Venture-backed tech has, for decades, been powered by people deciding to pay for SaaS products that will help their businesses grow. Soon, we will see that trend start to play out in reverse.
As autonomous startups begin to emerge, the AIs that run these operations will need to call on human help to generate sales and grow, creating a new tech category in the process: HaaS, or humans-as-a-service.
We’re already seeing how VCs are beginning to shift their sights from would-be unicorns onto so-called “donkeycorns” — smaller ventures run by lone founders who are making use of AI agents to automate their workflows. Those agents will be great at some things, but early signs show that for certain jobs, like closing valuable B2B contracts, AI just isn’t going to cut the mustard, with many well-hyped and heavily-backed automated sales products already running into challenges.
As the world of business gets more and more automated as AI systems get more capable, the value of the human touch for some functions will be more important than ever.
The shape of autonomous companies
We are already starting to see strong signals about what kinds of business processes are easiest to automate with AI agents, be it coding, customer service, legal advice, procurement and predictable workflows like payroll.
And some are finding ways to put these tools to work, saying they’ve used AI to build businesses that require minimal human intervention. Experiments like No-Code Mindset’s local business directory, which its maker claims brings in $2.4k a month with just four hours of work spent to manage it, offer a window into a possible future where a single entrepreneur could oversee multiple businesses that all but run themselves.
A whole economy is opening up around this kind of low-touch company. New startup studios like New York-based Audos are offering investment and AI technical support for people wanting to launch a business, and then helping them with automated distribution via targeted marketing. Audos says it wants to launch 100k companies a year using AI.
But, while this model might work for B2C companies finding customers on social media, B2B growth will be harder to automate. A lone entrepreneur might be able to build an amazing software product for airlines with AI, but they are unlikely to be able to sell it into those large organisations without connections to the industry and by relying on an automated sales function.
The value of being well-connected
The growth of HaaS as a category will be accelerated as some of the hype around AI’s sales capabilities begins to unravel.
While companies like London-founded 11x, which builds AI “workers” to automate junior sales jobs, have raised chunky rounds from investors like a16z, many are starting to draw attention to shortcomings in some of these tools, like poor personalisation of messages, and unreliability. The reality is that many AI sales products are essentially automated email outreach tools that could have a very short shelf life: as more LLM-written sales messages are sent that customers don’t want to read, people will get tired of this brand of spam and stop opening them.
This doesn’t mean that the world of sales will stay the same. We're already seeing the growth of 'fractional execs', as companies hire part-time senior level expertise across every business function, from marketing and commercial to finance and IT, to cut costs and maximise flexibility. Fractional industry experts are also being hired by companies to open doors and land B2B sales in hard-to-reach industries — and I think we’ll see AI systems at autonomous companies start looking for similar services within 12 months.
That’s because, in the painstaking world of B2B sales, existing relationships are one thing that AI can’t eat, and many more well-connected and experienced professionals will start selling their services and network on top of their full-time jobs to supplement their incomes.
Follow the leader
(Human) networks are becoming increasingly valuable elsewhere too. In the same way that the influencer marketing industry for consumer brands has exploded in recent years, having a big online following is also becoming a big deal in B2B.
Take Stockholm-founded AI app maker Lovable: while users love the product, founder Anton Osika’s big following on X and LinkedIn must've helped its viral growth too. Then there’s 20VC’s Harry Stebbings, who’s built a whole VC firm off the back of growing a huge audience for his podcast.
And, with AI steadily encroaching upon more and more of the way we work, the value of these networks is only going up, as professionals are forced to focus on building connections to add value in an increasingly automated economy. This strange new era of HaaS — where humanity, rather than software, becomes the product — will demand adjustment from everyone in the value chain, from business leaders, to their employees and investors.
It could be a good thing too, as we all focus more on using qualities that make us human, rather than the kind of monotonous work an AI might well be able to do better.
