today marks a special moment - I'm beyond excited to announce wordware's $30m seed round led by @sparkcapital (followed by @felicis & @ycombinator) for decades, coding was the only way to create in our digital world. but AI is changing everything - it thinks in beautiful shades of grey, not just 1s and 0s. with this shift, we saw an opportunity to reimagine who gets to build. there are 30 million software engineers worldwide, but we've always believed that creativity isn't limited to those who can code. wordware is for the next 500m builders - the dreamers, experts, and innovators who've been waiting for their moment to create AI Agents (check out the video for our definition of what that means 😂) it's been quite a journey to get here. 3 years full-time with my brilliant cofounder (@bertie_ai), a decade in the AI space, countless failed experiments with transformers, major pivots, sleepless nights, and 100-hour weeks that tested everything we believed in. but today, I want to pause and celebrate what our incredible team has achieved: - 350k builders bringing their AI visions to life - 10 million people running agents built with wordware - amazing clients like instacart, runway & metadata - breaking @ProductHunt's servers (sorry, not sorry!) - raising one of the largest seeds (if not the largest) out of @ycombinator we still have mountains to climb, but watching our community build things we never imagined possible... that's what keeps us going. what makes wordware different? we've turned English into a programming language for AI. no coding bootcamp required - if you can express ideas clearly, you can build sophisticated AI solutions. our take on reimagining the development stack as a full-stack os for building AI: - unified notion like IDE - built-in tools for rag, speech-to-text, image gen, data analysis, scraping & more - proper engineering concepts for power users (loops, conditionals, function calls, code execution, version control) - open source community: fork, share & customize AI solutions once you're done iterating, deploy as an API to power your AI backend or utilize your AI agent as a workflow to our incredible team who made this possible - thank you to the believers who backed us (@nabeel, @paulg, @AstasiaMyers, @vladm, @dessaigne, @azeem, @benparr, @MattPRD, @bentossell, @blader, @brownthings, @collinmathilde, @kul, @soleio , @DanWestgarth, @barticz, @tomik99 & many more) - thank you thinking about that AI workflow, product feature, or full-fledged AI company? let's chat: wordware.ai ps: we're hiring across all roles! join us in rebuilding how humans create with ai: jobs.ashbyhq.com/wordware.ai

I spent $1.5M building our office after raising a seed round. My co-founder thought I was crazy. Here's what changed his mind... 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭: After our seed round, I looked at our team. Mostly immigrants. Working 6-day weeks. Building something incredibly hard. The office wasn't just where they worked. It was becoming their home. So I made a bet, what if we actually designed for that? The requirements I gave our real estate agent: - Shower (for ocean swims between meetings) - as close to the beach as possible, ability to quickly go surfing/kiting etc. - Big enough kitchen for a chef - Room for an actual sauna People thought I was building a vacation house, I thought: I am building a place worth the sacrifice. 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐈 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤: - Found one of SF's best real estate lawyers. Negotiated hard. - Negotiated Tenant Improvements + First year for free - Effective cost: $250k (not $1.5M) Then I was extremely prescriptive with design and construction. No endless back-and-forth. I drew what I wanted. Told them to build it. Cut iteration time by 80%. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭: - Nordic vibes (keeping our European souls) - Industrial kitchen - Sauna room (yes, like our product: sauna.ai) - Ocean access - Space that feels like home Conclusions: - This "expensive" decision already paid for itself. - In SF, recruiters charge $100k per engineer. We've closed multiple hires -because candidates walked in and said: "I want to work here." But the real ROI isn't only financial. It's this: - We do Friday AMA as a BBQs on the beach. - People actually use the surfboards. - The team's lifestyle supports the intensity of the work. EVERYONE WANTS IN, doesnt matter if events, hiring or using the space as coworking (@bertie_ai and I open it up for our portfolio companies) My co-founder's response after 3 months: "You were right." Some founders optimize for low burn rate. I optimize for: Can great people sustain this pace for years? Because great companies aren't built in one sprint. They're built by people who can go the distance. We're hiring: wordware.ai/careers (Comment if you want intros to our real estate agent, lawyers or construction team - happy to connect)

WE ARE HIRING ACROSS THE BOARD! Story of how we got there... June 2021: solo founder with a thesis December 2021: convinced one of my best friends to join me (@bertie_ai ❤️) Late 2023: Major Pivot September 2024: Top Launch on Product Hunt ever, raised 30mm seed after YC November 2025: 18 people building Sauna together (sauna.ai/) Throughout all of this: 3 rejections from YC, probably 100s of rejections from VCs, more all-nighters than I'd recommend. Still pushing. The thing that surprised me most? How much I care about the people part. I thought I was here to build product. Turns out I'm here to build a team that builds product. And I love that. If you want to work on something audacious with people who genuinely like each other, we're hiring: - Senior Frontend Engineer ($20k referral bonus) - Product Designer ($15k referral bonus) - Head of Growth ($15k referral bonus) - more roles: wordware.ai/careers Note for International people: We sponsor O-1s for incredible people so please still apply and ping me a DM! Note for Polish people: I will be in Poland most of December, lets have an in-person interview 🇵🇱 P.S. Robert and I met in 2014. The full story is really cool. Comment "story" if that would be interesting. Bloody hell 11 years in the making... 😮

3. Traction — best menu of growth channels, experiment with them all. 4. Culture Code — lessons on how to build culture, tiny traditions etc from most successful organisations like SEAL Team Six

2. 15 commitments of Concious Leadership — things that make you and your company happier and more in touch with their emotions. I recently run a workshop on how to link problems and successes to 5 core emotions: fear, sadness, anger, joy and creativity.

4 books I think every founder should read: 1. Most practical and actionable 190 pages of my life: The Great CEO Within by amazing Matt Mochary. Really good chapter on negotiating salaries 😊 get it on Amazon or drop a comment saying CEO and I’ll send you a google doc.

I’ve never heard a more beautiful call out: “𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱-𝟭 𝘀𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱” !!!!!! 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 @Starcloud_Inc1, @ezrafeilden, @adi__oltean

How to Hire Episode 3/15 In my first company, I hired like I was assembling IKEA furniture. Role needs filling? Find the piece. Slot it in. Organization runs. This time I did the opposite: ex-founders and high-agency people everywhere. It's expensive. More equity. More opinions. More "why are we doing it this way?" But when shit hits the fan—and it always does—these people don't wait for permission. They fix it. That's the difference between cogwheels and engines. When looking at a candidate ask yourself is this a cogwheel or an engine. Another comparison is about cannons and ammunition. and ammunition is useless without barrels.

How to hire episode 2/15 where I tell the story of our incredible team and how we got them 😊 @Guillaume_rx21 •⁠ ⁠Incredible people usually have incredible jobs, which meant poaching was the only path forward. •⁠ ⁠Guillaume was crushing it at 11x - responsible for millions of ARR and already an a16z scout. Not exactly someone looking for a career change. •⁠ ⁠Poaching isn't about convincing someone to leave - it's about figuring out what's missing from their life and whether you can genuinely provide it. For Guillaume and me, that meant him literally living with me for a while and having real fireside chats (not the bullshit networking kind) about sustainable happiness, personal & professional growth and what the next decade should look like. •⁠ ⁠We mapped his Ikigai (google it): the intersection of what he loves (connecting people, building community, experimenting with growth), what the company needs (user growth, a great brand), what he's great at (people), and what can sustain him. •⁠ ⁠That's how we designed his role. A year in, Guillaume keeps bringing his contagious energy that lifts the whole team. Interesting caveat tho: Here's the thing about enthusiastic/energetic people though - it takes a trained eye to catch when something's off. Burnout doesn't discriminate. When Guillaume hit a wall, we have a compulsory policy: go surfing for a week. Reset. Come back when you're ready. What a year it's been working alongside you, @Guillaume_rx21 🏄‍♂️

Era of Sauna begins now. Get on the waitlist: sauna.ai And join us on this mission: jobs.ashbyhq.com/wordware.ai

Meet @isaacdyor A lesson in why: passion and drive > experience. The guy quit uni and run a marathon after being told he is too junior. Because obviously 42km is the way to prove eng seniority :D we just had to give him the job. Join us jobs.ashbyhq.com/wordware.ai

tldr Come north, avoid Mission, build something great while slowly losing your European soul - or join us in trying to keep it. We are hiring (engineering, growth eng, AI , content, brand, SM) @bertie_ai and I invite best founders to cowork out of our office. DM me^^

- oh and everyone is best at everything - get used to terrible intersections - travel often, Tahoe skiing, Mendocino for a romantic getaway, orr hot springs, hike, skydive, paraglide, dive

- dating culture in america is very different to europe, i would suggest a country of origin filter (California accent is a physical preference challenge you didn't know you had) - Therapy is discussed like weather in London - Everyone's "super excited" about everything always

- rarely party and go to illegal nature raves over clubs - bars are great but its weird to get boozed and then end a party at 2am, set your expectations - get an office 50 meters from the beach like we did SUP, kitesurf, swim, kayak, row to stay sane

European founders treat SF as a town not a city. here is a guide for eu founders on how to live a seaside town life in SF. see map - Mission is for masochists and commuters from the valley (you're neither). I never go there, I am way too sensitive to see so much misery.

We're all cosplaying productivity, and why AI's greatest gift could be deleting fake work. open.substack.com/pub/davidg…

Would recommend @kul to all my founder friends 😊 he is actively investing !

@kozerafilip założyciel @wordware o praktycznym wykorzystywaniu technologii AI, budowie biznesu w US i filozofii życia. Must watch! 😍

Two days ago, @kozerafilip, the CEO of @wordware (YC S24) and I spoke at the GenAI summit on Background Agents. For decades knowledge work has been single‑threaded: open an app, issue a command, wait. Background AI agents break that bottleneck by letting dozens of task‑specific models run in parallel, each quietly advancing your goals while you sip coffee. We talked about: 1. how to inject intelligence without driving humans crazy 2. what great founders must still do 3. how Filip and other founders use background agents 4. what will "a day in the life" look like in 2028 5. what to do for job security See the link to the blogpost in the comments below 👇