{"ok":true,"data":{"items":[{"id":"019ffb95-f790-704b-aa27-a43e4b417145","slug":"malith-garnage","status":"published","headline":"ZapDigits Founder Malith Gamage on Taking the Busywork Out of Agency Reporting","portrait":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019ffb95-f790-704b-aa27-a43e4b417145/1786641387662/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019ffb95-f790-704b-aa27-a43e4b417145/1786641387662/512.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019ffb95-f790-704b-aa27-a43e4b417145/1786641387662/200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019ffb95-f790-704b-aa27-a43e4b417145/1786641387662/64.png"},"name":"Malith Gamage","company_name":"ZapDigits","role_title":"Co-Founder & CEO","about_you":"I’m Malith Gamage, founder of ZapDigits. I’ve spent the last 15 years building software, leading engineering teams, and working with startups and growing companies.\n\nToday, I’m focused on building ZapDigits, a reporting platform that helps marketing agencies bring their data together, create client dashboards, and automate reporting without the usual complexity.\n\nI’m a developer at heart, so I still enjoy being close to the product, talking to customers, and building things myself.","building_today":"We’re building ZapDigits, a marketing reporting platform for agencies. It brings data from 30+ marketing platforms into one place, so agencies can create white-label dashboards and automated reports for their clients without spending hours pulling data together manually.","problem_solving":"Marketing agencies spend too much time collecting data from different platforms, building reports, and keeping client dashboards up to date. The tools available are often expensive, complicated, or limited when agencies need to scale across multiple clients.\n\nZapDigits makes this simpler by bringing marketing data into one place and automating the reporting workflow, so agencies can spend less time managing reports and more time focusing on their clients and actual marketing work.","company_story":"ZapDigits is a marketing reporting platform built for agencies, freelancers, and teams that need to turn data from multiple marketing platforms into clear, client-ready reports.\n\nThe problem is simple: marketing teams work across a growing number of platforms, each with its own dashboard, metrics, and reporting format. An agency might need to pull data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Ads, Meta, Reddit, LinkedIn, email platforms, SEO tools, and more just to create one client report. That process quickly becomes repetitive, difficult to maintain, and expensive as the agency grows.\n\nZapDigits brings that data together in one place. Users can connect their marketing platforms, build dashboards, track KPIs, create automated reports, and give clients access through a branded client portal. The goal is not to replace the tools agencies already use, but to make the reporting layer between those tools and their clients much easier.\n\nThe product currently supports 30+ marketing data sources, with more being added over time. We are also building more advanced ways for users to work with their marketing data, including our MCP integration, which allows marketing data from ZapDigits to be used in external workflows and applications.\n\nI’m the founder of ZapDigits, and I come from a software engineering background. I’ve spent around 15 years building software and working with startups, agencies, and growing technology companies. I still spend a lot of my time building the product myself, talking directly with customers, and figuring out where we can make the biggest difference.\n\nWe are still an early-stage company, which is intentional. We are building ZapDigits closely with our customers rather than trying to build a huge product based on assumptions. Our customers are primarily small marketing, SEO, and PPC agencies that want professional reporting without paying enterprise-level prices or spending a significant amount of time maintaining their reporting infrastructure.\n\nOne thing we have learned is that agencies do not necessarily want another complicated analytics platform. They want something that works, looks professional, and saves them time. They care about being able to quickly onboard a client, connect the relevant data sources, create a dashboard, put their own branding on it, and have reporting run automatically.\n\nThat has shaped how we build ZapDigits. We focus heavily on simplicity, reliability, flexibility, and a straightforward pricing model. We want a small agency with a handful of clients to be able to use the same platform as it grows to dozens or hundreds of clients, without constantly having to rethink its reporting setup.\n\nWe are still early in the journey, but we have paying customers, real usage, and a growing set of integrations. Our focus now is on expanding the data sources we support, improving the reporting experience, and making ZapDigits an increasingly useful part of an agency's day-to-day workflow.\n\nUltimately, we want ZapDigits to become the reporting infrastructure that agencies can rely on as they grow, without the cost and complexity that usually comes with it.","company_motivation":"I’ve spent most of my career building software for startups, agencies, and growing companies, and I kept seeing the same problem: teams were spending far too much time moving data between tools and turning it into reports for clients.\n\nI started ZapDigits because I believed there should be a simpler way to do this.\n\nMarketing agencies already use dozens of great tools for analytics, advertising, SEO, social media, and email. The problem is that their clients do not want to log into 10 different platforms to understand what is happening. Agencies need a simple way to bring everything together, present it professionally, and keep it updated without spending hours every week on reporting.\n\nWhat motivates me is building a product that solves a very practical problem. I like working on products where the value is easy to understand: if ZapDigits saves an agency several hours every month, helps them deliver better reports, and makes managing clients easier, then we are doing something useful.\n\nI also wanted to build a company where I could stay close to the product and customers. Rather than building something based purely on assumptions, I want to talk to users, understand how they actually work, and continuously improve the product around their needs.\n\nThere is a lot more we want to build, but the core idea remains simple: marketing agencies should not have to spend their time fighting with reporting. They should be able to focus on their clients and the work that actually grows their business.","current_challenges":"The marketing reporting space is competitive, and there are established companies that have been around for years. As a small company, we need to be very deliberate about where we compete and how we differentiate. We cannot simply outspend larger competitors on advertising, so we are focusing on product quality, pricing, flexibility, and being much closer to our customers.","company_end_goal":"The goal is to make ZapDigits the reporting infrastructure that marketing agencies can rely on as they grow.\n\nToday, we are focused on bringing marketing data together and making client reporting easier. Over time, I want ZapDigits to go beyond reporting and become the layer that helps agencies understand, manage, and act on their marketing data.\n\nI want an agency to be able to connect all of its clients' data sources once and have ZapDigits handle the rest: dashboards, reporting, KPI monitoring, insights, and eventually more of the day-to-day workflow around marketing data.\n\nOur ambition is to build a large, sustainable software company by focusing on a specific market and solving a problem extremely well. I am less interested in chasing growth for the sake of growth and more interested in building something customers genuinely depend on.\n\nThe long-term goal is for ZapDigits to become one of the default tools agencies think of when they need to turn scattered marketing data into something useful for their teams and clients.\n\nWe are still early, so the immediate goal is much simpler: keep building a product people love, find a repeatable way to acquire customers, and grow from there.","ai_monopoly":true,"ai_monopoly_comment":"","ai_race_winners":["openai"],"ai_race_other":[],"ai_race_comment":"","agi_timeline":"never","agi_timeline_comment":"","money_disappear":false,"money_disappear_comment":"","software_engineers_disappear":false,"software_engineers_disappear_comment":"","ai_outlook":"concerned","ai_outlook_comment":"","future_valuable":["human_creativity","human_relationships"],"future_valuable_other":[],"future_valuable_comment":"","future_of_work":["largely_unchanged"],"future_of_work_other":[],"future_of_work_comment":"","contrarian_prediction":"Sustainability will be more important than ever.","future_vision":"If we can slow down the climate change then hopefully we will live in a better world than today.","coding_agents":[],"coding_agents_other":[],"chat_llms":[],"chat_llms_other":[],"underrated_product":"","indispensable_product":"","founder_advice":"","networking_goal":"","networking_offer":"","anything_else":"","personal_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/malithmcr/","personal_x_url":"https://x.com/malith_dev","personal_website_url":"https://zapdigits.com/","company_website_url":null,"company_linkedin_url":null,"company_x_url":null,"founder_wircle_profile":null,"company_wircle_profile":null,"published_at":"2026-09-08T14:25:28.673Z","created_at":"2026-08-13T14:45:37.296Z","updated_at":"2026-09-08T14:25:28.673Z"},{"id":"019fb3c1-eec0-7451-b924-8a18ce4416bb","slug":"katja-danilina","status":"published","headline":"Meet Katja Danilina, the Founder Making AI Collaborative","portrait":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb3c1-eec0-7451-b924-8a18ce4416bb/1785862817397/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb3c1-eec0-7451-b924-8a18ce4416bb/1785862817397/512.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb3c1-eec0-7451-b924-8a18ce4416bb/1785862817397/200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb3c1-eec0-7451-b924-8a18ce4416bb/1785862817397/64.png"},"name":"Katja Danilina","company_name":"Mantle Chat","role_title":"Co-founder and CEO","about_you":"I’m Katja, CEO of Mantle Chat. My experience spans product design, company strategy and AI-supported development. We are building Mantle Chat together with Ilia, CTO of Mantle Chat.","building_today":"Mantle Chat is a collaboration platform where teams can work with AI together.","problem_solving":"We solve the fragmentation of teamwork with AI. Teams use AI in isolated private chats, while communication, knowledge, files, and workflows are scattered across disconnected tools.\n\nAs a result, context gets lost, and teammates cannot easily collaborate on, continue, or reuse each other’s AI-assisted work, or build, share, and use AI agents together.","company_story":"We had talked about building something of our own for years, but we wanted it to be useful and in a field we understood. When AI started changing the way we worked, it felt like the right moment to finally try.\n\nAs we used AI more in our own work, we noticed a disconnect: AI was becoming part of everyday work, but mostly through private, individual chats. Meanwhile, teamwork was happening across messages, documents, files, project tools, and meetings. Useful context was often left behind in one person’s AI chat.\n\nAlso we had seen a similar pattern before. Many tools became much more useful once they became collaborative: from Google Docs for writing to Figma for design. Instead of passing files back and forth, people could work together in the same place.\n\nThat led us to a simple idea: AI will become collaborative too.\n\nWe started Mantle Chat to explore what that could look like: a shared AI workspace where people can communicate with each other and with AI, share context, and build, share, and use AI agents together.\n\nWe surveyed more than 60 IT professionals and used their feedback to develop the product through prototype, alpha, and beta. In less than a year, while building Mantle Chat as a side project with limited resources, we brought it to market and reached #4 Product of the Day on Product Hunt. It was also encouraging to see multiplayer AI becoming a broader direction in the industry.\n\nNow we are focused on the next stage: learning which teams benefit most from Mantle Chat and where collaborative AI is most useful in real work.\n\nIt has already become clear to us that Mantle Chat is especially useful when several people work on the same tasks, need shared AI context, continue each other’s work, or use the same agents and knowledge.\n\nWe are now exploring where these needs are strongest. This may lead us toward a particular type of team or workflow, or we may find that the need is broader. We want to stay flexible while keeping our main direction clear: making it easier for people to work with AI together.","company_motivation":"I would like to see tools that make it easy for people to work with AI together, not only individually.","current_challenges":"Our biggest challenge is balancing limited time and resources with how much there is to learn and build. As a small team, we are constantly learning across product, sales, marketing, and company building while deciding where to focus our attention.","company_end_goal":"Our goal is to make working with AI together as natural as collaborating in Google Docs or Figma. We want Mantle Chat to grow into a place where people can work with AI together, share knowledge, use agents, and automate repetitive work when it makes sense.\n\nIf we are successful, my bigger dream is to build a broader ecosystem around Mantle Chat. I have many ideas for where it could go, but I’d prefer to keep the details for now.","ai_monopoly":false,"ai_monopoly_comment":"Big AI companies may control the main models and infrastructure, but AI may also make it easier for small teams to build useful products and start companies. We may see more small, focused businesses serving specific users and markets.","ai_race_winners":["google","nvidia","openai","anthropic","amazon","xai_spacex","apple","microsoft","meta","mistral"],"ai_race_other":[],"ai_race_comment":"I do not expect one company to win the entire AI race. Different companies may lead in models, infrastructure, enterprise software, and open AI. I think the companies selected above will continue to be major leaders in different parts of the market.","agi_timeline":"2050","agi_timeline_comment":"I don’t know if we will ever reach AGI, but I would really like to be around if it happens.","money_disappear":false,"money_disappear_comment":"","software_engineers_disappear":false,"software_engineers_disappear_comment":"I don’t think software engineers will disappear, but their role will likely change significantly, as has happened with many professions before. AI will probably take over more of the coding itself, while engineers focus more on defining problems, designing systems, reviewing results, making trade-offs, and taking responsibility for what gets built.","ai_outlook":"neutral","ai_outlook_comment":"I expect the overall impact of AI to be mixed, as often happens with major technologies. It will bring useful opportunities and real benefits, but also new risks, mistakes, and unexpected consequences. Some uses may strengthen human thinking and collaboration, while others may weaken skills and increase inequality. The final outcome will probably be somewhere between the most optimistic and most pessimistic predictions.","future_valuable":["trust","human_relationships","reputation"],"future_valuable_other":[],"future_valuable_comment":"","future_of_work":["new_jobs","most_jobs_change"],"future_of_work_other":[],"future_of_work_comment":"","contrarian_prediction":"The future of AI will not be single-player. The most valuable AI products will help people think, decide, and create together, not only make individuals faster.","future_vision":"I am optimistic about the next 20 years, not because I think progress is guaranteed, but because historically humanity has been able to improve many things that once seemed impossible to change. We live longer, fewer people live in extreme poverty, and education and knowledge are far more accessible than they used to be.\n\nI hope technology, including AI, will continue that trend — making education and important services more accessible and helping more people meet their basic needs. If people have more security and opportunity, I hope they will also have more space for relationships, creativity, personal growth, and kindness.\n\nWhat also gives me hope is the younger generation. I often find younger people open, energetic, and free in the way they think. That does not mean every generation automatically becomes better, but I like the idea that each one can learn from what came before.\n\nI cannot predict what the world will look like in exact numbers, and progress is never guaranteed. But looking at how much humanity has already changed, I find it easier to believe that the world 20 years from now can be better rather than worse.\n\nI cannot give exact predictions, and of course there will be challenges. But overall, I do not believe we are moving toward a worse world. I believe the future can be more thoughtful, more compassionate, and more human.","coding_agents":["codex","claude_code"],"coding_agents_other":[],"chat_llms":["chatgpt","claude","gemini","grok"],"chat_llms_other":[],"underrated_product":"I would highlight AutoSend, an email platform for transactional, marketing, and automated emails. Although we do not actively use it in our work yet, I think it is a very promising product, and we are considering migrating to it in the future.","indispensable_product":"Codex is currently the tool we use most for software development.","founder_advice":"Being afraid is normal. Bugs are normal too. Even the biggest companies have them. Show your product anyway, listen to feedback, and keep improving. Trying to build something is already an achievement, and every attempt teaches you something. And try to get enough sleep.","networking_goal":"I’d like to meet founders, potential early customers, mentors, investors, and potential partners interested in building useful integrations with Mantle Chat.","networking_offer":"I’m happy to share my experience, support launches and encourage other founders. Building a startup can feel uncertain, so I’m glad to listen, exchange ideas, and celebrate small wins together.","anything_else":"If you’ve read this far, I have one small challenge for you: ask an AI, “What do you think about humanity?” It can be interesting to look at ourselves from a slightly different perspective. Then share the answer with someone else and discuss it together. That small moment is actually close to the idea behind Mantle Chat: AI becomes more valuable when it becomes part of a shared discussion, not just a private conversation.\n\nAnd if you ever want to continue that conversation with me, feel free to write :)","personal_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/katja-danilina-010915111","personal_x_url":"https://x.com/KatjaDanilina","personal_website_url":"https://www.instagram.com/katja_danilina","company_website_url":"https://mantle.chat/","company_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/company/mantlechat","company_x_url":"https://x.com/MantleChat","founder_wircle_profile":{"id":"019fe784-748d-7073-a167-fabe797cda9e","username":"katja","type":"human","name":"Katja Danilina","media":{"avatar":{"light":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fe784-748d-7073-a167-fabe797cda9e/light/1786352956215/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fe784-748d-7073-a167-fabe797cda9e/light/1786352956215/512.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fe784-748d-7073-a167-fabe797cda9e/light/1786352956215/200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fe784-748d-7073-a167-fabe797cda9e/light/1786352956215/64.png"}},"banner":{}}},"company_wircle_profile":{"id":"019fea9e-26c5-75b3-bb0f-c70d8622ca64","username":"mantlechat","type":"company","name":"Mantle Chat","media":{"avatar":{"light":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fea9e-26c5-75b3-bb0f-c70d8622ca64/light/1786365626978/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fea9e-26c5-75b3-bb0f-c70d8622ca64/light/1786365626978/512.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fea9e-26c5-75b3-bb0f-c70d8622ca64/light/1786365626978/200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fea9e-26c5-75b3-bb0f-c70d8622ca64/light/1786365626978/64.png"}},"banner":{}}},"published_at":"2026-08-09T18:34:17.987Z","created_at":"2026-07-30T16:00:59.071Z","updated_at":"2026-08-12T18:20:36.056Z"},{"id":"019fb39d-0b37-711f-95a7-341e0d3c3052","slug":"adam-cosyra","status":"published","headline":"Meet Adam, the founder bringing Claude wherever you go","portrait":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb39d-0b37-711f-95a7-341e0d3c3052/1785530743729/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb39d-0b37-711f-95a7-341e0d3c3052/1785530743729/512.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb39d-0b37-711f-95a7-341e0d3c3052/1785530743729/200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb39d-0b37-711f-95a7-341e0d3c3052/1785530743729/64.png"},"name":"Adam","company_name":"Cosyra","role_title":"Co-founder & CTO","about_you":"I've been a software engineer for ten years. I've worked in many different industries, mainly in finance and supply chain.  I've been building consumer apps on the side for about five years now. It's something that I genuinely enjoy doing.","building_today":"We are building a consumer app for developing software from anywhere.","problem_solving":"All software engineers that have worked in the industry for more than a year know what it's like to be on call and have to carry your laptop around with you everywhere. Additionally, with LLMs, we have people walking around with cracked open laptops. We solved that problem by just giving you an always-on environment that you can access from your phone.","company_story":"The company started as a tinkering idea a couple of months after Claude Code was first launched. My co-founder and I found ourselves complaining about how annoying it was sitting at our desks. It felt like we were playing a slot machine. We enjoyed AI just as much as the next person. It sped up development a great deal. But when we were using it for real work, we didn't want to be sitting at our desks prompting the AI and reviewing the code from there. I wanted some freedom. So I set out to create the prototype of Cosyra, which was literally just an SSH client app in Termux that I hooked into a virtual machine I had running in the cloud with 8 GB of RAM.\n\nIt cost me about $60 a month to run. It was awesome, but it was missing some key features that I needed to actually write my software. Thus, Cosyra was born.\n\nWith some improvements, we moved away from SSH, for example. We found ways to lower the cost and still give users the 8 GB machine, even with the rising costs of RAM. We also locked down our system with many iterations of security audits. That way, we could feel comfortable giving this to our friends and family.\n\nSince then, we've slowly been growing. We just recently passed 2,500 users, and we don't plan on stopping anytime soon.","company_motivation":"","current_challenges":"","company_end_goal":"","ai_monopoly":false,"ai_monopoly_comment":"I think the opposite. I think small teams can now produce software at a crazy pace, while the bloat of big corporations gets in the way when you have too many engineers working on the same products. I think that the consumers' ability to actually consume software hasn't really changed since pre-AI, so more is not necessarily better in terms of features. The only way that the big AI companies will swallow the smaller companies is by acquisition, but that is good for small indie developers who want to build and make some money.","ai_race_winners":["anthropic","microsoft"],"ai_race_other":[],"ai_race_comment":"Not really a hot take, but it's pretty clear that they operate on another level than the other A.I. companies. Microsoft is going to win on the infrastructure side of AI.","agi_timeline":"never","agi_timeline_comment":"I don't think LLMs are leading to AGI. I think we would need some other breakthrough AI technology.","money_disappear":false,"money_disappear_comment":"Anyone who tells you money is going to disappear is out of their minds. It's as core to the human experience as language.","software_engineers_disappear":false,"software_engineers_disappear_comment":"No.","ai_outlook":"very_optimistic","ai_outlook_comment":"I think that the frontier labs are going to lose their stranglehold on the best models, and that is in the best interest for the consumers. We are going to get cheap tokens and very high-performing LLMs.","future_valuable":["distribution","proprietary_data"],"future_valuable_other":[],"future_valuable_comment":"Those who have data that the LLMs cannot have access to will become extremely valuable. The talent of being able to distribute apps and features is really important for indie developers today.","future_of_work":["new_jobs"],"future_of_work_other":[],"future_of_work_comment":"This is just classic creative destruction in economics. We can already see that software engineering jobs are going up from last year. I think if we do have a downtick in jobs and work, it's not going to be because of AI, but because of the financial implications of the bubble popping.","contrarian_prediction":"I think software engineering jobs are going to become way more in demand. What's happening to software is that it's becoming more fluid. Since things can be changed at a much faster rate, companies are okay with changing their UI on a weekly basis or having the backend logic flow with the user's trend for that week. This is going to require a much larger workforce in order to support.","future_vision":"I genuinely think that AI is just another form of automation, albeit very, very autonomous. It also varies from previous automation in that it doesn't need a tightly defined set of executable steps and can use inference. I still think that the effects on the world will be the same as any other type of automation. We will see some jobs that were very popular in the early 21st century completely disappear, and we're going to see new jobs pop up that didn't exist before. Software will accelerate. Maybe we'll have a new breakthrough in artificial intelligence or hardware. And relationships will become more important than ever. Life (and being human) will stay, more or less, the same as it is today, though.","coding_agents":["codex","claude_code","opencode"],"coding_agents_other":[],"chat_llms":["chatgpt","grok"],"chat_llms_other":[],"underrated_product":"I really like the Pi coding agent because you can build your own plugins for it and make it how you want. It's fun to tinker with.","indispensable_product":"Definitely Claude Code. Anthropic just has the best models. And the user experience for Claude Code is just great. It's easy to use.","founder_advice":"Nothing that you haven't heard before. Talk to your customers.","networking_goal":"I would love to meet other founders who are in their seed round. I think it's important to keep a strong network of individuals as you all attempt to climb.  It's kind of like in League of Legends. You want your friends to all be the same rank as you so you can queue up together.","networking_offer":"Sharing my experiences and knowledge that I've picked up, along with my network.","anything_else":"","personal_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-roman-559469a6/","personal_x_url":"https://x.com/adamisnotroman","personal_website_url":"https://cosyra.com/","company_website_url":"https://cosyra.com/","company_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/company/cosyra","company_x_url":null,"founder_wircle_profile":null,"company_wircle_profile":null,"published_at":"2026-08-03T12:54:30.262Z","created_at":"2026-07-30T15:20:41.527Z","updated_at":"2026-08-03T12:54:30.262Z"},{"id":"019fb3dc-b14c-73bc-af79-8a54e8c5c39c","slug":"yan-balau","status":"published","headline":"This founder built an agent that's going to find you users 24/7, and he believes we already achieved AGI.","portrait":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb3dc-b14c-73bc-af79-8a54e8c5c39c/1785429799401/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb3dc-b14c-73bc-af79-8a54e8c5c39c/1785429799401/512.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb3dc-b14c-73bc-af79-8a54e8c5c39c/1785429799401/200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/journal-interviews/019fb3dc-b14c-73bc-af79-8a54e8c5c39c/1785429799401/64.png"},"name":"Yan Balau","company_name":"Outify","role_title":"Co-Founder","about_you":"Hey, I'm Yan, I've worked as a GTM engineer, I've built multiple projects that didn't work, and now I'm building Outify, to help founders like me find new customers easier.","building_today":"We're building an outreach agent that works 24/7 without human interaction.","problem_solving":"Outreach is hard, especially for new startups, and we're making it easier with an agent that pursues potential customers until the deal closes.","company_story":"Outify is the result of our own struggles doing outreach for multiple products that we've built before. All the companies are shouting big claims about using AI in outreach, everyone's releasing an AI SDR, GTM agents, and so on, but we've yet to find an agent or AI system working well, autonomously.\n\nMost of the products in the market are the same old useless outreach products with a bit of AI on top.\n\nWe're building something that's missing, something that hopefully will help a lot of founders that were in the same position as we.\n\nOur agent is handling all the steps in the outreach flow, starting with sourcing the leads and finding the right people to pursue, until actually closing the deal. The agent is assisting our users during the sales process by suggesting angles, messages, ideas, etc., It's a strategic agent that knows when to pause and wait for the right outreach moment, something that no one in the market does, which makes it very effective, since it's reaching the right people at the right time, which is the key to running successful outreach campaigns.","company_motivation":"","current_challenges":"","company_end_goal":"","ai_monopoly":false,"ai_monopoly_comment":"I think they'll swallow a lot of different companies but I don't think they'll have a monopoly. I think we'll have a wave of new companies doing things so diverse that it won't be possible for the big players to swallow everyone.","ai_race_winners":["apple","openai","google","meta","xai_spacex"],"ai_race_other":[],"ai_race_comment":"I think Apple is secretly working on a lot of cool AI projects, and they'll be amazing once they step in. Google has a huge pool talent and proprietary data, and I think they'll manage to come up with powerful AI systems as well. Meta is hungry and Mark is pushing hard in this direction, I believe in him. XAI obviously have their own advantages, especially because of SpaceX.","agi_timeline":"2026","agi_timeline_comment":"I think we already achieved AGI and we're already interacting with it every day. The AI systems we're talking to every day are not just predicting the next tokens, they \"understand\" the questions they're getting and they're responding with intelligent responses.","money_disappear":false,"money_disappear_comment":"I don't see it disappearing anytime soon - maybe on Mars if we can colonize at some point, but not on earth.","software_engineers_disappear":false,"software_engineers_disappear_comment":"No, but the profession will change (it already has), and it's going to become a bit different, but it won't disappear for sure.","ai_outlook":"very_optimistic","ai_outlook_comment":"I can't tell exactly where the AI is going, and what it's going to become, but I think we haven't even hit 5% of what it can do, and we haven't even hit 1% of using it in all the industries where it matters. We're using AI to build B2B SaaS companies, but not in medicine, climate, social sciences, space, exploration, chemistry, etc., - all those fields are still waiting for the moment the AI is going to disrupt them. That's when we'll hit real progress.","future_valuable":["trust","distribution","proprietary_data"],"future_valuable_other":[],"future_valuable_comment":"Trust is going to be important for sure, especially when it comes to information, videos, photos, etc., - we'll need to trust that what we see is real and it's not AI generated.\n\nProprietary data is important obviously, since by definition it's something that only you have, and so it becomes even more valuable in a world where more and more things can be replicated increasingly easier.\n\nDistribution of course is even more valuable as before because you'll have way more competition, since the barrier to entry is much lower, and a lot of companies will be able to easily replicate most of the things you'll build. This is why I think distribution is even more important as before.","future_of_work":["new_jobs","most_jobs_change"],"future_of_work_other":[],"future_of_work_comment":"I think that we'll keep working and work is not going anywhere, but we're going to have new kinds of jobs, and the existing jobs will be changed by the AI - in a good way.","contrarian_prediction":"I believe it will be better than the past and the present, I am 99% sure about this, I believe in humanity.","future_vision":"","coding_agents":["codex"],"coding_agents_other":[],"chat_llms":["chatgpt","perplexity"],"chat_llms_other":[],"underrated_product":"Honestly, Render.com - it's very easy to deploy your projects on it, both the frontend, and the backend, the pricing is ok, and everything is working smoothly.","indispensable_product":"I'd probably say Codex at this point, since it's the software we're using the most, to build Outify.","founder_advice":"Never give up, keep moving forward, try new things, stay true to your beliefs, and don't forget to get some sunlight!","networking_goal":"I'd like to meet fellow founders, building any kind of products.","networking_offer":"Happy to share outreach ideas and advice.","anything_else":"Happy to help founders find new customers - drop me a DM to set up your Deal Chaser agent that's going to find customers 24/7 for you.","personal_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/yan-balau","personal_x_url":null,"personal_website_url":null,"company_website_url":"https://outify.com/","company_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/company/outifyhq","company_x_url":"https://x.com/outifyhq","founder_wircle_profile":{"id":"019fa00f-c7a5-722c-b223-c7bbc1624fe8","username":"yan","type":"human","name":"Yan Balau","media":{"avatar":{"light":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fa00f-c7a5-722c-b223-c7bbc1624fe8/light/1785098295273/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fa00f-c7a5-722c-b223-c7bbc1624fe8/light/1785098295273/512.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fa00f-c7a5-722c-b223-c7bbc1624fe8/light/1785098295273/200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fa00f-c7a5-722c-b223-c7bbc1624fe8/light/1785098295273/64.png"}},"banner":{"dark":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/banners/profiles/019fa00f-c7a5-722c-b223-c7bbc1624fe8/dark/1785097672461/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/banners/profiles/019fa00f-c7a5-722c-b223-c7bbc1624fe8/dark/1785097672461/1600.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/banners/profiles/019fa00f-c7a5-722c-b223-c7bbc1624fe8/dark/1785097672461/1200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/banners/profiles/019fa00f-c7a5-722c-b223-c7bbc1624fe8/dark/1785097672461/600.png"}}}},"company_wircle_profile":{"id":"019fad63-6bb8-7358-9b89-48eb5379b3a3","username":"outify","type":"company","name":"Outify","media":{"avatar":{"light":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fad63-6bb8-7358-9b89-48eb5379b3a3/light/1785321948859/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fad63-6bb8-7358-9b89-48eb5379b3a3/light/1785321948859/512.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fad63-6bb8-7358-9b89-48eb5379b3a3/light/1785321948859/200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/avatars/profiles/019fad63-6bb8-7358-9b89-48eb5379b3a3/light/1785321948859/64.png"}},"banner":{"light":{"source_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/banners/profiles/019fad63-6bb8-7358-9b89-48eb5379b3a3/light/1785338748900/source.png","large_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/banners/profiles/019fad63-6bb8-7358-9b89-48eb5379b3a3/light/1785338748900/1600.png","medium_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/banners/profiles/019fad63-6bb8-7358-9b89-48eb5379b3a3/light/1785338748900/1200.png","small_url":"https://wircle-media.b-cdn.net/banners/profiles/019fad63-6bb8-7358-9b89-48eb5379b3a3/light/1785338748900/600.png"}}}},"published_at":"2026-07-30T19:08:17.414Z","created_at":"2026-07-30T16:30:12.812Z","updated_at":"2026-07-30T19:17:13.499Z"}]},"agent":{}}