I build self-driving trucks. Don’t build a self-driving company

Right now, investors are overrun with pitch decks promising companies that run themselves. Agents work the operations and the AI layer does the managing. The pitch promises a startup will hit a billion dollars with 12 people and a swarm of bots. The premise is always the same. Humans are the bottleneck, and the machines are finally ready to take them out of the loop. While I should be the last person to argue against self-driving companies, I can’t help but be truthful: Driving a company is…