Hey Reader,
A solo founder sold his 6-month-old AI startup for $80M. Instead of 50 employees, he ran 100 AI agents around the clock. This the true story of Maor Shlomo from Israel, founder of Base44: built solo, zero external funding, sold to Wix for $80M+ within 180 days. Atomic Scaling is doing more with less. Here’s how.
3 Ideas from Me
I. Your First Hire Should Be a Bot.
Maor didn’t hire developers. He deployed them—100 AI agents writing 90% of the code. He kept the “team” as small as possible for as long as possible, fully bootstrapped (no external funding), a stark contrast to his last startup where he raised $130M and hired 100+ people.
This time he orchestrated AI tools to ship new features almost daily. The result? Blazing speed, viral adoption, and built-in-public momentum. Atomic Scaling principle: replace headcount with systems. Stay small. Scale output, not payroll. Sometimes less is more.
II. Build for Fun, Serve Your People.
Maor wasn't just chasing an exit; he was building something he genuinely enjoyed. He said, "I was like let's take a shot at it, and start the product that I know is going to be very very fun to build."
This passion was deeply intertwined with serving people he knew and understood, a concept we at Atomic Scaling call the BRAW Framework: Build for Fun: what problem are you genuinely excited to solve? Relate to: who do you deeply understand and empathize with? Access to: who can you easily reach and get feedback from? Willing to Serve: who are you willing to go the extra mile for, even for free initially? Maor first user: his girlfriend, an artist. Second user: his childhood best friend, a restaurant owner.
III. $80M per Employee Is the New Metric.
Forget $1M per employee. Try $80M. This is the ultimate efficiency metric. Actually, out of 80M$ cash exit, 20M$ go to 6 employees hired 30 days before the exit after reaching with one person team $3.5M ARR and 300K+ users. In Atomic Scaling, we call them EPIC employees!
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2 Quotes from Others
I.
“The funny thing is that with Base44, for the first time in my life, I was not trying to build the biggest thing ever.” — Maor Shlomo, Founder of Base44​
II.
“It doesn’t matter if I failed. At least I passed the concept on to others. Even if I don’t succeed, someone will succeed.” —Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba
1 Action for You
What must be human? What can be automated or delegated to AI? How would you run this business if you couldn’t hire anyone? Sketch it. Do it. Have fun!
Let's Play,
Ludovic Bodin
3x Entrepreneur, 2x Unicorn Investor, 1x IPO. Founder of BOBIC Generational Wealth and Author of Atomic Scaling
P.S. Atomic Scaling = I help founders and teams shift into TTHG mode—“Tiny Team, Huge Growth”. We have a cohort of Atomic Scalers starting on July 25th. Want to know more: reply TTHG to this email.
If this made you think, share it with one founder who needs to hear it. If you want to dig more into Maor Shlomo story and learning, watch this.
WHAT THEY ARE SAYING:
"I want all the golden nuggets I can to help founders raise less or avoid VCs entirely. Atomic Scaling by Ludovic Bodin has some killer actionable ideas in it.” — Chris Tottman, Founding General Partner of NOTION.vc ($1B AUM) & "The Million Dollar ARR Club"
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