AgentWeb

building the internet for agents

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

As someone who has been told multiple times that I am effective in my communication (granted effective in this context means someone can understand the higher + deeper meaning), here are some tips:

> slow down your speech
> physically stand a lil wider, by spreading your legs just above shoulder width (this helps your confidence)
> pay attention and listen to the person (without nodding or saying Mmh all the time though)
> don’t “pretend” to be smart about a topic just to keep it active
> have conversations about stupid topics
> understand the person you’re talking to + their traits (culture, humor, etc)

I promise you being able to form coherent sentences is a skill that can 1000% be learned, you just have to apply yourself

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

Personal update: I started a company and I'm taking time off college.

For the last 18 months I've been surrounded by generational talent, from people building defense companies at 19 to others building cheaper manufacturing for oil discovery. All of them got there for the same reason: they decided to swing for the fences and follow their dreams.

This post comes at a strange time. As I only have 1 year left of college the pressure to graduate is real. All of my close friends are graduating (congrats to all of you), and I feel a little out of place. But the truth is that I told myself last year that I don't see myself walking the graduation stage at this point in my life, because I have a calling to start the company now.

When you start, three things matter: the market, the timing, and the people.

My company is @_agentweb , where we believe the internet needs to be designed for agents, starting with commerce. The future of work is agents, and they need a reliable way to see and understand which parts of a business they can actually use. One human can have a thousand agents working at once, and we're already seeing traffic to our design partners grow more than 500% week over week.

The market is now. Working at a startup in 2023 that helped businesses build their own agents showed me that autonomous agents are the future of labor. Agents make people more efficient than ever, and I take it as my responsibility to make sure you don't burn thousands of dollars on token spend per week to get there.

The people: I'm starting this company with my best friend of 20 years, @egor_kzmv , and funnily enough we were born in the same hospital 8 days apart. Egor, there's nobody else I'd rather be doing this with. p.s. It's time to expand the team, so we're also hiring (GTM, media, engineering).

Reach out in our DMs if you want to be part of a generational journey and help shape how we operate as a company.

I also want to thank every single person that has been on this incredible journey the last 18 months. Mom, dad, thanks for supporting me and always believing in me, even when you don't say it out loud. Thank you to Santa Clara University, to all of the friends I've made along the way, the faculty involved and everyone else. To the SCU Bronco Venture Accelerator, thank you for the exposure to the venture world. To Cynthia Cooper, for constantly supporting me with resources. To Christopher Norris for your advice. To Ryan Pool and Lauren Jisser for being awesome soundboards on fundraising. And to all of our investors, thank you.

Being in the Bay has been the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I promise you, I'll be back. But for now, back to work.

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

heard of a YC startup that closed multi million dollar contracts in only several weeks and have a couple of things to mention

1) there’s a clear differentiation between pipeline revenue, cARR, MRR, collected revenue and other terms in the financing world. don’t lie to your investors and say you have “direct revenue” when u have 4+ year contracts, coz that’ll affect your reputation

2) the procurement / sales process when it comes to hardware is very different than it is software. feel like there’s a direct benefit to doing a demo live on site than if you were to do a zoom of your product (I.e software)

overall insanely impressed with *some* companies from this batch, and best of luck to everyone for demo day tomorrow!

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

This is probably going to be the biggest summer for me in terms of both growth and also starting my *second* company and going in full time.

operating out of London, would love to get access to good coworking spaces :) open to recs

also, if you’re around London shoot me a text! always looking to meet cracked folks. about to be a legendary summer

p.s (we also got funding now 😏)

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

This is so so so so so true.

This applies for any line of business. It's all about the people. Every single damn time, it's always about the people.

For hiring especially I never start the conversation with "this is your comp". I ask them about their hobbies. What sports they played growing up. Their family relationship. The shit that makes you truly human.

I think too many startup founders are desperate for the capital to the point where they'll "cut the noise and get straight to the chase" when in reality, a founder <> investor relationship is probably one of the biggest decisions of your startup journey.

Don't be a transactional douchebag, and get to know your investors.

People like doing business with people they like

[AgentWeb @_agentweb]

@Andrey__HQ @egor_kzmv love

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

My cofounder and best friend turns 21 today so here are some reasons why I love you big dawg @egor_kzmv

1. You’re the most loyal mf I know. I could trust you with my life

2. You get after anything you put your mind to, initially w medicine, then comp skiing, jazz, swimming, and now our startup. your energy is truly admirable

3. you make others around you feel seen and heard, from a homeless stranger to your mom, who we both dearly love

4. it’s impossible to not laugh around you. you’re genuinely one of the funniest and odd people I know.

5. you’re forgiving. even through my countless mistakes you’re always considerate and forgiving

6. you respect others, no matter where they come from

7. you’re intentional, from your smallest faults that you turn into learnings, to major decisions about where to live

8. you’re a true brother. you talk shit to my face and give it to me straight, yet defend me with your life behind my back

9. you’re truly one of the kindest people I know.

i think Nikita Bier would ban me from X for the longest post in history if I had written everything down, but the list can go on and on.

incredibly proud of the person you’ve become and the person you’re becoming, let’s go kick some ass.

- your best friend and brother, Andrey

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

I think the best way to understand whether your cofounder is the right fit for your company is to figure out how to handle disagreements.

for example. my cofounder is my best friend, we’ve known each other for just shy of 21 years and he’s basically like a brother to me.

whenever we have disagreements we always try and firstly acknowledge the other persons perspective (if it’s regarding a feature, action, etc)

it’s often times better to not be “right” in said argument but to make the other person feel heard (shoutout my mom who taught me that)

make sure to make ur cofounder feel heard when disagreeing. it can save the company

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

The easiest way of getting investments + any form of success or positive outcomes is to simply be specific.

Too many people focus on the "we think x" or "it's big" or "the problem is there" when in reality if you just had the slightest level of concrete metrics you would be way ahead.

I promise you, the more concrete metrics you have, the easier it is to understand what you do and how you operate

signal >>

[Blake Fullerton @blake_fullerton]

Dope dudes!

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

If there's one thing I learned over the last year of being surrounded by the best founders / the most entrepreneurial people in the world, it's that everything before Series A is about you as a person.

They say they do, but in reality they (VC's) don't care about your market or your product or your tech or anything else.

They care about why YOU're the person to dominate in the field you're going after.

They literally only invest in people.

So if you're struggling to raise it's a you issue, not a business issue

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

too many people in today's world, especially on tech twitter, tell others what they should do with their lives or comment on progress, which relates to comparison (adjacently related to corgi work hour expectations from Nico)

we live in a toxic world where if you don't raise $X million or get to $100M in ARR within the first year you're ngmi and such, but the reality is that everyone is on their own journey.

some people have been in startups for several decades and still haven't made something successful, but they will eventually.

others hit a homerun after 1 attempt, because they spent a lot of time around other successful founders and have learned the ropes from being in the wheats of it all.

just remember that you can't be late to your own path, and there's no right or wrong way of life / business. the best thing you can do is be supportive, even to strangers coz the startup journey is extremely challenging

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

La familia ❤️

insanely happy to have met folks from all 3 cohorts of the next trillion dollar institution

FR8 4 L

[AgentWeb @_agentweb]

@Andrey__HQ commenting for reach

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

URGENT!!!!

I need good startup banks that take beneficiary owners of companies from Russian Federation.

We're not going to get haulted with just a hurdle. If you're a startup bank I ask you to reach out if you can support.

Banking shouldn't be constrained by country of citizenship, even if the residency is from UK. Two goated founders on a mission to change how agents interact with the world

This is urgent and I beg anyone to help!

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

10000 startups died today

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

You’re living the wrong life if you don’t look at your past self and cringe super hard

I just messaged @bhalligan (we’re opening up our round soon) and my first message to him several months ago was “YO BRIAN HOLY GOAT”

There’s been so many learnings over the past several months (let alone years) that we’re definitely changing our approach

The only thing we’re not changing is our vision for an agent-first world.

Our traffic backs it up:
> 67k agent requests in 1 month
> 11 design partners
> $300K in pipeline rev that’ll realize within 18 months

Insanely stoked to be taking some time away from college…..

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

Too many people overcomplicate their product to an unnecessary level and get confused in their own wording, to the point where it takes them ~6 sentences to explain what they do.

I'm also guilty of this when we started out (when we were in pivot hell and we were testing things every other hour)

But as we made progress (we're now at 65k agent requests through AgentWeb), we've realized one thing: the ability to dumb down your product to the point where you can explain it to a granny on a train is actually very high signal

I'm blessed to have younger siblings that know nothing about tech (yet), and I have them explain AgentWeb back to me.

You'll be fascinated by how accurate they get it, and that should be a new baseline test for understanding your problem so well, that a 5 year old could get it (literally)

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

Finally someone said the quiet part out loud.

The world is so far away from mass adoption of proactive agents.

An agent is something that can act ON YOUR BEHALF WITHOUT YOU NEEDING TO BE THE PROMPTER

It can understand context, make decisions, buy from businesses, trade goods, verify payments, complete all of that without a single human interference in the loop

Of course there's many issues and security concerns, which is why the mass adoption of this world is far, but the agent-first layer is here.

Excited to be building AgentWeb for this exact future

[Andrey @Andrey__HQ]

The most respectable thing you can do in a world of AI slop is have clarity and concise articulation of exactly what you want to say.

I see too many people (not just founders) that try and use big buzz words and can’t form a sentence and pretend to be idiots (maybe they are genuinely stupid) to try and “seem smart” or “impress the people they’re talking to”

In reality you’re just making yourself look like an absolute fool to anyone with a relatively average EQ.

EQ is just as important as IQ, if not more. coz at the end of the day that’s exactly what makes us human