Matthew Gallagher took simply two months, $20,000 and greater than a dozen synthetic intelligence instruments to get his startup off the bottom.
From his home in Los Angeles, Gallagher, 41, used AI to jot down the code for the software program that powers his firm, produce the web site copy, generate the photographs and movies for adverts and deal with customer support. He created AI methods to research his enterprise’s efficiency. And he outsourced the opposite stuff he couldn’t do himself.
His startup, Medvi, a telehealth supplier of GLP-1 weight-loss medication, bought 300 clients in its first month. In its second month, it gained 1,000 extra. In 2025, Medvi’s first full 12 months in enterprise, the corporate generated $401 million in gross sales.
Gallagher then employed his solely worker, his youthful brother, Elliot. This 12 months, they’re on monitor to do $1.8 billion in gross sales.
A $1.8 billion firm with simply two staff? Within the age of AI, it’s more and more potential.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, predicted the rise of a brand new breed of superefficient firm in 2024. A one-person enterprise price $1 billion “would have been unimaginable with out AI,” he mentioned on a podcast, “and now it would occur.”
Now as AI instruments unfold, entrepreneurs are harnessing the know-how to broaden their startups to an infinite scale at breathtaking velocity with only a few people. Huge firms, particularly in tech, are getting in on the disruption, too. Pinterest, Block and others have reduce hundreds of employees in current months, citing efficiencies enabled by AI.
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Gallagher, who previously ran a startup that offered wristwatches, mentioned he thought Altman’s prophecy of a one-person $1 billion firm can be a agency that constructed AI. He was excited when he realized he could have accomplished it, taking an previous concept — being a intermediary for weight-loss medication — and utilizing AI to turbocharge it.
“It’s not an AI firm, however I did it with AI,” he mentioned.
In an e-mail, Altman mentioned that it appeared he had received a guess together with his tech CEO mates over when such an organization would seem, and that he “wish to meet the man” who had accomplished it.
Medvi is technically not a one-person $1 billion firm, since Gallagher employed his brother and has some contractors. The startup, which has not raised outdoors funding, additionally has no official valuation. However many extremely valued tech firms can solely dream of hitting $1 billion in income with so few employees. Medvi can be worthwhile, Gallagher mentioned.
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The New York Occasions was given entry to Medvi’s financials to confirm its income and income and interviewed Gallagher’s enterprise companions.
On a current afternoon on the Soho Home membership in Los Angeles, Gallagher, sporting unkempt curly hair, a saggy T-shirt and tattoos on his arms and palms, mentioned the final 18 months had been a whirlwind.
He works on Medvi from his home mainly anytime he’s not showering, sleeping or spending time together with his two kids, he mentioned throughout a two-hour dialog. He even made an AI clone of his voice to assist handle his private life, utilizing it to name and schedule appointments so he would have extra time to work.
Not everybody can construct such an AI-enabled firm, although many could strive. Gallagher is suited to the second as a result of he is aware of advertising and the way to use cutting-edge AI, mentioned Kobie Fuller, an investor on the enterprise capital agency Upfront Ventures who has suggested him.
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“These people which have these abilities, it’s sort of like their superpower,” Fuller mentioned. “That is an excessive instance, however I don’t suppose it’s going to be the final by any stretch.”
Gallagher has instructed hardly anybody about his firm, which he mentioned was raking in additional than $3 million a day. He was nervous to speak publicly about it, he mentioned.
“I imply, it’s loopy, proper?” he requested, earlier than answering himself. “It’s loopy.”
Recognizing Alternative
Gallagher had an itinerant childhood, residing out of motels and vehicles for a time earlier than touchdown in Cincinnati when he was 12. That was the place his uncle gave him a laptop computer, which he used to show himself to code so he might make a Bizarre Al Yankovic fan web page.
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As a teen, Gallagher started constructing web sites for native companies. He all the time had a hustle, together with promoting candles and Samurai swords on eBay. At 18, after constructing a internet hosting enterprise, he offered it for $6,000.
Gallagher briefly attended the College of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky College however didn’t graduate. In 2010, he moved to Los Angeles to turn into an actor. He finally returned to coding, bouncing between tech jobs.
In 2016, he constructed Watch Gang, a startup that offered wristwatches by way of subscription. It had followers however by no means turned a revenue, at the same time as Gallagher chased income progress and employed 60 individuals.
OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in 2022 impressed Gallagher to begin tinkering with AI. Two years later, he met Jiten Chhabra, a co-founder of CareValidate, a medical startup in Atlanta.
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CareValidate presents what is basically a telehealth-in-a-box package. Firms, employers or retailers that wish to promote clients prescribed drugs can use CareValidate’s know-how and community of on-line docs to arrange a enterprise. The corporate’s software program connects sufferers with docs and pharmacies, which write, fulfill and ship the prescriptions. CareValidate prices charges for its software program.
Gallagher noticed a chance for his personal telehealth enterprise. He might use AI to do the branding and advertising and let CareValidate and the same platform, OpenLoop Well being, deal with the docs, pharmacies, delivery and compliance. He deliberate to begin with GLP-1s.
He was coming into a longtime market. For almost a decade, Hims & Hers Well being, Ro and different firms have offered medication for erectile dysfunction and hair loss on-line, utilizing a web-based community of docs to jot down the prescriptions. Hims, which went public in 2021, has 2,442 staff and generated $2.4 billion in income final 12 months.
Hims and Ro had already expanded into GLP-1 medication, however Gallagher thought he might do the identical factor quicker and extra effectively with AI and the doctor-on-demand platforms.
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He used many AI instruments to construct Medvi’s web site, together with ChatGPT, Claude and Grok. He created customized instruments, together with AI brokers, or bots that carry out duties on their very own, to get his software program methods to speak with each other. He examined AI voice instruments from ElevenLabs and others for speaking with clients. And he used the picture and video mills Midjourney and Runway to create media for his web site and adverts.
Altogether, he spent $20,000 on the software program and the primary month of selling.
Medvi’s preliminary web site featured pictures of smiling fashions who seemed AI-generated and before-and-after weight-loss pictures from across the net with the faces modified. A few of its adverts had been AI slop. A scrolling ticker of mainstream media logos made it look as if Medvi had been featured in Bloomberg and the Occasions when it had merely marketed there.
However Gallagher was most involved with getting Medvi’s checkout to work easily and ensuring his AI customer support system caught to the duty at hand. He examined it by asking the system for lasagna recipes; it took some tweaking to get it to cease supplying them, he mentioned.
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Medvi opened for enterprise in September 2024. It was completely timed. Individuals wished low cost GLP-1s, delivered with out going to a health care provider’s workplace. The startup charged as little as $179 for the primary month’s provide of the medication, consistent with opponents.
The Sky’s the Restrict?
From the start, “progress was insane,” Gallagher mentioned.
Medvi shortly grew to become one in every of CareValidate’s and OpenLoop’s prime purchasers. The businesses mentioned they had been blown away by the startup’s velocity and scale.
“You’re like, ‘Do you could have a military of individuals behind you someplace?’ And he’s like, ‘Nope,’” CareValidate’s Chhabra mentioned of Gallagher.
Dr. Jon Lensing, OpenLoop’s CEO, mentioned Gallagher had began sharing tech ideas together with his firm. “Matthew’s native tongue appears to be AI,” he mentioned.
There have been snags. Medvi’s customer support chatbot generally made up costs for the medication. (Gallagher honored these.) Or it hallucinated, claiming Medvi offered hair-loss medication when it didn’t.
If clients wished to speak to an individual, Medvi’s customer support chatbot had been skilled to switch them to Gallagher’s cellphone. That led to greater than 1,000 customer support calls, he recalled.
To handle the onslaught, he built-in applications from OpenLoop and CareValidate that fielded customer support calls. Gallagher quickly graduated from utilizing the web authorized web site LegalZoom to utilizing a legislation agency, and from utilizing AI accounting instruments to utilizing an accounting agency. He additionally employed media companies to assist purchase adverts to entice clients.
As gross sales took off, Gallagher requested Fuller, the enterprise capital investor, if he ought to elevate enterprise funding. Fuller instructed him that if he didn’t want the cash, he shouldn’t elevate it.
“It’s best to simply hold constructing,” Fuller mentioned he had instructed Gallagher. Gallagher later thanked him for the recommendation.
In March 2025, Gallagher modified one thing minor on Medvi’s web site after which went on a hike. From the path, he bought a name from one in every of his media companies asking whether or not it was odd that there had been no orders for the final hour.
Gallagher realized that his replace should have damaged one thing. With nobody to repair it, he sprinted dwelling. The downtime misplaced him round 200 potential clients, he mentioned.
Nonetheless, he was hesitant to rent anyone. At Watch Gang, having 60 staff had not helped the corporate develop.
“It simply elevated my prices, after which it delayed my decision-making as a result of I had extra individuals to take care of,” he mentioned. Medvi’s greatest benefit was his means to maneuver shortly, he mentioned.
Gallagher added two engineers on contract and determined to rent solely Elliot, his 36-year-old brother in Cincinnati in April. His brother’s job consists of intercepting and filtering communication so Gallagher can give attention to his priorities.
“I simply helped take a whole lot of the burden off of him,” Elliot mentioned in an interview.
That gave Gallagher respiratory room to repair some shortcuts he had initially taken, like swapping out the before-and-after weight-loss pictures for ones from actual clients. Some pictures on Medvi’s homepage stay AI-generated.
By the top of final 12 months, Medvi had reached $401 million in annual gross sales and amassed 250,000 clients. It produced 16.2% in internet revenue, or $65 million, with spending going to the charges for telehealth platforms, advertising after which software program. Hims, in contrast, had a internet revenue of 5.5% final 12 months.
Medvi’s aggressive promoting has led to authorized and regulatory points. In February, the Meals and Drug Administration despatched the corporate a warning letter about “false or deceptive claims” on Medvi.io, a web site run by a advertising company employed by Medvi, which instructed that Medvi mixes its personal medication and implied that these medication had been FDA-approved once they hadn’t. Gallagher mentioned the language was eliminated after the warning.
Final month, a lawsuit searching for class motion standing filed in U.S. District Courtroom of the Central District of California accused Medvi of violating California’s anti-spam legislation with its use of “falsified header data, spoofed domains and nonsensical sending addresses to evade spam filters.” The corporate declined to touch upon the lawsuit.
Gallagher is reinvesting a few of Medvi’s income into growth. He thought of shopping for firms that present different well being merchandise, however determined it was simply as straightforward to construct himself.
In February, Medvi began promoting males’s well being merchandise, together with erectile dysfunction medication. That enterprise hit 50,000 clients within the first month and is on monitor to eclipse the GLP-1 enterprise in 4 months, Gallagher mentioned.
Final month, Medvi added wholesome meal supply plans, which OpenLoop handles. Subsequent up is girls’s well being, together with hormone remedy medication. Hair-growth medication, dietary supplements and skincare merchandise are additionally on the agenda.
Medvi’s whole revenue of $70 million to $80 million to this point has made Gallagher emotional, given his upbringing.
“For the primary time, I’m not in survival mode,” he mentioned.
Final 12 months, he arrange a basis with $1 million and donated to a Los Angeles cat rescue group, with plans to additionally donate to a nonprofit that helps younger individuals experiencing homelessness. His objective is to run most of Medvi’s income via the muse. For enjoyable, he invests in movies and buys historic gadgets, together with a pocket watch from the 1700s.
Gallagher doesn’t anticipate hiring extra individuals. He mentioned he simply didn’t see how it might assist Medvi, although he misses the camaraderie of colleagues.
“At this level, I sort of wish to rent individuals as a result of I’m lonely,” he mentioned.
However some human contact continues to be wanted.
In September, Medvi started assigning human account managers to a subset of consumers. When these clients name, textual content or e-mail with a query, they connect with the identical account supervisor. The thought is that the account managers will get to know purchasers and bear in mind particulars akin to birthdays or kids’s names, creating greater buyer satisfaction.
Medvi’s seven account managers, all employed on contract, now have a number of hundred purchasers every. To handle that many relationships, they’re utilizing AI.