Mike Litman
The High Agency Multiplier
A TALK BY MIKE LITMAN

The High Agency
Multiplier

Why one person with pep beats twenty waiting for the meeting.

From a Stripe co-founder
“

There are two categories of people I would be super bullish on right now. First, high-agency people. The people who have that pep in their step and want to go make things better. They are so much more empowered thanks to AI.

John Collison · Stripe co-founder · 2026
Definition

High agency is three things.

01
Sees the gap.
Before anyone asked. Before it was obvious. The problem was there; they just looked.
02
Decides without permission.
Not recklessly. With judgement. The decision happens with or without the meeting.
03
Ships.
The thing exists. In the world. Other people can use it. That is the only test that counts.
TO BE CLEAR

What high agency is not.

  • NOTHustle. Hours are not the unit. Decisions are.
  • NOTHeroics. The drama is the tell that the system is broken.
  • NOTLone-wolf. High agency talks to more people, not fewer. Just not in steercos.
  • NOTFounder worship. It's a habit anyone can run, at any level, in any org.

AI doesn't create high agency.
It multiplies it.

01
WHY NOW

The moat that protected slow companies was that everyone was slow.

Big teams, long meetings, six-week briefs were the speed of business because that was the speed of everyone. Then Cursor, Claude, and the agent stack arrived. The slow-org moat went with them. A high-agency person ships in a week what a steerco schedules for next quarter. The gap is no longer survivable.

PIETER LEVELS · PHOTOAI · $100K MRR SOLO BY SEPT 2024
What high agency looks like now

It is not the loud one in the meeting.
It is the one who left.

Monday
Spots the gap.
Parents in N8 cannot find pram-friendly pubs.
Thursday
Builds the thing.
A voice agent that calls the venues.
Friday
Ships.
Buggy Smart. 1,180 venues. Live map.
LOW AGENCY
Person One

Books a workshop. Adds it to the roadmap. Routes it through three approvals. Waits for the steerco.

Workshop request filed
Roadmap slot requested
Three approvals pending
Waiting for steerco
HIGH AGENCY
Person Two

Already shipped it.

Done.

1 + AI

equals what used to take a team.

In February 2024, Klarna said its AI was doing the work of 700 customer service agents and saving $40M a year. The math broke. Most orgs are still budgeting against the old equation.

THE PATTERN, NAMED

High agency at scale, today.

The Collisons
STRIPE

Built on the belief that the people closest to the customer should decide.

Pieter Levels
SOLO BUILDER · PHOTOAI, NOMAD LIST

PhotoAI alone hit $100K MRR solo by Sept 2024. Competes with venture-backed teams.

Jennifer Stephens
CO-FOUNDER, CMO, NED

Shipping at the intersection of AI, brand science, and PE deal flow. Multi-role operator in a single seat.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff
NESS LABS

Solo founder. Built the books, the courses, the community, the research. End-to-end.

02
PROOF, FROM ONE OPERATOR

One person. One year.

No team. No funding. No permission. The loop: see the gap, build the thing, ship it, learn, build the next one.

BUGGY SMART · 1,180 VENUES VISIBLE SHELF · 295 BOOKS WITH MOSHI · AI PHONE FOR RESTAURANTS THE SYSTEM · PAID PIPELINE EVERYWEAR · DAILY EDITION QUEUE INDEX · FIRST ORDER · OISHII
FOUR OBJECTIONS A SMART SCEPTIC RAISES

Yes, but. All of these are real.

  • 01"Without taste, you just ship garbage faster."
  • 02"Klarna walked back the AI rehiring humans."
  • 03"In regulated orgs you can't ship by Friday."
  • 04"High-agency people burn out and leave."
AND HERE'S WHY EACH ONE PROVES THE THESIS

Yes, and here's why.

  • 01Taste and the customer are the constraint. Agency without judgement is chaos. With it, leverage.
  • 02The Klarna walk-back proves the constraint. They overshot, customers pushed back, they adapted. The loop worked.
  • 03True. The move: small teams with customer access and ship-to-staging permission, no steerco. Stripe runs this way.
  • 04Also true. The org that loses them already lost. Build for them or watch them ship for someone else.

Tools without agency
ships nothing.

MIT's 2025 GenAI Divide report: 95% of enterprise AI pilots deliver no measurable business impact. Seats bought, dashboards lit, output unchanged. The bottleneck wasn't the tool.

04
WHERE IT COMES FROM

High agency is built, not born.

It's a habit shaped by reps. See the gap, decide, ship, learn. The reason it looks innate is that the people who have it have run the loop a thousand times. You don't hire for it. You set up an environment where it's allowed to compound.

15+ YEARS RUNNING THE LOOP R/GA · MEDIAMONKS · BURST · SOLO 20+ AI-NATIVE PRODUCTS THIS YEAR
SO WHAT

Three audiences. Three moves.

FOR HIRING
One question.
What did you ship last month, with whose permission? That replaces the CV.
FOR BUILDERS
One test.
Pick the gap you'd ship by Friday if you had no one to ask. That is the diagnostic.
FOR ORGS
One warning.
Your high-agency people are leaving. Build for them, or watch them ship for someone else.
SO WHAT DOES HIGH AGENCY LOOK LIKE FOR ME?

Being able to be the designer, the creative, the strategist, the builder, the writer, the product guy, the social guy all in one. The wearer of many hats, like a startup founder.

Agency was always the asset.
AI just removed the alibi.

Mike Litman · mikelitman.me · hello@mikelitman.me

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