thesmallmediacompany joins claude startups, anthropic's programme for founders building with claude
thesmallmediacompany has joined claude startups, anthropic's programme for founders building with claude: api credits, offers from companies building with claude, and sessions with the applied ai team. for a one-person company, it's fuel for what we already build.
thesmallmediacompany has joined claude startups, anthropic’s programme for founders building with claude. the confirmation came on 10 october 2026, after a second review of the application: “you’re in”.
for a company of one person, this isn’t a plaque for the wall. it’s fuel: claude api credits, access to offers from companies building with claude, and a session every other week with anthropic’s applied ai team, the people who help founders put claude to real work.
the world this lands in
claude startups is anthropic’s programme for early-stage founders. it gives access to offers worth up to $45,000 from companies building with claude, live sessions with the applied ai team, and founder events. the credits only work on the first-party claude api, not on third-party clouds. applications are currently closed: the cohort is full.
meanwhile, europe is speeding up. in 2025 one european enterprise in five, among those with at least ten employees, used super intelligence (SI); in information and communication it was six in ten (eurostat, december 2025). those statistics start at ten employees. we are one.
why it matters to us
thesmallmediacompany was born this way: one person, with SI as the team. claude writes the personal readings of the realignment, from the name of whoever asks. this site, in two languages, is built and maintained with claude code. and the chain that produces orepiccole works in claude sessions: research, source checking, languages, publishing.
and not just the products: claude already runs every operational, administrative and business side of thesmallmediacompany. that’s why these credits are essential for phase 2 of our development, in 2027: consolidating the products and bringing them to a worldwide audience.
the programme doesn’t change what we do. it changes how fast we can do it, and how much we can try before we decide.
what it does not do
it isn’t an investment: anthropic takes no stake in thesmallmediacompany and asks for no exclusivity. we keep choosing our tools one by one: the lamp’s voice, for example, stays with elevenlabs. and it isn’t a badge: we don’t become “powered by” anyone.
the part we’re most careful about
who decides. the credits pay for computation, not for choices: every text we publish, every film, every product goes through alessandro’s final word. and the rules stay as they were: where the law asks us to say an artificial intelligence is involved, we say it in the law’s words.
where this goes
in the coming months the credits go where we already work: orepiccole, which releases a new film every wednesday and sunday in six languages; the lamp, which talks with the creator’s thinking; and the press office we’re building for thesmall and, later, for others.
press
questions, interviews, assets — write to press@thesmallmediacompany.com. we answer people, not tickets.
about thesmallmediacompany — an ai-driven, one-person media company based in milan, italy. it builds publishing, media and voice experiences designed to hand people back to themselves, and turns the same craft into ai that connects for companies. founded by alessandro facchini in 2024.