A few days ago, while researching the Earth Dog project, I suddenly thought of a question—

If AI can enable one person to do the work of ten, does entrepreneurship still necessarily require fundraising?

The more I think about it, the more unsettling it becomes.

**The underlying logic of fundraising is shaking**

Looking back, fundraising essentially does one thing: exchanging money for people, using scale to buy time. If you lack programmers, you need money; if you lack operations, you need money; if you lack design, marketing, or sales, you need money. Fundraising → hiring → expansion → storytelling → further fundraising—this has been the standard route over the past ten years.

But since the advent of AI, this chain has started to loosen.

Now, with a single person equipped with Copilot, Agents, and automation tools, they can truly handle the workload of an entire small team. AI can write code, do design, craft copy and run ads, and even handle customer service, data analysis, and user operations.

When the marginal cost of hiring a new person approaches zero, the question "Why do I need to raise funds to hire more people?" becomes legitimate for the first time.

**Venture capital isn't really investing in the company itself**

Venture capitalists have never been investing in the company per se; they invest in something that can be infinitely amplified by capital.

In the past, this "amplifier" was the team and organizational capability—more people meant stronger execution, and the scale effect was more apparent. Now, this logic is reversing, shifting the core from "collective strength" to "individual ability."

If you have a clear product intuition, can continuously deliver real value, and add AI as an ability amplifier, you already possess the core assets in the eyes of VC. Do you still need traditional fundraising at this point?

Maybe, but the reasons are different.