Reference
Glossary of Key Terms
Every named concept from No One Works Here, defined.
AIDE
AI-Driven Enterprise
A company that systematically replaces human labor with autonomous AI agents, decoupling revenue from headcount.
Agent Experience (AX)
The design discipline of building for AI agents as the primary user — analogous to UX for humans.
Architect
The leadership posture that designs intelligent systems rather than directing tasks. Contrast: Captain.
Captain
The legacy leadership posture that directs individual tasks. The Captain must become an Architect to survive the AI era.
Carbon Node
A human agent in an organizational network. Biological, with Human Time constraints.
Chief Node Officer
CNO
The emerging executive role responsible for managing the balance and orchestration of Carbon and Silicon Nodes.
Friday Night Test
The diagnostic: if every human in your organization disappeared tonight, what would still be running in the morning?
Headcount Trap
The organizational belief that scale requires proportional headcount growth.
Human Time
The era in which business operated at biological speed — limited by sleep, meetings, and human deliberation.
Innovation Debt
The accumulated cost of decisions that favor stability over adaptation, compounding until the organization becomes unable to change.
Latency Stack
Multi-Layered Latency Stack
The framework for identifying every layer of delay in an organization — from data to decision to deployment.
Parallel Entrepreneurship
The ability to run multiple venture bets simultaneously using AI agents, enabled by the ZPC model.
Silicon Node
An AI agent in an organizational network. Operates in System Time — 24/7 at the speed of code.
Silicon Payroll
The cost structure of running Silicon Nodes instead of Carbon Nodes. Scales differently from traditional headcount costs.
Sunday Afternoon Strategy
A weekly personal AI exploration practice that compounds an individual's AIDE capability over time.
System Time
The operating tempo of AI agents — continuous, 24/7, at the speed of computation. The successor to Human Time.
The 30-Minute Startup
The methodology for standing up a minimally viable AI-driven business in under 30 minutes using modern agent tools.
The Friday Night Test
See: Friday Night Test.
v0 Rule
The principle that the first version of any product or process should be built by AI agents, not humans.
Velocity-Variance Framework
AIDE Velocity-Variance Framework
The matrix for evaluating an organization's speed-to-output against its output consistency — the two dimensions of AIDE health.
Zero-Person Company
ZPC
An enterprise that generates revenue with zero full-time human employees. The logical endpoint of the AIDE architecture.
About Paul Cheek
Paul Cheek is a global expert on AI-driven enterprises and enterprise innovation. He is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Senior Advisor for Entrepreneurship & Artificial Intelligence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. As founder of the AI-Driven Enterprise Institute and Entonomy, he develops data systems and software that power AI agent-run businesses. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, bestselling author of Disciplined Entrepreneurship: Startup Tactics, and recipient of MIT’s Monosson Prize for impact on entrepreneurship education, Paul has advised and built ventures from seed to scale, with his work featured in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Forbes.
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AI strategy and AI-Driven Enterprise transformation advisory for C-Suite teams, boards, PE firms, and operating companies. Engagements range from board-level AI literacy workshops to multi-month or year-long AIDE transformation sprints.
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