We believe one of the most valuable uses of human-level (and beyond!) artificial intelligence will be to start startups. After all, this has been one of the best ways for human intelligence to create value!

We can think of progress toward these “self-driving” startups in terms of levels of autonomy—just like in self-driving cars. At level 0, no AI is involved. And at level 5, no humans are involved:

Level 0: No AI

People do everything. They come up with ideas, build products, and run operations. Many legacy businesses still work this way.

Level 1: People use AI tools ⬅︎ we are here

People might use ChatGPT to help write copy or Cursor to help write code. This is where most startups are today.

Level 2: AI agents complete tasks based on human instructions

People might ask AI agents to write software from a plain-English spec or tell it execute well-defined customer service processes. At this point entire departments (like support or QA) get largely replaced by AI. No startups I know of operate at this level yet—but if yours does, let me know.

Level 3: AI agents propose changes to their own instructions

They might propose new customer service processes and product changes in response to customer feedback. Humans would still approve each of those changes. Just a few people could run a large company this way.

Level 4: AI agents autonomously change their instructions

At this point startups become self-improving. Humans would only be involved as an escalation point or where required by the real world (e.g. to raise capital or to incorporate). At this point many startups would only have one human.

Level 5: No humans

AI agents decide which businesses to start, raise capital (through crypto tokens or other means), build and run them. No humans required. This would require major reforms in the legal and financial system.

How will this play out?

It’s incredibly hard to predict, but we’re excited to find out.

We’re a startup that makes self-driving startups. We’ll start with a few L2 startups (garple.com is our first). By the end of 2025 we’d like for the core loop to operate at L4: talk to your customers and improve the product autonomously!

A few other companies we’ve seen are working on the same thing and we expect we’ll see L3 self-driving startup studios emerge in 2025. In 2026 it may then become so cheap to build and run a self-driving startup, that any SaaS without a strong moat will see its margins collapse.

As is generally the case with new technology, this will ultimately be great for all software users—individuals and businesses alike. They’ll get access to better software cheaper!

🇬🇧 We’re hiring AI engineers in London that are (or would like to become) obsessed with coding agents. To apply, email hiring@nustom.com. Remote okay with 2 weeks/month travel. If you refer somebody we hire, we’ll give you £10,000.