Last week, Taylor Swift broke new ground in the era of hyper-individualism by proving you can launch a movement with a single podcast appearance.

By announcing her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, on the podcast of her longtime boyfriend and N.F.L. star Travis Kelce, she proved that she can’t just mobilize millions of loyal followers and fans (which we already knew), but also entire companies and brands around the world to adopt and quickly turn her brand into their own meme-able content.

The era of the hyperinfluencer is here. But does this always look as simple as she makes it seem? And what does it mean for the rest of us?

One of the most compelling moments about this period in time is that so many of us can do more with less. Less money, less time.

Technological advances combined with souring attitudes on political and corporate institutions is making it possible to detach from the system of work.

We can start (and run) companies from a single laptop. We can pursue our multi-hyphenate, portfolio careers. In a world that’s constantly told us, “That’s too much!” we are suddenly, quite possibly, able to have it all. So what do we do about it?

The 1970s classic The Mythical Man-Month was one of the first books to highlight the counterintuitive truth that adding more people to a software project can actually slow it down. In fact, it suggested an inverse relationship between team size and the speed of bringing a project to market.

Maybe that’s why the tech industry is so obsessed with this idea of a single-person, billion-dollar company.

But here’s the catch: This fantasy is short-sighted. In a world where AI is accelerating faster than we can regulate, interpret, or even fully understand, what we need isn’t radical individualism, it’s radical collaboration. Not bigger teams for efficiency’s sake, but broader coalitions for perspective, accountability, and wisdom.

Sure, maybe it’s possible to build a billion-dollar unicorn run by one person and a fleet of AI agents. But the more compelling path is the hyper-collaborator: Someone who uses the leverage and velocity of nimbleness to cut through the silos and politics of big organizations, while also slowing down just enough to bring ethics and humanity back into the equation.

Here’s something I’ve learned about running a single-person solo company this year: You can’t actually do it alone.

Starting a company is sort of like designing an escape room, made just for you.

Since you have no one else in your way, you get to leave all of your bad habits and quirks out on your desk. Since you don’t need to share, you never worry about cleaning your dishes or putting away your laundry. You spend weeks and months simply gathering and collecting all of the puzzle pieces that you might need in the years to come.

This can be a lot of fun. But it can also be pretty frustrating. Back in June, I got to a point where I realized that all of the clues I needed to escape were indeed inside the room. I just needed a little help finding my way around all the clues.

I felt like I was in some twisted version of an old-school RPG, somewhere between a carnival fun house and a hyper-personalized “Escape the Room.” You might think you have all of the clues you need inside the room yourself. But the secret is really, you need to pick up the phone and ask some friends for help.

Taylor Swift gets this, by the way. She’s been the beacon of the hyper-social, hyper-collaborator for years. She’s got her people for producing songs on albums and her people for cross-promoting her work. Her people for business and her people for PR. And, by the way, she apparently treats them all very well.

The American Dream used to be 160 acres and a plow. Today, it’s a laptop and an AI agent. But the lesson hasn’t changed: Frontiers are never crossed alone. The future won’t belong to the billion-dollar soloist, it will belong to the hyper-collaborators who know when to move fast, when to slow down, and how to build with others in the room.

Last week, Taylor Swift broke new ground in the era of hyper-individualism by proving you can launch a movement with a single podcast appearance.

By announcing her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, on the podcast of her longtime boyfriend and N.F.L. star Travis Kelce, she proved that she can’t just mobilize millions of loyal followers and fans (which we already knew), but also entire companies and brands around the world to adopt and quickly turn her brand into their own meme-able content.

The era of the hyperinfluencer is here. But does this always look as simple as she makes it seem? And what does it mean for the rest of us?

One of the most compelling moments about this period in time is that so many of us can do more with less. Less money, less time.

Technological advances combined with souring attitudes on political and corporate institutions is making it possible to detach from the system of work.

We can start (and run) companies from a single laptop. We can pursue our multi-hyphenate, portfolio careers. In a world that’s constantly told us, “That’s too much!” we are suddenly, quite possibly, able to have it all. So what do we do about it?

The 1970s classic The Mythical Man-Month was one of the first books to highlight the counterintuitive truth that adding more people to a software project can actually slow it down. In fact, it suggested an inverse relationship between team size and the speed of bringing a project to market.

Maybe that’s why the tech industry is so obsessed with this idea of a single-person, billion-dollar company.

But here’s the catch: This fantasy is short-sighted. In a world where AI is accelerating faster than we can regulate, interpret, or even fully understand, what we need isn’t radical individualism, it’s radical collaboration. Not bigger teams for efficiency’s sake, but broader coalitions for perspective, accountability, and wisdom.

Sure, maybe it’s possible to build a billion-dollar unicorn run by one person and a fleet of AI agents. But the more compelling path is the hyper-collaborator: Someone who uses the leverage and velocity of nimbleness to cut through the silos and politics of big organizations, while also slowing down just enough to bring ethics and humanity back into the equation.

Here’s something I’ve learned about running a single-person solo company this year: You can’t actually do it alone.

Starting a company is sort of like designing an escape room, made just for you.

Since you have no one else in your way, you get to leave all of your bad habits and quirks out on your desk. Since you don’t need to share, you never worry about cleaning your dishes or putting away your laundry. You spend weeks and months simply gathering and collecting all of the puzzle pieces that you might need in the years to come.

This can be a lot of fun. But it can also be pretty frustrating. Back in June, I got to a point where I realized that all of the clues I needed to escape were indeed inside the room. I just needed a little help finding my way around all the clues.

I felt like I was in some twisted version of an old-school RPG, somewhere between a carnival fun house and a hyper-personalized “Escape the Room.” You might think you have all of the clues you need inside the room yourself. But the secret is really, you need to pick up the phone and ask some friends for help.

Taylor Swift gets this, by the way. She’s been the beacon of the hyper-social, hyper-collaborator for years. She’s got her people for producing songs on albums and her people for cross-promoting her work. Her people for business and her people for PR. And, by the way, she apparently treats them all very well.

The American Dream used to be 160 acres and a plow. Today, it’s a laptop and an AI agent. But the lesson hasn’t changed: Frontiers are never crossed alone. The future won’t belong to the billion-dollar soloist, it will belong to the hyper-collaborators who know when to move fast, when to slow down, and how to build with others in the room.