Matt Portnov

Leading Internal AI @ Decagon

[Matt Portnov @MattnPortnov]

@davidbooth @a16z Let’s gooooo

[David Booth @davidbooth]

Excited to announce the inaugural class of @a16z Ops Engineer fellows!

~50 ops engineering leaders selected out of thousands of apps from talented people around the world.

They sit at the intersection of operations and engineering, scaling operational rigor within and across teams.. they are building the internal tools that consolidate the tooling stack, designing the data and context layers that agents draw on, deploying agentic workflows with human checkpoints, and driving adoption inside their companies.

We have folks like Ben Booi (@BenjaminBooi) and Rushaabh Saliya at Opendoor, Chris Jones (@chrisojones) at Shopify, Dilan Shah (@dilan_shah) from Cresta, Kevin Chu (@realKevinChu) from ElevenLabs, Saya Iwasaki (@iiiwokk) at Notion, Jordan Shapiro at Handshake, Christina Huang at Cognition, and Keith Gliksman (@KeithGliksman) at Tennr,

Others are are world-class COOs and chiefs of staff redefining how AI gets used across organizations. They’re deciding which workflows to automate first, the KPIs that prove it’s working, and are leading the teams that put it to work. Folks like Caroline Ingeborn (@caroingeborn) at Luma AI, Brandon Gell (@bran_don_gell) at Every, Rohan Shah (@RohanxShah) at Datavant, Gabriella Garcia (@reallygabriella) at Warp, Matt Stehle at Formation Bio, and Meera Shah at Glean.

Others are taking how software gets built to the next level, creating new products and leading the teams that ship them, like Claire Vo (@clairevo) at ChatPRD, Seb Goddijn (@sebgoddijn) at Yaklabs, TK Kong (@tkkong) at Concept, Matt Portnov (@MattnPortnov) at Decagon, Owen Williams (@ow) and Sharadh Krishnamurthy at Stripe, Andrew Qu (@andrewqu) at Vercel, and Maxwell Nardi (@maxwellnardi) at Runlayer, @davidgan at SpaceX/@bot, @matthew_busel at Basis.

And another ~25 awesome folks we can't squeeze into one post !! (see full list in comments)

Missed out on this but want to stay in the loop for future cohorts? sign-up at https://t.co/frfnA7R7If

[Matt Portnov @MattnPortnov]

We’ve discovered radio and AirPods are coming

[Seb Goddijn @sebgoddijn]

Watching my agents cook and realizing we're still very much in the dial-up modem phase of how fast they can work. Hard to imagine what this is all going to look like when we've upgraded to fibre.

[David Booth @davidbooth]

Announcing: the @a16z Ops Engineering Fellowship ⚙️

Because: operations (along with everything else??) is becoming something best approached with an engineering mindset.

We've been tracking this space closely, and are seeing a new kind of builder emerging inside companies... They connect internal systems, build agents, and redesign workflows across finance, sales, support, and everything between. @levie calls them "Internally deployed FDEs".. others say "AI Operations", "Agent Engineer"... I don't think anyone's agreed on the title yet, but there's something interesting going on - which to me means it's a good time to get the people who are at the frontier .. applying an engineering mindset to re-thinking how companies operate in an AI-native way - together.

So:

We're launching the a16z Ops Engineering Fellowship: bringing ~50 internally deployed engineers and AI-pilled operators to together over 6 weeks in San Francisco and NYC (+ group chats).

There's a killer crew involved already - Claire Vo (@clairevo) is joining as a Founding Fellow, as is Sebastien Goddijn (@sebgoddijn) - who built Glass at Ramp; Owen Williams (@ow) at Stripe; Ann Miura-Ko (@annimaniac) - deep in the trenches of AI-pilling operators via Floodgate; Brandon Gell (@bran_don_gell) - COO at Every; TK Kong (@tkkong) - who helped start Ramp Labs; Matt P (@MattnPortnov) - leading internal AI at Decagon; and several more we can't include in the announcement (but watch this space 👀)...

For now: Asking X

1- Who is leading "Ops Engineering" (or whatever you call it) at your company?

2- Who do you respect in this space, who should we know about, absolutely must have join the cohort and/or join us for a dinner ?

Tag below, DM me -

3- or apply below ! 👇👇

[Matt Portnov @MattnPortnov]

Such a great time! Thank you @tylerxdev 🚀

[Tyler Xiao @tylerxdev]

📸 How to AI Pill Your Company at @Accel

Highlights:
- @MattnPortnov and @ayjin12 speaking about @DecagonAI internal AI efforts!
- Meeting @sebgoddijn, creator of Ramp glass!
- discussing best strategies to build AI for nontechnical folks in a company

Thanks for having me! 😁

[Matt Portnov @MattnPortnov]

@DecagonAI @tryramp @cursor_ai @cognition @Accel @a16z https://t.co/E5L29xMIRq

[Matt Portnov @MattnPortnov]

Internal AI moved beyond eng, and changed how every function works.

We're hosting builders / former operators who've built internal AI system to talk learnings, and what's next.
- @DecagonAI
- Former builders at @tryramp @cursor_ai
- @cognition

Link below! @Accel @a16z

[Daniel C. Liem @damndanielliem]

We've been running an "AI Pilled" playbook for non-technical teams at @DecagonAI - inspired by @tryramp, @Shopify, and others.

WoW AI spend (@claudeai) has ballooned ~20x in 3 mos, with hundreds of scheduled workflows, skills, web apps, and agents, automating hours of collective manual work.

Here's how we're doing it:

[Andrew Qu @andrewqu]

💊

[Andrew Qu @andrewqu]

Call me the pharmacist for how I make people AI-pilled