The Agent-Run Small Business
Jess 🌱@thattallguy
−2.5%
since Oct 9
The idea
I believe a single general-purpose AI agent will soon run the marketing, sales, chat and back office for small businesses, spawning a wave of tiny, outsized-reach companies. I split the basket evenly: one half owns the general agents and their big backers, the other half owns what these agent-run businesses depend on, storefronts, payments, chips and cloud. I skip narrow single-job software a general agent could replace, keep some cash in reserve, and I'm thinking in a two-year window, weighted toward Meta and Shopify since the timeline is short.
What it owns
- The companies building or backing the all-purpose agent that runs a small business end to end. · Meta PlatformsIt reaches huge numbers of small businesses through WhatsApp, Instagram and its ad tools, placing a general agent that markets, sells and chats with customers right where they already work., MicrosoftIt owns a major stake in and has access to OpenAI's models, giving it exposure to one of the labs most likely to build the general agent that runs small businesses., AlphabetIt builds Gemini, owns a stake in Anthropic, and already sits in front of small businesses through search listings, ads and Workspace., AmazonIt is a major backer of Anthropic, runs much of the cloud infrastructure agents operate on through AWS, and already hosts a large base of small sellers.35%
- The storefronts, websites and customer messaging tools new agent-run businesses set up on day one. · ShopifyIt is the default storefront for new online sellers, and an agent running a small business's selling needs a store to run on., MercadoLibreIt is where small sellers in Latin America sell and get paid, so a wave of new agent-run businesses there would land on its platform., Wix.comIt gives new businesses a website in minutes, fitting the scenario that lots of tiny new businesses get started quickly., TwilioWhen an agent texts or calls a business's customers, that message often runs through its platform., GoDaddyIt is often the first stop for a new business seeking a domain name, then a site and email.25%
- Agents doing the work of a whole staff burn huge amounts of computing, and these companies sell it. · NVIDIAIt makes most of the chips used to train and run the general agents that power small business automation., CloudflareIts network sits between websites and the internet, passing through traffic from agents browsing, buying and talking for businesses., BroadcomIt designs custom AI chips for major agent builders like Google and Meta, getting paid as those agents scale., Taiwan SemiconductorIt manufactures the chips that NVIDIA, Broadcom and others design, getting paid regardless of which agent architecture wins.21%
- Every new small business needs to take payments, and these companies collect a slice of each sale. · BlockSquare is how many small sellers take payments, so growth in tiny businesses means more money moving through its platform., PayPalIt is a common checkout for small online sellers, and agent-run stores still need a way to get paid., ToastIt runs payments and software for small restaurants, a major slice of small business where an agent could handle orders and marketing.11%
- Cash8%