I recently wrote about what happens when a product owner can prototype directly with AI, without waiting for an engineering slot to open up. Then I thought: what if it's not just the prototyping that a product owner can do in partnership with AI. What about running the whole company?
Right now (amongst other things) I'm the chief product owner and commercial decision-maker across three live web products. Actify, a working daily exerciser for actors. A Day Skipper (sailing) primer which has moved from a Supabase prototype into a proper MySQL/PHP build with an AI Agent running safe deployment. A third product, aimed at food hygiene and safety compliance in the catering market, is underway alongside them. Different markets, different stacks, different customers — and one person at the centre of all three.
I've not just got a highly productive virtual developer by my side. I use automation tools to run scheduled and secure tasks I don't need to touch by hand. I have an exercise creation agent standing by to create new material when I need it. For another venture I have a small AI Agent team running daily scans for AI regulation and industry changes, turning them into a compliance training digest for financial services.
But what if we stretch this idea, to a full-blown virtual company, with a virtual team underneath a very real chief product owner and commercial manager?
The org chart that doesn't exist yet
Picture the roles filled in around me, reporting up the way a real team would:
This isn't a company with fewer people doing the same jobs. It's a company where the org chart is built for one human at the top making the calls only a human should make, and a set of specialists under them who never sleep, never context-switch, and never need a 1:1. Furthermore, I just need a hierarchy of roles. I don't need a team of developers or a team of call-centre operators. I just need to define the scope and responsibilites of each role.
At one time I would have scoffed at this idea, but this picture feels more plausible now that I have experienced a glimpse of it.
I am the key constraint
The most tried-and-tested part of this vision is the role of chief coder and architectural adviser. It is already the most mature part of the whole picture. My 'friend' is doing real work for a fraction of the cost and time it would take for the human equivalent.
The key constraint is me and the bandwidth I have to orchestrate and manage my 'team' of agents. Speed of development can be a double-edged sword. It is easy to end up with a lot of half-baked solutions and ideas in varying degrees of maturity. Having said that, I'm thinking that here's another role that I could introduce: a portfolio manager to track my projects; remind me where I've got to; give me a cost benefit breakdown. Tell me when to stop!
Mitigating the risks is my responsibility
There are of course some important risks that need to be managed such as liability, brand integrity and security. I need to make sure that judgment sits in the right place. That my agents don't over-reach their boundaries and that appropriate audit checks are in place.
I need to be sure that architectural decisions aren't just accepted because they were offered confidently. I need to actually review what is being proposed. That's a discipline challenge for me, not a capability problem for the agent.
None of this argues against the vision. It argues for a hierarchy and clear roles: a human at the top, not because the agents can't act, but because someone has to own what happens when they do.
The best place to start is here
The instinct might be to reach for the flashiest gap, build the customer success agent, stand up the live-ops watcher. But, the more honest starting point is the role that's already working. The chief coder and architectural adviser is the one part of this picture that isn't a vision at all; it's a daily habit I've already formed, across all three products. The real test of this whole idea isn't whether the roles I've identified are compelling, but whether the model I've already established is sound. So far so good. I'll keep pushing the boundaries and see how far we can go!