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Through the end of the 2010s, people were a companys infrastructure. Large workforces provided the scaffold upon which a business could build capacity for complexity: hire more people, take on more work. Artificial intelligence has upended this relationship, decoupling a companys potential productivity from its headcount and redefining which businesses will fare best. As a result, Americas mid-sized companies are disappearing: the number of businesses with between 250 and 499 employees has fallen by 22.5% since 2020. Meanwhile, the independent professional economy is quickly growing to take their place: 30.4 million U.S. solopreneurs (businesses with a single employee) now collectively generate over $1.75 trillion in output, rivaling that of larger firms. As mid-size companies dwindle, their economic role will be replaced by individuals using AI as their infrastructure. The next five years will see the rise of an entirely new model of work, one in which savvy service professionalsfrom lawyers to plumberswill operate at a scale previously possible only for mid-sized or even larger companies. EXPANDING SOLO WORK When surveyed, entrepreneurs note that they spend 36% of their working hours on administrative tasks, leaving little capacity to think about business growth or transformation. Single process automations have historically helped to free up some of this brain space, but AI does this on an entirely different level. Pearls proprietary research shows 50% of white-collar workers believe AI could handle over half of their job responsibilities in the next five years. For a new crop of solopreneurs, AI will completely assume their burdensome administrative work. But AI wont be just another force multiplier akin to digitizing invoices in QuickBooks or tracking a customers status in Salesforce. For solopreneurs, AI will add entirely new forces, equipping them with super agents to expand their business to the heft of a mid-sized firm while leaving them room to focus on mastering their craft. Middle-sized companies used to occupy a protected niche, gathering trusted groups of professionals to offer formalized work too specialized for large enterprises and too complicated for solo workers. Now, a solopreneur can harness the power of a 250-person firm, not by replacing hundreds of employees but by using AI to replicate the coordination that previously made this size staff necessary. THE DIGITAL WORKFORCE Solopreneurs will match the quantity and quality of work of a mid-sized business by assembling a digital workforce to coordinate across five distinct categories: Sales and Marketing The solopreneur already has a distinct advantage over mid-size companies in acquiring customers: their singular voice. AI helps them extend this voice to find new leads far beyond their network and maintain sales relationships at a capacity far higher than what one person can manage alone. Businesses are currently using AI to make faster marketing decisions and even automate entire workflows, such as sending tailored emails to capture a potential customer who has abandoned their cart and tracking the results. Future sales and marketing will hand off even more of the strategic work to AI, allowing it to lead entire accounts, negotiate pricing, and derive new messaging based on real-time customer signals, all to extend a professionals personal reach. Research For client work already secured, solopreneurs are using tools like Perplexitys Deep Research to create expert-level briefs in minutes, earning the company an $18 billion valuation from investors betting on AI-driven knowledge work. From synthesizing multiple earnings call transcripts to surfacing the latest news on competitors and novel techniques, AI is giving sole proprietors access to an exponentially wider breadth of knowledge and eliminating the fluff so they can absorb only the most consequential information. As AI matures, it will help solopreneurs continually update a research memory bank, question initial output for factuality, and flag missing data. Execution For a legal issue, for example, customers would rather avoid paying for the overhead of a large firm and work solely with the most experienced lawyer. AIs execution power finally enables this, connecting trusted experts directly with customers. The most advanced sole proprietors today compete with mid-size companies by running multiple specialized agents, automating workplace tasks like drafting informed email responses, summarizing meetings through different expert lenses, and preparing tailored reports. Already, U.K. civil servants have reported that they save an average of two weeks per year with similar AI automations. In the next five years, AI will evolve from requiring explicit instructions to only needing intent. Instead of requesting email drafts for review, a solo lawyer might ask AI to keep a client warm or move this deal forward and let an agent do the rest. Humans will still play the most important role, consulting on nonnegotiable accuracy checks and strategy decisions. Compliance Though famously unsexy, compliance is essential to company growth and what keeps many smaller firms from venturing outside their core pursuits. With AI anticipating compliance issues, solopreneurs can more quickly expand into new areas of business, rivaling larger firms whose governance teams protect them in these pivots. AI compliance platforms already track and map relevant changing regulations, allowing solopreneurs to keep up with shifting legal obligations without a large compliance team. What will come next is AI-generated audit trails and compliance assessments for real-time operations, shifting the work of keeping a company in line completely into the background. Management Coordinating an entire infrastructure of autonomous agents will be essential to scaling a business with only one human employee. The startup period will likely be much more extensive than for a human-staffed company, with the solopreneur needing to define a vision fo the business and reiterate it to management agents to get processes right. When management agents are finally aligned with the company leader, theyll be able to predictively schedule subordinate agents, balance workloads, and uplevel important considerations before they turn into problems. Today, an AI agent can launch tens of others to complete a complex process. Tomorrow, a network of management agents will continuously reprioritize work to meet the solopreneurs long-term goals. SCRAMBLING THE PROFESSIONAL FIELD Rather than a distant vision, the multi-million-dollar solo business is already here. In just six months, Maor Shlomo alone built vibe coding platform Base44. He garnered tens of thousands of customers and sold it to Wix for $80 million. Meanwhile, 50% of global freelancers are already earning more on projects when they use AI tools. 62% of GenZers are interested in starting their own business so America can expect a continuing increase in sole-proprietor firms from the next generation of knowledge workers. However, not every professional will be equipped to immediately become a solopreneur. They will still need training grounds like enterprises, continuing education programs, and peer mentorship to hone the expertise necessary to justify staking out on their own. What AI has changed is that anyone in the professional sphere can now go solo, they just have to choose the right moment in their career. Even as more Americans consult AI for advice, they will continue to seek out human experts for the best service. Increasingly, however, these professionals will be powered by AI infrastructures complex enough to rival mid-sized firms.
Category:
E-Commerce
As the Barack Obama Presidential Center takes shape ahead of its June 2026 opening, some observers have pointed feedback about an element of the building’s design. The Chicago tower features all-caps lettering that wraps around two sides of the building. But for many people, the textan excerpt from the former presidents speech in 2015, on the 50th anniversary of the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabamais nearly impossible to read. Its designers say legibility isn’t the onlyor even the primaryfunction of the lettering. “One of the key questions I asked at the beginning was, are people supposed to read this?” says designer Micheal Bierut, who typeset the lettering with a team at Pentagram, led by designer Britt Cobb. “Is legibility the primary goal here? Do we want people to be able to stand on the ground, look up at this tower, and read those words? And that was discussed on the client end, and the answer came back, ‘No, it should have the promise of meaning, it should be decipherable, everything should be spelled right and it should make sense. [Rendering: The Obama Foundation] Letters as texture Early concepts of the Obama Presidential Center designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) showed a perforated upper section depicted in drawings as an abstract, irregular pattern. At one point, architects considered filling the space with a bunch of words, like a word cloud, though that idea didn’t feel quite dignified enough for a presidential library. Instead, they decided to use an excerpt from one of Obama’s speeches. “Just as a million people go to the Lincoln Memorial, some of them will stand and read every word of the second inaugural; some people will just admire the statue in the building and kind of take it in, and a couple of words will jump out, but not the whole thing,” Bierut tells Fast Company. “It’s in that tradition that I think we were operating.” The function of the feature is to serve as a space on the building that would be illuminated to the outside at night; from the inside, it’s a viewing area. Bierut says it was “never intended to look or feel or communicate as an applied sign stuck on the building.” It’s part of the architecture, not separate from it. Not everyone is a fan, though. Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey wrote on X that the text was “tough to read to me, giving off the lorem ipsum vibes,” referring to the Latin dummy text designers use as a placeholder when typesetting, while other X users joked the full quote can only be fully read by a drone as a dual dig against the design and against the Obama administration’s drone warfare program. [Photo: E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images] Typesetting an architectural feature The words are load-bearing, which added an element of complexity to the design process. “We’re moving around typography, adjusting letter sizes and letter spacing, and suddenly you’re typesetting 5-foot letters that are bearing tons of weight,” Cobb says. “It gets to a point where it becomes [more] about structural design. . . . I might say how I wish that letter could be three inches closer, but no, sorry, it’s bearing all this weight. It’s got to be here instead of there.” The letters are set in an adapted version of Gotham, Obama’s presidential campaign font, and the excerpt comes from one of Obama’s most famous speeches as president. Given at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the National Historic Landmark where police attacked civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday 1965, Obama tied Selma to the broader American story in his speech. The excerpt reads: “You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word We. We the People. We Shall Overcome. Yes We Can. That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.” The text as it appears on the building wasn’t designed to be a billboard or read as a speech. It’s a pep talk to America. You are America. We the people. Yes we can. Even if glanced only in snippets, these words still hold power.
Category:
E-Commerce
Say what you will about business and media mogul Kim Kardashian, but if theres one thing she undoubtedly excels at, its building a personal brand so recognizable that all of her ventures scream Kim. Shes done it once again with her new energy drink brand Update, which looks like it couldve organically spawned in the walk-in fridge of her sleek Los Angeles home.Update is a four-year-old energy drink brand founded by CEO Daniel Solomons. On February 24, the brand revealed a full packaging and design overhaul and introduced Kardashian as a cofounder in its new era. In an interview with Fast Company, Solomons said that Kardashian had been a steady customer since 2023 and began offering feedback on the brands formula and packaging, which ultimately led to her formally joining the team. In addition to Kardashians sign-on, Update also announced a 4,000-store distribution deal with Walmart, which will begin on March 1.[Photo: Update]This isnt just a celebrity brand endorsement. Since joining Update, Kardashian has worked closely with the team to completely rethink Updates branding, taking it from what Solomons describes as a masculine tech bro look to a can that feels perfectly natural in Kardashians hand. This shift taps into the refined personal brand that Kardashian has built over the past several yearsone thats perhaps most exemplified by her ultra-successful apparel company Skims, which embraces simple, minimalist shapes; a color palette of neutrals offset by pops of pastels; and a futuristic yet grounded ethos.For Kardashian, Update is essentially Skims in a can: a drinkable version of the aspirational aesthetic thats at the core of all of her business ventures.Onboarding the right agency for the jobDesigning a modern energy drink is no small task. The energy drink aisle is notoriously crowded, and its only getting busier as functional beverages take off among wellness-focused young consumers. According to the agency Grand View Research, the global energy drinks market was estimated at $79.39 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $125.11 billion by 2030. To design a beverage that would actually stand out on shelves, Update turned to an agency with a healthy background in thinking up breakout brands for saturated markets: Day Job, the design wizards behind brands like Fly by Jing, the adaptogen drink Recess, and the viral protein bar brand David, which recently exploded in popularity in no small part due to its ultra-minimalist, refined look. The lesson we take from the success of naming and branding David is that a brand doesnt need to be your friend, says Rion Harmon, Day Jobs executive creative director. It just needs to be very, very good. People want excellent products. And its okay for your branding to reflect that.For Update, that meant leaning into Kardashians tonal, minimalist aesthetic that aspirational shoppers are already familiar with, rather than attempting to design an energy drink for the everyman. [Photo: Update]Designing a drink that “feels like Kim, without saying Kim”Updates original branding included a palette of bright (almost neon) metallic hues, paired with a stenciled wordmark and some highlighted nutrition info. The overall look was akin to a beverage one might expect to see in the Tron universe or in a gamers streamneedless to say, it was far off base from something Kardashian might design.Previous branding for Update. [Photo: Update]“The category of energy drinks is extremely loud,” Harmon says. “Lots of color, lots of neons, lots of overlapping graphics, lots of chaos.”But, according to Harmon, Kardashian had a vision for the brand as soon as she joined the team. She wanted it to express a clean, premium futurism to reflect the innovative approach to energy, he says. (Updates formulation relies on the ingredient paraxanthine, a molecule that the body naturally converts into caffeinewhich the brand says gives its products a less jittery feeling.)Day Job took this concept and spun it into a variety of different cans, all totally different in their approach to logo, layout, type, and color. Kardashian then selected her top cans and provided the team with specific notes for each.She was very involved, from initial vision to minor refinements, creative directing all along the way, Harmon says. She has a very sharp eye, her feedback is always clear, she has real aesthetic vision, but shes collaborative as well.[Image: kimkardashian/Instagram]The final design brings together a palette of muted metallic blue, pink, maroon, and yellow, all of which look like they could star in the next NikeSkims collection. As it did with the packaging for the protein bar David, Day Job minimized any text on the cans to the barest of bones, leaving only subtle notes on flavor, calories, and sugar content. They replaced the techy logo font with a bolded sans serif. Harmon calls it a nearly non-logosomething simple and default, but with a reflective materiality to evoke futurism.In sum, Update is a beverage that would look perfectly natural next to a pair of ballet-core joggersor nestled in Kim Kardashians expertly manicured hand.Kims body of work has a recognizable quality, and thats something we wanted to inform the brand identity, Harmon says. It needed to feel like Kim, without saying Kim. We wanted to find the line between something that fits in her fridge, and the fridges of Walmart.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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