You've been building AI wrong. So were we. Here's the proof.

60 days ago we announced our $6M raise. today we're on a billboard in Times Square. neither one feels as big as the seven words on that wall.

18 months ago we set out to build Swan AI as the first autonomous business.

a company designed to scale with intelligence, not headcount.

$10M ARR per employee is the target.

no SDR army, no ops team stacking linearly with growth.

but back then, I'm not sure we fully understood what we meant by "autonomous."

somewhere along the way, "autonomous business" got flattened into "AI doing everything alone."

that's never been the bet. not for us.

AI on its own gets you to mediocre, fast.. the real unlock is the opposite, humans and AI, both operating with as much autonomy as possible, amplifying each other.

so we put that idea somewhere a million people a day would see it.

Humans + AI.

Autonomy is only real when shared.

seven words. on a wall. in the loudest place on earth.

me, Karthiga, and Jeremy (missing Niv and Ido ofc…..) standing under it this morning. surreal isn't the word.

and somehow the numbers are telling us we might be onto something.

revenue has almost doubled (90% growth) in the 60 days since we announced the raise.

and the only thing that scaled with it was how autonomous our team (humans and agents) got to be.

the answer isn't "stop hiring."

it isn't "let AI do it all" either.

the answer is humans and AI, together, with more autonomy than either has ever had alone.

that's the only thing that moves the needle now.

I don't know exactly how the next 18 months look. but I know we are going to spend them chasing this one idea harder than we've chased anything.

getswan.com

Manual First, Automate Last

• Kill the automation, Pick one AI-driven workflow you're running this week. Turn it off. Do it by hand for 2-3 days. Not to slow down, to see what's actually happening inside the process you've been delegating.

• Map what you're actually doing, Every time you handle a case manually, write down the scenario. High intent. Objecting. Just browsing. Don't template yet, just name the situation and what you did. By day 3, you'll have a map you didn't know you were missing.

• Now automate the map, not the task, Take what you documented and build the automation around your actual judgment calls, not the generic workflow you had before. This time, the AI is multiplying something real.

We unlearned these the hard way, 18 months and a Times Square billboard later. What's costing you right now?

–Amos

Amos Bar-Joseph

Founder & CEO of Swan AI. Building the first autonomous business scaling to $10M ARR per employee with AI agents. Writing about the future of GTM and leadership.