Why I joined Startedby — and why 'AI-native' is more than a buzzword
Tags: AI, Startups, Future of Work
I recently joined Startedby — an AI-native consulting company. We're building a company that operates with AI as a core teammate for everything we do.
The old model of work: A company is made up of people, and those people use tools to do their jobs.
The new model: A company is made up of people and AIs, and they collaborate to do their jobs.
Said differently, we don't just use AI to build stuff for clients, we use AI to run the company itself.
AI native is the future
Most businesses today are stuck trying to figure out how to bolt AI onto what they already do. We ask a more fundamental question:
What if your business had been built from day one to operate in partnership with AI?
So it's not about your product or service, it's about the process and the team that produces that product or service.
The rise of AI Agents
We see it as rethinking how a company even works at all. Imagine for a moment a company where no one works there… only the AIs do.
We're not to that point yet, likely never will be, and probably don't want to be. Elon Musk famously quipped that "humans are underrated." But keeping the AI Native thesis top of mind is a good way to keep score of how much you're able to leverage tools to do work that only humans could do in the past.
Startedby, in a nutshell
- Startedby hosts a platform that analyzes your business showing areas where you could improve it. That part is free.
- Startedby is also a studio that helps companies build what matters — automations, systems, and smart workflows that solve real pain points.
Why I joined
The ideas Startedby is based upon excite me. It's a new way to think about teamwork and indeed of work itself. Being at Startedby feels like a ground zero opportunity to do that.