The Great Convergence (Your Autonomous Business, Part 1)

Good morning.

We’re seeing a convergence taking place.

AI tools, systems, agents, automations, workflows, data, API calls, and so on…

Are coming together to enable the transformation of your existing business into an autonomous (self-driving) business.

Don’t fall for the hype and the crazy talk.

I’m here to give you the reality, facts, and trigger your imagination to see what’s now possible.

This is the first issue in a series of 3.

Let’s dive in.

—Sam

IN TODAY’S ISSUE 🤖 

• The Great Convergence.

• The First, Second, and Third Spark.

• The New Age of the Bionic Business.

• New Metaphor Drop: A Living, Breathing Business.

Let’s dive in.

The Great Convergence

We’re here already and I can’t believe it happened this fast.

If you wanted to run a 1-person marketing team (with copywriters, media buyers, content marketers, social media, and so on), you could. 

Same goes for most online functions of any team inside your business.

Accounting? Done.

Administrative? Done.

Sales? Done.

Any and all marketing? Like I said, done. 

Soon, you’ll be able to run a 1-person business.

How much revenue you bring in depends on what you’re selling, to who, and how.

Some claim you can do $1M per year already. 

Others say $10M. 

Crazy people say you can soon run a 1-person, $1 Billion business.

I don’t know about that, but I can see it being possible in theory. 

But what’s possible now, today, is not theory. 

You can now, today, run most parts of an online-centric business by one person, or a few.

It all happens through a combination of automations, agentic workflows, AI tools, and Agents.

Clients I’ve worked with used to have 20-person marketing teams. 

They’re now slimmed down to 4-5 people, sometimes fewer—getting more done, faster, better quality, and better results.

Same with sales teams. Same with various operations or admin teams. 

I’ve consulted with different agencies over the years, and they’ve eliminated tons of contractors and bloat in personnel count. 

I’m not necessarily a fan of this. I’m pro-human. I see and use AI as augmentation and automation, as assistants and workers.

I don’t design and build AI systems to eliminate humans from the loop. 

But I can’t change the world or stop people from doing the inevitable:

AI systems, of different kinds, can and will replace humans. 

But not all jobs will go away. Not all businesses will become redundant. 

More opportunities, more work, more new businesses are coming online every week—thanks to AI. 

If the threat level is at 80%, the opportunity level is at 200%.

Obviously, I’m talking about businesses that mainly run online. If you’re a plumber or electrician, or run a business in the “real world”, you’ll be fine for many years.

But this newsletter is about online businesses, and businesses who get most of their value production done online.

If you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, marketer or copywriter—you’re reading the right newsletter. 

Bionic Business is about transforming your existing business into a self-driving business, to whatever extent you want it to be.

We’re witnessing a convergence of the pieces that have been around for years.

Agents? They’ve been a thing for at least 2 years. They were crude and wonky at the start. But they were a thing.

Automations? Obviously been a thing for many, many years.

Smarter LLMs? Yeah, they’re here already and only getting smarter.

No-code tools? Yup, already here.

Ways to implement agentic workflows? Yes, for a few years now. 

If you think Agents are new, or any other AI systems you see out in the wild, let me break it to you—you’re 2+ years behind.

But that’s okay. It doesn’t matter that much that you’re behind.

AI has collapsed time, in many ways. 

Your basic AI stack for operating a business could be as simple as: 

• LLMs (GPT-4o, o1 and o3, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Deepseek R1, etc.)

• Automations and workflows (Lindy, Gumloop, N8N, even Zapier, etc.)

• Access to data and analytics (Narrative BI, etc.)

• Agents (MultiOn, Crew AI, and 50+ more code frameworks).

String these together, in an input → processing → action → reflection flow, and you have your new team with a human in the loop.

A lot of the above has required elbow grease and a lot of work to implement. It hasn’t been easy. It still isn’t as easy as clicking a button.

But it’s getting easier.

And the past ~6 months, I’ve seen things happen faster than even I anticipated:

The operational pieces for running a 1-5 person business, with $10M or more in yearly revenue, are here. 

The operational pieces for transforming your existing business into an autonomous, self-driving business are converging.

All the pieces have been around.

Now you’re able to glue them together more effectively, more accurately, and more consistently than ever before. 

We’re witnessing the dawn of your autonomous business.

The same guiding principles for making a business work haven’t disappeared.

You need access to a market of buyers who are buying your thing. 

AI doesn’t replace this. AI maximizes your opportunities and can help maximize your revenue and profits.

Solid, good, sound business principles still apply. 

Offers. Market of willing buyers. Margins that work. Operations. Healthy profits. Growing revenue. Products and services that deliver. The list goes on.

All of this can now be done a little easier, faster, better, and in many cases, handled entirely by an AI system.

There’s no better time to take your existing business and apply AI to it. 

(I think starting a business is easier than before, but also harder at the same time. You have more competition. Using AI is not a competitive advantage on its own, everyone has access to the same models. And once again: access to a market of buyers matters more than AI).

Self-driving cars were science fiction. Until it wasn’t.

A similar transformation is sweeping through the business world. Just as self-driving cars 

emerged from the convergence of sensors, computing power, and sophisticated algorithms, we're witnessing the birth of self-driving businesses. 

But why now? What makes this moment different from previous waves of automation and artificial intelligence? The answer lies in a convergence of three technologies.

The First Spark: Language Intelligence Comes of Age

Remember when chatbots could barely handle basic customer inquiries? Those days are fading fast. 

Everyone was rushing to install a customer service chatbot—and I was telling businesses it was a waste of time, which it was (and might still be).

The latest LLMs don't just process text—they understand context, generate human-like responses, and most importantly, reason about complex problems.

That means they can reason and provide solutions to your business problems.

LLMs can easily do this and 100+ more things, in minutes: 

• Write compelling marketing copy that resonates with specific audience segments.

• Analyze market research reports to extract strategic insights.

• Generate detailed technical documentation.

• Develop sophisticated financial models and business strategies.

The key difference is reasoning capability. While earlier AI could follow predefined rules, today's models can think through novel situations and adapt their responses accordingly. 

As AI pioneer Andrew Ng notes, "The set of tasks that AI can do will expand dramatically because of agentic workflows."

The Second Spark: The Rise of Autonomous Agents

If language models are the brain, autonomous agents are the nervous system of the self-driving business. 

These AI-powered programs can actively pursue goals, learn from experience, and work together in coordinated systems.

Consider an e-commerce business. Autonomous agents continuously:

• Monitor inventory levels and automatically reorder stock.

• Adjust pricing in real-time based on competitor actions.

• Optimize advertising spend across multiple platforms.

• Identify and respond to potential customer service issues before they escalate.

What makes this particularly powerful is the emergence of multi-agent systems. Instead of isolated programs handling discrete tasks, we now have networks of specialized agents working together. 

One agent might identify a supply chain disruption, while another automatically adjusts pricing and inventory strategies, and a third updates customer communication—all without human intervention.

Ecommerce is one example. You can apply the same idea to any agency, SaaS, publishing company, media company—and the list goes on.

The Third Spark: Automation Reaches Maturity

The final piece of the puzzle is the maturation of business process automation technology. This includes:

No-Code/Low-Code Platforms: You can create sophisticated workflows without deep technical expertise. What once required teams of developers can now be accomplished by business analysts using visual interfaces.

API Integration Platforms: These act as digital connective tissue, allowing these systems to communicate and coordinate seamlessly. This enables:

• Real-time data flow between systems.

• Automated workflows across multiple platforms.

• Instant responses to business events.

Event-Driven Architectures: These systems allow businesses to respond to changes in real-time. When a customer places an order, updates their profile, or abandons a cart, the system can trigger immediate, appropriate responses across all relevant business functions.

I’m not kidding when I tell you that: 

• A decent N8N flow can automate 90% of your agency, if not more. That’s any kind of agency.

• A solid collection of Gumloops or Lindy’s can perform that work of a 10-person marketing team. 

• A handful Zaps can be your new junior (or even senior) copywriter.

This is just for marketing. I haven’t even mentioned sales, operations, and admin work yet. But it’s the same pattern: 

• A lot of work that happened online, inside software, can now be handled by a good bunch of agentic workflows. 

In the next couple of issues, I’ll go into more detail.

For now, I want you to look towards the dawn that’s rapidly approaching.

The New Age of Bionic Businesses

While each of these technologies is powerful in isolation, their true transformative potential emerges from their interaction.

Language models provide the intelligence, autonomous agents execute the actions, and process automation ties everything together into a coherent system.

Consider a SaaS company using this convergence:

• Language models analyze customer support tickets and usage patterns to identify trends.

• Analytics can identify churn risks and expansion opportunities—and then Agents act on this.

Or a media company leveraging these technologies:

• Language models generate and optimize content for different platforms.

• Autonomous agents manage distribution and engagement strategies.

• Process automation coordinates publication schedules and tracks performance metrics.

For Ecommerce:

• AI can manage inventory, optimize pricing, handle customer service, and personalize shopping experiences.

• Automated systems can handle ordering, shipping, and returns.

• Analytics can predict trends and optimize stock levels, and set off a series of agentic workflows that manage this (with a human in the loop).

For Agencies:

• AI can handle project management and client communication.

• Automated systems can manage workflows and deliverables.

This convergence is particularly powerful because these technologies don't just work independently. For example, an LLM might identify a customer issue, an AI agent might execute the solution, and analytics systems might learn from the interaction to prevent similar issues in the future.

New Metaphor Drop: A Living, Breathing Business

As these technologies converge, something different begins to emerge:

A business that behaves less like a machine and more like a living organism. 

Imagine a company that processes information—and actually “thinks.” 

One that doesn't only respond to changes, but anticipates them. A business that learns, adapts, and evolves in real-time.

Your business is a network of nodes.

The nodes are things like your marketing team and functions, sales, operations, and so on. 

There's latent intelligence "hiding" in your business.

And most are probably letting it atrophy and go to waste.

Imagine the revenue and margin you'd unlock if you just added some intelligence into the network.

That’s what various AI systems can do for you. 

Up until recently, businesses have been thought of with the metaphor of a factory. 

You have input and output, processes and SOPs—everything is defined.

There’s nothing wrong with that metaphor.

But there are other metaphors that might work better in the Age of AI.

The confluence of language intelligence, autonomous agents, and process automation creates something like a corporate nervous system. 

Like neurons firing in a brain, or nodes in a network, these AI systems work to sense, decide, and act.

Data flows through your organization like oxygen through blood vessels.

Automated responses fire like reflexes, while deeper analysis mimics cognitive thought.

But what exactly does this "Bionic Business" look like in practice? How does it sense and respond to its environment? How does it learn and adapt? How can you transform your own business into this new kind of enterprise?

In Part 2, "The Bionic Business," we'll dissect this new organizational anatomy and discover how your company can evolve from a traditional business into a living, thinking system.

Look, there’s an insane amount of hype in the AI world. 

I’m sure you’ve seen and heard it all. 

Personally, I’m so sick of it. 

Lots of people talking about things they don’t understand—and haven’t tried to implement. 

I’ve been working with ML since 2016 and (what we now call) Generative AI since 2019. It’s been a ton of hard work, sweat, tears, and years of my life.

When ChatGPT came along, I was excited—finally, more people saw what was possible.

We’ve really seen a new market emerge in the past ~3 years.

Everything that used to take a lot of time and effort, has become 100x easier. 

We used to custom code the kind of agentic automations you can now create with the click of a button.

I used to write prompts and work on (true, actual) prompt engineering for hours, and put together early “agents”. 

Without any hype whatsoever, because I don’t do hype: 

It’s truly 100x easier to transform your business into an autonomous business than ever before.

Everything is converging. Fast. 

Part 2 and 3 will explore this further, in a bit more detail.

For now, the most important task for your week is:

Start to imagine your business differently. Use a new metaphor of a living system, a network of nodes, to think about what your business does. 

Use your imagination more. If you can’t “see” the new world we’re entering, it’ll be harder to implement any of the tactics available to you.

A lot of people will read this issue and gloss over it. 

That’s their loss. 

Make it your gain.

Talk soon,
Sam Woods
The Editor