This post originally appeared in my Substack newsletter on AI. Subscribe here.

In the age of the internet, we learned to equate value with scale. A piece of content was considered good if it went viral. A software product was deemed successful if it had millions of users. Reach, popularity, and growth became the dominant metrics of value.

But something is shifting.

With the rise of AI-assisted tools, the cost of producing content and software has collapsed. What once required a team of experts can now be done by a single person with a laptop and the right prompts. As a result, a new kind of creation is quietly emerging—what I call “content for one” and “software for one.”

Content for One

Imagine someone reading a dense research paper and using an AI tool like NotebookLM to generate a personalized AI podcast that explains it back to them in simple terms. No plans to publish it. No audience. Just a custom learning artifact made purely for their own understanding.

This isn’t performance; it’s synthesis. It’s not about gaining followers; it’s about gaining clarity.

Software for One

Or consider someone using no-code or AI-assisted coding tools like Windsurf or Cursor to build a habit tracker, journaling app, or knowledge base that fits their exact quirks and needs. It’s never launched on Product Hunt. It doesn’t scale. But it works beautifully for them.

This isn’t startup culture; it’s self-culture.

A Shift in Metrics

Traditionally, we judged the success of content and software by how many people used it. But in this new landscape, maybe the more meaningful question is: how deeply does it serve one person?

In an era where the tools of production are so powerful and so personal, value isn’t always measured in likes or downloads. Sometimes, the highest ROI comes from a tool or piece of media that transforms your own thinking, organizes your own chaos, or helps you see the world more clearly.

This is a new form of leverage.

Naval’s Wisdom, Revisited

Naval Ravikant famously said: “Code and media are leverage. You can create software and media that work for you while you sleep.”

Traditionally, we interpreted this as: build once, sell infinitely. Reach millions. Get rich.

But AI subtly adds an extra layer of meaning to that quote. Because now, even without an audience, even without a user base, you can create software and media that literally work for you while you sleep. Not for a business. Not for a brand. For you.

In this light, leverage becomes less about scale and more about amplification of the self:

  • Tools that multiply your focus
  • Content that deepens your understanding
  • Automations that reclaim your time

You become your own first and only user. And that might be enough.

The Rise of Personal Leverage

We are entering an era of personal leverage—where building something that only serves you isn’t a selfish act, but a revolutionary one. It represents a shift away from chasing scale for validation, and toward designing tools and content that actually improve our lives.

We used to build for the world. Now, we can build for the self.

That shift might not make headlines. But it might just change how we think, work, and live—one creation at a time.

This post originally appeared in my Substack newsletter on AI. Subscribe here.

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Published by Zara Zhang

Zara Zhang works at ByteDance in its Beijing office. Previously, she was an investment analyst at GGV Capital (first in the Menlo Park office, then in the Beijing office), a venture capital firm that invests in companies in the US, China, and other emerging markets. She has interned as a reporter covering China’s tech industry for The Information. Her writings have been published on The Harvard Crimson, Harvard Magazine, Foreign Policy, Huffington Post, and China Personified. She has also worked as a marketing intern at ZhenFund. Zara graduated from Harvard University Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in psychology. At Harvard, she wrote and edited for The Harvard Crimson, led the organization of Harvard China Forum (a 1,000-people conference featuring leaders from China and the US), and ran a weekly newsletter about food around the university. Zara grew up in Changchun, a city in northeast China, and received her secondary education in Singapore. A language enthusiast, she is trained in Chinese-English interpretation and translation, speaks French and Japanese, and can sing in Cantonese. Zara co-hosted “996”, a podcast where she and GGV managing partner Hans Tung interviewed leaders in US-China cross-border tech and entrepreneurship. Listen on iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, SoundCloud, or search “996” in any podcast app.

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