Everyone Gets A Software Company — Benjamin Guo, Zo Computer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr15lGAGKpo
AI Engineer · 15 min · 231 sentences · sentence-level transcript from YouTube's caption track; each line begins at the time shown

[00:01] [music]
[00:12] Hello everybody.
[00:13] I'm Ben from Zoho Computer.
[00:15] I just posted on X from my Zoho.
[00:18] You know, I'll be giving away $100 in AI credits and I do all sorts of stuff with my Zoho.
[00:23] This is my computer.
[00:24] My Zoho is my computer.
[00:26] And before I get started, I made the site just now while I was waiting to get started presenting.
[00:31] This is a kind of overview of all the speakers in today's claw session.
[00:35] You can scan this QR code and check it out.
[00:37] I've got some useful links in here, but also I've got like some deep research on everybody presenting including their recent thoughts, links to their profiles and websites, blogs, etc. So, scan this.
[00:49] It's super useful.
[00:50] I just made it just now.
[00:52] This is my computer that you see right here, my Zoho computer.
[00:54] I'll be talking about it and this talk is about kind of Zoho and a lot of things.
[00:58] It's also about kind of personal agents, personal cloud agents in particular, which Zoho is one instance of and kind of the future and where I see all of this going.
[01:09] So, a little bit about me.
[01:13] I'm the co-founder of Zoho.
[01:15] My name is Ben.
[01:16] I started my career on the early Venmo team back in 2013 and um I met my co-founder Rob at Venmo and I left Venmo to work at Stripe quite early.
[01:25] I was one of the first I was the 80th engineer and my co-founder Rob, he went on to build Substack.
[01:30] He was the first engineer there.
[01:32] And a final fact about me as you can see is that I really love computers.
[01:36] I'm dressed up as a computer.
[01:39] And I like to start with this like fun fact about this finder icon.
[01:43] So, this icon was designed by Susan Kare, an early graphic designer at Apple Computer and many people don't know the story behind this icon, but it actually represents the human, this white face, and the machine, this blue face, and they're kind of like in happy
[01:59] harmony.
[02:00] And I think that is what we should aspire to as we build AI tools for people.
[02:05] Like humans love tools, humans have always loved machines, and like when we feel at one with our machine, we feel like this.
[02:11] We feel happy.
[02:13] So, who like me misses the way that computers used to feel?
[02:17] Raise your hand, right?
[02:18] Like the early internet, like your first website, your first PC.
[02:22] Right?
[02:22] It used to feel different, right?
[02:26] Today, the internet and our computers feels more like this.
[02:30] We are swimming in the sea of applications and sites and services and it's not great.
[02:38] And on top of all of that, they're jacking up the prices on these things that we use, often because of AI features that we didn't ask for.
[02:48] And I think quite reasonably, consumers or I'll just call them regular people are upset or confused or scared of AI.
[02:57] So, Computer is based in Brooklyn, we're in Bushwick actually, kind of like the heart of hipsters in New York, and you know, there's a lot of this out there.
[03:07] I see a lot of this kind of vandalism over AI ads in the city.
[03:12] On top of all of that, this is what our industry looks like.
[03:17] But the deeper root of why this is bad is is a structural thing.
[03:23] It's what we call techno-feudalism.
[03:26] So, basically, feudalism was this like kind of shitty system back in the day, and though it no longer exists, it still is alive and well in our digital lives.
[03:36] So, we are still the peasants, we pay rent to the SaaS providers who pay rent to the cloud providers who pay rent to the kings who are, you know, like probably Nvidia these days.
[03:47] And because we are peasants, our lives are shitty.
[03:50] We are fragmented between all these different tools.
[03:53] There are various services that we use that lock us in and and shitify over time.
[03:57] Like that PM at that product that you use is not incentivized to make your life better.
[04:02] They're incentivized to improve their bottom line, to monetize your attention, to take your data, lock it in, and sell it back to you.
[04:10] And because you don't own anything, you are a peasant.
[04:15] So Zo, our mission has always been to solve this by giving people a real home on the internet.
[04:22] And we believe that most people in the world are kind of living in the Matrix, and we're trying to show people a better way.
[04:31] So Zo is alive and well.
[04:33] We've been out for about a year, and real people are using it.
[04:37] Real regular people like Charlotte, this LA-based private chef and life coach.
[04:42] She hosts her websites, she has multiple websites now, on Zo.
[04:46] Zo manages her invoices and her accounts and bookkeeping and her scheduling and her notes.
[04:52] And it's just like amazing system.
[04:54] It makes her feel like clear and calm and on top of the world, and it's fun.
[04:59] As you can see this text that she sent me.
[05:02] So what is Zo?
[05:03] Zo is a personal cloud.
[05:06] We've never really had a personal cloud before, but it's quite simple.
[05:10] You have your own home in the cloud.
[05:11] You're not using other cloud services.
[05:13] You have your own thing.
[05:15] You put your stuff in it.
[05:16] You put your AI in it.
[05:17] And because it is a place in the cloud, you can host stuff in it.
[05:22] You can host services like websites or APIs, and they're all yours.
[05:29] And I think for people in this room, if you're like interested in clouds and personal agents, like your personal cloud might look something more like this.
[05:35] You might have like a suite of local devices.
[05:38] Um and for me, I have like this like Zo computer, this like cloud computer as well, which has my Zo agent on it.
[05:45] It also has a Hermes on it, and it has my services.
[05:49] I have many websites and APIs and things that I've built, all hosted in the same place, and it can also talk to my laptop or my Mac mini, or I can use it on my phone.
[05:59] And that, collectively, is my personal cloud.
[06:04] So, Zoe is a personal server with AI built in.
[06:08] It's It's quite simple.
[06:10] And it hearkens back to a simpler time.
[06:13] So, back in the day, this is actually how we built and hosted websites.
[06:17] We just FTP'd our files onto a server, and that updated our website.
[06:22] You were just shipping to prod.
[06:24] You're like always doing it live.
[06:26] And that's actually, I think, how most people should build.
[06:29] I don't think it's necessary for a regular person like Charlotte to think about deployment.
[06:36] Unfortunately, for many of us in this room, this is probably what your life looks like, actually.
[06:42] You're kind of just navigating between these different AIs and devices and SaaS services, and it's very confusing.
[06:51] Zoe is meant to be a simpler way.
[06:53] It's one place for all of your stuff and your AI and the stuff you host, all of your personal stuff in the cloud.
[07:03] Here's another case study that I'd like to talk about.
[07:05] This is Anthia.
[07:06] She was one of our early users.
[07:07] She's totally non-technical.
[07:08] She's a free-diving instructor, and she's already on track to make $100,000 on Zoe.
[07:14] She used to use all of these different SaaS services to run her business and her life, like Squarespace, like Calendly, etc. And now she's replaced all of that with Zoe.
[07:25] She's canceled all of those SaaS subscriptions.
[07:28] She is no longer a peasant.
[07:31] Anthia went from this, kind of being very confused and having her data in all of these different SaaS silos, and not really being able to connect them very easily,
[07:42] to this.
[07:43] So, Anthea not only hosts her retreat website on Zo on a custom domain.
[07:48] She has many different websites now.
[07:50] She has her personal workspace that looks like this.
[07:52] She's really into fairies and like drawing and mushrooms and she's like expressing her whole self and her creativity online in this new way that we kind of really haven't had as regular people for a long time since like the '90s.
[08:06] And under the hood, like all of those sites are just the tip of the iceberg.
[08:11] So, when Anthea gets somebody who's interested in a retreat, Zo texts her with their number.
[08:17] Anthea now immediately calls them at that moment of intent to buy.
[08:21] She texts her Zo, "Give me a payment link."
[08:23] And she closes the deal right then and there.
[08:25] And that is how she is actually booking much more revenue than before with these retreats.
[08:30] Like her retreats are now like actually kind of hard to book because there's too much demand.
[08:35] And that's amazing.
[08:35] And under the hood, she has a database for all of her retreats.
[08:38] She doesn't really know what a database is, but she has one.
[08:41] She has all of her notes, all of her accounting, and it's all in one place.
[08:44] If she has like some images from a retreat and she wants to put those on her website, she just tells her Zo to do it and it's like right there.
[08:50] She can like host files directly from her personal server.
[08:54] And she is self-hosting everything.
[08:58] So, Zo is made to be simple enough for anyone, for people like Anthea, for my parents, for other people's parents.
[09:03] People are always telling me on like LinkedIn or X that like they sign up their parent for their parents to Zo and their parents are like five coding up a storm.
[09:11] It was awesome to see.
[09:11] I just got this message on LinkedIn the other day.
[09:14] Our caterer uses Zo um to kind of manage his staff at his restaurant.
[09:18] Our recruiter uses Zo as well.
[09:20] He's really into it and he's like kind of building a whole He's like rebuilding his his stack for his recruiting agency on Zo.
[09:26] Our marketing agency has become Zo-pilled.
[09:29] So, it's made for everybody.
[09:31] But it's also powerful enough for the audience in this room.
[09:35] It can be the home for your Open Claw or your Hermes.
[09:37] You can have a really nicely set up server to host your personal agent in if you use one of those tools.
[09:43] You can bring your codex or Gemini or etc. subscriptions and you can build and host anything.
[09:48] You have like root access to your own server to this very nicely set up Linux VM where like the networking is also like very well set up and you don't really have to worry about any of it.
[09:57] You can SSH in and you can control your Zo via API or MCP.
[10:02] So, very flexible.
[10:05] So, scan this QR code if you haven't yet uh to get $100 in AI credits.
[10:10] Um just try Zo.
[10:11] I I think you'll like it.
[10:13] And I'm going to do a little demo and then I'll have a little bit more to talk about after that.
[10:18] Um
[10:19] [snorts]
[10:20] So, really quick demo of Zo.
[10:22] You already saw it in the beginning, but Zo is this like nice kind of cloud workspace.
[10:26] I made this website just now.
[10:27] I make all sorts of websites on the fly.
[10:29] Um you can chat with really any model as I mentioned.
[10:32] You can bring your own API key.
[10:34] You can even talk to Claude code in here.
[10:36] [snorts]
[10:36] You've got this nice file system, built-in cloud storage because it's your server.
[10:39] You can just like use it as a Dropbox.
[10:41] Um and you know, you can obviously like work agentically in the chat with any of your files.
[10:47] You've got automations.
[10:48] So, you can kind of run tasks on a schedule with AI.
[10:51] [snorts]
[10:52] You've got tons of built-in integrations.
[10:54] You don't have to set any of this up.
[10:56] We have
[10:56] [snorts]
[10:57] lots of skills, a large skill library.
[10:59] There's a built-in browser, so you can log in to sites and let your Zo like buy things for you or do whatever.
[11:05] Actually, I always text my Zo these days to buy stuff on Amazon.
[11:08] It's like really dangerous for impulse purchasing.
[11:10] I like see something I'm like, let's buy it.
[11:12] [snorts]
[11:12] Um and as I mentioned, you can host stuff.
[11:15] So, you can really host anything, any arbitrary service, HTTP or TCP.
[11:20] And we also give you a really nice built-in personal website.
[11:22] This is my Zo space and this is all set up nicely and it's got like, you know, nice kind of like live coding features.
[11:29] Um and you just chat with it to edit it.
[11:31] And I've built all sorts of cool things inside of here.
[11:34] Um this for example is like my Calendly replacement.
[11:37] People can book time with me and it has just like this custom setup that I like.
[11:41] Um and my Zo can like review the people that are interested.
[11:43] I don't want anybody like booking time with me directly.
[11:46] Um and so that's kind of like what Zo is and I want to conclude by just talking a little bit about the future.
[11:53] So the reason we're building Zo is to build a future and better internet, one that looks more like this where everybody,
[12:01] [snorts]
[12:02] every individual has a real home, a presence on the internet.
[12:06] And
[12:06] [snorts]
[12:06] companies already have this, but like we should interact directly with other people on the internet without middlemen.
[12:12] And we should also interact with like the various companies and their AIs.
[12:16] Um and it should be like more direct.
[12:20] Another way to look at this is that like in the future we will probably just be interacting mostly with agents and the agents will kind of interact with the cloud, like these like software 1.0
[12:31] things like websites and APIs.
[12:35] But
[12:35] [snorts]
[12:35] if you dig a little deeper into here, what's probably actually going to happen is that most of these agents that we interact with will also be in the cloud.
[12:42] Some of them will be local, but many of them will be in the cloud.
[12:45] And when those agents are in the cloud, the question again is like whose cloud is it?
[12:51] [snorts]
[12:52] So Claud tag is newly out and and Claud tag is actually, if you think about it, a cloud agent.
[13:00] It's this like cloud Claud.
[13:02] It's like a company level Claud that has like all the company's context and
[13:06] [snorts]
[13:06] anybody can interact with it.
[13:07] And you know, it's it's an interesting and very like ergonomic model.
[13:10] Town and Victor are also kind of similar instances of this.
[13:14] [snorts]
[13:15] But the problem with Claud tag is this.
[13:19] Whose cloud is it?
[13:20] Whose Claud is it?
[13:21] It's not really your company's Claud.
[13:23] And as you kind of improve your Claud tag setup, like what really improves is Anthropic, right?
[13:30] Like the the arrow is pointing the wrong way.
[13:35] And
[13:35] [snorts]
[13:35] this is intelligence feudalism.
[13:38] The intelligence now is bubbling up the wrong way.
[13:42] And you are still a peasant again, or your company is still kind of a peasant in a way.
[13:49] [snorts]
[13:50] And at Zoe believe really strongly in changing the way that things work and giving people and companies more
[13:59] [snorts]
[13:59] ownership over their cloud and over their intelligence.
[14:02] So, we believe that the future should actually look more
[14:05] [snorts]
[14:05] like this.
[14:07] Anybody, a company or an individual should be able to publish agents and own them and have end users and like have the end usage of their agent improve, like self-improve
[14:18] their own kind of published agent.
[14:20] And that is the future that we're building.
[14:23] We have
[14:23] [snorts]
[14:23] a kind of beta version of this.
[14:24] So, um I'm going to go back to to this Zoe space uh and scan this QR code finally if you want to talk to me, get AI credits, sign up for the beta of this kind of new agent publishing
[14:37] platform.
[14:39] [snorts]
[14:39] And uh yeah, also you can check out all of the speakers that are presenting on this Zoe space page.
[14:44] Um I'm Ben from Zoe computer.
[14:47] Thank you.
[14:48] [applause]