0:00
/
0:00
Transcript

#27 | The AI Co-Founder: Building Businesses With Agents

How Ben Collins is redefining company creation with Woz — where AI agents replace the need for technical co-founders
1

Welcome to GTM Vault — trusted by 20,000+ GTM leaders building the future of revenue.

This week’s guest is Ben Collins — co-founder and CEO of Woz (YC W25), an AI platform that lets anyone build and scale a software business without writing a single line of code.

Before launching Woz, Ben spent years in venture capital and partnerships, bringing a GTM lens to investing and ecosystem design. At Woz, he and his team of veteran engineers have productized decades of expertise into an AI-native platform that compresses company creation from months to days.

His vision? A world where anyone — solopreneurs, consultants, even enterprise teams — can launch and scale software products with the help of AI agents.

“Automation gets you to 80%. What matters is how you design the last mile — the human layer that closes the gap and builds trust.”

This one’s for founders exploring AI-enabled entrepreneurship, operators building in a crowded space, and investors curious about what autonomous company creation means for venture and GTM.


Listen & Subscribe

YouTube // Apple // Spotify


In This Episode

  • The aha moment that led to Woz and its YC journey

  • Why technical co-founders are no longer a bottleneck

  • How Woz’s AI agents mimic engineering + product teams

  • Where automation ends and human QA must begin

  • Lessons from building in a crowded AI tooling market

  • Why GTM for AI-native companies looks nothing like SaaS 1.0

  • How autonomous companies could reshape venture capital

  • The big picture: what Woz could look like by 2030


5 GTM Takeaways to Steal

  • AI Compresses Company Creation – From months to days — speed is now the default.

  • The Last Mile Still Matters – Automation gets you 80%, but humans close the trust gap.

  • Brand Is Still the Moat – Even with agents, differentiation comes from narrative.

  • Deflationary GTM Models – AI-first companies won’t scale with big sales teams — they need new motions.

  • Venture Barbell Is Here – Tiny capital-efficient startups on one side, billion-dollar “anointed winners” on the other.


Episode Highlights

00:00 – Intro: Meet Ben Collins (Woz, YC)

03:18 – Lessons from VC & partnerships shaping GTM

04:50 – Delivering on “no technical co-founder required”

05:53 – How Woz’s AI agents actually work

07:09 – The handoff between automation and humans

09:08 – Hardest technical & product challenges so far

10:57 – Surprising use cases & enterprise interest

13:42 – How GTM changes for AI-native companies

14:44 – How close we are to fully autonomous company creation

17:24 – What Woz looks like in 2030


Further Reading

Want to go deeper? Here are related playbooks and GTM frameworks from the archive:


Sponsor Spotlight: ZoomInfo

You might know ZoomInfo for contacts and emails — the fuel behind SDR teams. But ZoomInfo has quietly rebuilt itself into something much more powerful: a system that automates your entire GTM motion.

Signals come in. Outreach goes out. The list gets worked. Plays get triggered. Automatically.

ZoomInfo calls it GTM Intelligence. It’s not enrichment. It’s execution.

See a demo today

Thanks to our sponsors who help keep this email free and high-signal. Want to reach 20,000+ GTM leaders? Explore sponsorship options here.


Connect

Follow Ben Collins: LinkedIn // Woz

Follow Rick Koleta: LinkedIn // RiteGTM

Build companies without bottlenecks — and rethink what GTM looks like when software builds itself. Catch up on all GTM Vault episodes →

Discussion about this video

User's avatar