substantial part of the human price that I previously considered irreducible.
And that is where, for me, the question becomes interesting. A dozen years ago, the question I was asking myself was essentially whether I was ready to sacrifice a substantial part of my life to try to enter the three-comma club. My answer was no, but today, the question is different.
Is it now possible to build a company worth several billion without building, in parallel, the immense human organization that historically seemed necessary to reach that scale?
Is it possible to use agentic systems not merely as extra tools inside a traditional company, but as a fundamental part of its architecture, to gain a level of leverage that would have been impossible only a few years ago?
And, more personally, is it possible for me to attempt this adventure without sacrificing my family life, the things I love to do, and my health, which has already paid enough?
A few years ago, I would have answered no without really hesitating. Today, after what I have seen and tried these past months, I am no longer at all certain that the answer is the same.
And that is probably what fascinates me most about this period: we talk a great deal about what artificial intelligence is going to replace, automate or transform, but perhaps not yet enough about what it is going to make possible for individuals or very small organizations which, until now, were mechanically limited by their human capacity for execution.
Could a company made up of a few people, surrounded by agentic systems capable of carrying out a considerable share of the intellectual and operational work, one day have effective capabilities comparable to those of an organization of several hundred people?
I believe so. And if the answer is yes, how far can this asymmetry go?
For a few months now, I have caught myself mentally reopening a file I had closed a long time ago: the race for the three commas! (those who get the reference will understand)
Not because I suddenly need a billion: a few million are enough for me, nor because the goal has taken on any particular importance with age… But because I am starting to wonder whether the experience I once turned down because of its cost has become, twelve years later, a completely different experience.
So, am I finally going to decide to get back into this race? My decision is imminent. :)
For a long time, I wondered whether I was ready to pay the price to enter the three-comma club.
Today, the question knocking around in my head is whether that price still exists!
Good evening to you all.
—
Christophe Casalegno (find all my social links at: all.bo)
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