Startup Spring is here: welcome to the new Fractionl/AI relaunch!

The conversations I’m having this week with founders, investors and newly laid off operators all point towards the same reality: the economic centre of gravity is drifting away from megacorps toward a constellation of bootstrapped, seed and Series A‑stage ventures.

Startups are sprouting like spring plants, driven by the encouragement that global tensions have de-escalated slightly and that global trade might still be a thing. The amount of start ups is being driven by new AI technologies enabling smaller, nimbler businesses built by either solo generalists or 2-4 person specialists as they are laid off or demoralized by larger companies downsizing (52,000 jobs gone in 2025 alone from big tech).

The growth is bending the talent market into new shapes. The amount of business applications continues to break records, and early Census signals show the pace holding steady in 2024‑25. That’s nearly 30 percent above pre‑pandemic levels.

Into this vacuum steps the fractional workforce. The number of seasoned “one‑day‑a‑week” leaders doubled to roughly 120,000 between 2022 and 2024, with technology, SaaS and healthcare claiming the lion’s share of that brainpower.

For early‑stage founders, fractional product leads, CMOs and AI strategists are a less risky way to buy advisory or judgement that they can’t yet afford full‑time. For laid‑off operators, the model turns an uncertain job hunt into a diversified revenue portfolio.

So if you’re thinking about turning your idea in to an income stream, NOW is the time to build with agents.

If you’re a founder, you can rent the narrowest slice of genius required fractionally to accelerate with an agentic workforce - NOW is the time.

To that end, I’m expanding this blog in to a learning hub (https://learning.fractionl.ai) where I’ll share my agent builds and learning in public - and https://fractionl.ai will become an agent incubator for either fractional workers or founders. I can’t wait to help the next 1000 fractional workers and founders create the future.

If you’re interested in joining the Beta program, please visit https://fractionl.ai and sign up as either a founder or a fractional worker. I look forward to building agentic work with you.

-Krish