Jake Aaron Villarreal: I'm Jake Aaron Villarreal, born and raised in Silicon Valley, here to take you behind the scenes to share what it's like to be a startup founder, the journey they're on, the problems they face, the products they build, in an effort to make our lives better. Today we got Ben Guo, founder of Zo Computer on. Ben's been building something wild. Essentially AWS for consumers. He's creating a cloud computing platform powered by AI, giving everyday people access to a full Linux server in the cloud so they can build autonomous AI agents that actually do stuff for them. Before this, Ben spent eight years at Stripe building developer platforms, and now he's on a mission to make personal servers a real consumer device. We're talking about pivoting from B2B infrastructure, raising 8 million from Lightspeed and more, and how to position a product so general purpose, it's literally reshaping what's possible. So stick around as we dive into the future of consumer cloud computing. It's going to be good. So Ben, excited to have you. Before we jump in on you, where are you joining us from today?
Ben Guo: I'm in our office in Brooklyn. We're in kind of East Williamsburg on the L train.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Very cool. Well, I used to live in New York and I love the area. I was at Oracle at the time, so spent a lot of time on trains and taxi cabs and all that fun stuff, and uh, such a great place. It's a lot of energy and there's a lot of opportunities to do stuff in technology, too. So, I guess before we jump in, give us a little background of you, kind of what shaped you into becoming really a leader in your company, but maybe walk us back a little bit on the technical side.
Ben Guo: Yeah, happy to go through my career journey. Yeah. So, I started my career at Venmo in 2013 on the early Venmo team. It was quite small and scrappy. I met my co-founder there actually, Rob. Um, we just became really good friends. We were both like new grads. Um, and a lot of my core friend group actually is from Venmo. Our CTO is also from the early Venmo team. One of our employees as well is a good friend and he joined recently. So, um, that's kind of where I kind of just developed this love for startups. I decided to join a startup after college because it just seemed more fun than like kind of going into a FAANG company. Back in 2013 it was like a ittle bit uncommon to join a startup. Like people were just kind of waking up to like the importance of like kind of software, and like software is like a cool career, and so I joined Venmo. Um, and after that, um, I went to Stripe in 2015, um, which was also quite early. It was a pretty small team, maybe like 100 people. Um, and also very much a startup at that point. I knew about Stripe because of Venmo actually, because Venmo was acquired by Braintree, so I knew about kind of like the payments space, um, and always looked up to Stripe. Their engineering culture was just like super strong. So that's what led me to joining Stripe, um, quite early.
I stayed there for a long time, for eight and a half years as you mentioned. Um, and I just loved it. Um, I, it was like such a rocket ship to see Stripe go from like 100 to like 7,000 people by the time I left. Wild ride, you know. I like built a lot of things like from zero to one. When I joined Stripe, there weren't managers or PMs. It was just engineers, which was super cool. So you got to like kind of be at the ground floor of like, uh, many products. Um, a lot of products, like at Stripe, like different product areas were started by engineers. My claim to fame at Stripe was I built Stripe Terminal. I was the first engineer working on that. Um, and Stripe Terminal, um, if you don't know, is like Stripe's in-person payments product. So it's like SDKs and hardware and APIs to like enable vertical SaaS platforms to build their own point of sale solutions. And it's become really popular. At the time it was like this like bold bet to like fragment Square's stronghold in the space by like letting vertical SaaS platforms build like better solutions for particular verticals like, you know, barber salons or like, you know, gas stations and stuff like that. Um, and it's, it's very popular. If you look in the world, like there aren't that many kind of like Square hardware devices in stores. Often they're actually using Stripe Terminal, um, to build like very custom setups for their like, just front of house. So yeah, really, I guess am I gonna tell you a bit about that as well?
Um, we started actually, as you mentioned, as a B2B product. Um, this was in 2023, raised 8 million from Lightspeed to build an agentic inference platform. So we were serving open source models, but in particular, we had this, um, approach that enabled using LLMs, um, and other models, uh, in concert with kind of distributed computing. So you could for example, like, have an LLM like write and run code in a sandbox and utilize all these other...
[Pivoting from B2B to B2C with AI Focus]
...tools that we had in the platform. Um, it was a little bit early I'd say, a little bit ahead of its time. Now agents and workflows like that are like super common and that's just how people use things. We saw that this was like just the way to do it pretty early and that's why we started building Substrate on this original platform. And then as we were working on that and like kind of just like using AI, we became really AI-pilled in our own development workflows. Like we were using AI to like write code really early before it was popular. We're using like very early tools like Aider for example, which was kind of like cloud code, like, but before cloud code. It was quite janky. But anyway, um, as we were doing that, we just saw that like the next generation of developers is going to be everybody on, like, it's this like incredible like democratizing force. Um, and that drove us to like pivot from B2B to B2C just to serve the next generation of developers.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's really, that's really fascinating. You know, as you look at the evolution of AI today, there's not just opportunities to create better ways of doing things, whether it's with, you know, AI agents or building out systems that automate process, but it's really opening up the opportunity for product people or really people that aren't even engineers to develop and to create solutions to solve problems that they really didn't have opportunities in the past to do because technically there was kind of the door in front of them. They couldn't get through. They need to hire engineers to do that work. So when you look at your platform, talk about the inspiration behind what you saw in the market and why now is the time to build what you're creating.
Ben Guo: Yeah. So I guess like what we saw was like this first generation of kind of vibe coding tools, Replit and Lovable, um, very focused on kind of like enabling people to build websites with AI, um, which is really cool and really, really powerful. But the next phase of this, um, that we saw was that people just need raw access to like cloud computing in general. Not just for building websites, but for building all sorts of stuff. Uh, like coding goes so far beyond like making a website or making an app. There's like so much of coding that goes on that is like making automations or like hosting services or building APIs on top of your data. Um, and we really wanted to build like the perfect workspace for that for both technical and non-technical people. So, um, we really came out of us like building for ourselves and like our own needs. Like we were like building lots of side projects with AI. Um, and wanted a place to host that stuff, like kind of a unified workspace where we can store our personal data and the tools that our AI builds on top of it. Um, and it, it just...
[The Vision for Democratizing Cloud Computing]
...became Zo pretty naturally as we were like building this tool for ourselves.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well, there's definitely a lot of growth in the vibe coding sector and, you know, in terms of technical know-how. How much do you really need to know to use your platform? So, for example, you have a person that's in a basement and they've got an idea. Like I got, you know, I heard recently a story of a young kid. I think he was 14 years old and you know, he was online and he looked at all the reviews of, um, I think it was like a plumbing website, and looked at all the reviews and then took that and then put it into a ChatGPT and was able to create a good story with it, and then quickly put it into another system that built the website and it was up and running. And then he called the plumber and said, "Hey, you know, I have a new website for you," and he looked at it and showed it to him and paid him $1,000, and that was like his first customer and now he's been able to do that. So that's really figuring out the different tools that are out there. But for someone to use your platform, what's the process there? Because I, I know there's going to be a lot of replies and comments coming in on this about how do I get it, what do I need to know, how does it work, what's it cost, like all the fundamental questions that you would want to know.
Ben Guo: Yeah, totally. So Zo is very much designed for the non-technical user. Um, in the early days, like one of our first beta users was my mom actually, and we called Zo like "AWS for your mom" because of that. Um, because it's, it's really designed for people that are that non-technical. Like my mom is like one of the worst computer users I've met, you know. She's super non-technical. Um, she was using like Perplexity and like some like chatbot tools like ChatGPT, but really had not like experienced like kind of like using agents, and Zo is designed to like enable somebody like that to like use AI productively to build stuff. So my mom uses it, though a lot of our power users are non-technical. One user we talked about, I talk about a lot, she's a freediving instructor. She used to use Squarespace and Notion and Calendly and she's replaced all of those tools with Zo just by chatting with our AI agent. And she's built this like super custom website that's much better than what she had on Squarespace. Um, she has all these like fun integrations, like people can book time on her website instead of like going to a Calendly link. They just like book directly on our website and there are all these like on...
[Zo’s User-Friendly Platform for Non-Technical Users]
...the back end like automations that Zo set up. So like when somebody is, when a client is interested in a freediving retreat, um, Zo sets up a simple like kind of like text message, uh, thread with her and that client. So a lot of these like kind of like back office things are also automated for her and she does like her finances, like her accounting for her business inside of Zo because all that stuff is tracked in this like unified workspace now.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow, that's amazing. So, the next question we're going to get is, "That sounds amazing. How long does it take to get up and running?"
Ben Guo: Yeah. Uh, not, not long at all. I think probably some of your audience have heard about OpenClaw. Um, Zo is, is kind of like the consumer-friendly version of that. So, it comes with like a lot of the same features. You get like an agent that lives in a computer and can build stuff for you. But it all comes like kind of built-in, like the batteries are included. We have tons of like integrations. Like you don't have to set up, if you try setting up OpenClaw you have to like, you know, find a Mac Mini or like figure out how to host it on a server. Like it takes like a whole weekend and you have to like read a lot of docs and stuff or like work with your agent for a long time to set it up. Zo is designed to just be like a, it just works out of the box. You just sign up and you get this like fully loaded environment to get started and get up and running.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And is it actually a hardware configured system you purchase or is it you connect to your platform and does it really, it's through a browser?
Ben Guo: Yeah, so it's through, through a browser. Um, and we have a desktop application as well, and you can also use terminal to, to talk to it. And we provide the kind of cloud infrastructure. So we think of ourselves as a cloud provider. That's what we call ourselves, like "AWS for your mom." So, um, we give you like kind of the servers under the hood and it's infrastructure that you actually own, which is quite unique compared to like other SaaS tools out there. So similar to how like when you use AWS as like a company or as a developer, um, you own that infrastructure, it's the same model...
[Getting Started with Zo and Infrastructure Setup]
...with Zo. So we give you this like infrastructure that is personal and it's fully yours and controlled by you.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's really cool. You know I set up OpenClaw two weeks ago on the weekend and I understand what you're talking about. You know, I'm not technical and it took me a lot of starts and stops and, you know, going through the terminal and reading the content and following the direction and then something didn't work and, you know, I'm connected to the wrong LLM. And it... yeah, like there's a lot of back and forth and then you finally get it up and running and then you got to train the agent. Then, you know, it's a lot of collaboration back and forth. It's really cool. I think I set it up, um, wasn't through text message. It was through, what was it? Telegram, maybe. Telegram. There we go. Yeah, I was thinking, I, I was going to do it through Slack and I didn't want to do it through Slack, so I did Telegram. But yeah, up and running. I like it. It's really cool. But would I put my company on it? Probably not. At least not yet.
So is this something that say you're an established company, not necessarily like a one-off, you know, developer or product person, you know, in a basement, but you know, you got an organization, maybe you already are connected to AWS, but you know, you're going to be building agents and you don't really have everything totally mapped out yet, but you do want to have something that's secure, that you can access, that's easy, that you can understand the costs. I think that's one of the big questions all the time, or there's so many models out there with tokens and usability and monthly fees and you get stuck at the end of the month with, you know, quite frankly numbers you didn't expect. So that's a big gotcha. What companies are looking for today is transparency. What's it going to cost? How do I use it? How do I get charged? What can it do for me? And is it secure with data? So, yep, I'm throwing a lot out there, but these are just the questions we get all the time from people. So, walk me through, defend that a little bit.
Ben Guo: Yeah, totally. So, Zo is secure by design. Um, because we like set up your infrastructure for you, um, and we kind of have like all of these like really good networking primitives, it's much harder to like shoot yourself in the foot if you're non-technical with a setup like Zo that's like kind of designed for people from kind of like all, all use cases. From like kind of individuals to kind of like companies, larger orgs. We serve a lot of like kind of startup founders who are like maybe non-technical or like have a team that is non-technical. Um, and Zo is like this like really useful place to build tooling for your company. We do a lot of that, of course, inside of Zo as well. Like we use Zo for a lot of our internal automations, which, which is super useful. So yeah, I think like we're starting with...
[Security, Data Privacy, and Infrastructure Control]
...like this like consumer orientation, but it very much works just as well for people in companies.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it. Cool. And you know when you talk about automation, you know there's lots of tools that do that. Is your, is your stack third-party applications that are integrated or is it really from the ground up you've built it all yourself?
Ben Guo: Yeah. So, we have built a lot of it ourselves and it's like integrated nicely into our platform. Um, you can obviously connect various integrations with tools that you might use like Google Calendar or like your email or Notion. Um, and we also have integrations with like Slack and Discord. So, you can like talk to your Zo from, from anywhere or like from inside of your company Slack for example, which we do a lot actually inside of our own Slack. Like we have all these threads that like we're chatting about with Zo. Um, which is super useful. But, but yeah, um, the way to think about it is that like you get this infrastructure in Zo that like you fully own, um, and you have full control over. You have like kind of root level access to like this infrastructure that they give you. Um, which means that you can like host anything on there, including like, you know, maybe like other, uh, tools that you have inside of your company. Like you can just host them inside of Zo or like connect to them. It's, it's very flexible, um, by design. Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it. You know, one of the biggest barrier, barriers to entry is security and safeguarding of data. And when you have a company like an AWS that's pretty well known and obviously they've built a lot into it over the last 10, 15, 20 years, there's like a level of safety, safety factors that you think of, "Okay, if I go here, I know that for the most part I'm pretty protected." What do you, how do you define protection on your side and what, what do you offer there?
Ben Guo: Yeah. So fundamentally the form factor of Zo is like infrastructure that you own, which is like more akin to AWS. We're actually kind of a multi-cloud provider. So we have this abstraction on top of different clouds that we run on, including AWS and GCP and Oracle and Azure. Um, and we will like position your infrastructure in the right place. And we aim to give you this like interface over the cloud that's like made kind of... I guess like security is also related to like kind of like trust and like kind of just like diving deeper into like kind of like that level of like ownership, which I think is really important. Like people don't want to be locked into a provider that like has all of these like platform-specific things that they, that they use, um, that like maybe are like proprietary or like hard to like move off of. Um, we're very aware of that and we're designing Zo to be like very portable by default. We use like kind of proprietary, like open-source formats for a lot of the stuff inside of Zo. And really, a lot of like what is running inside of your Zo is actually running inside of your Zo infrastructure, including the Zo application itself. It's actually hosted on your infrastructure. So like when you use the Zo app inside of the web app or the desktop app, that's actually running on your own infrastructure. It's not kind of running in our servers. It's running on your server.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it. So when you say it's running on your server, let's play this out a little bit. You've got infrastructure that now we're buying through you, but it's really our own infrastructure. Is that set up in a data center which is carved out by like a certain customer? Like this is, you know, Jake's server within this data center and you know, this is Bob's server within this data center. So nothing's integrated there. Okay. And then if you happen to use Oracle's cloud or Amazon or Azure, it is a layer on top of that kind of integrates. So I don't have to go ahead and repurpose one environment into now this new environment. It all sort of seamlessly integrates.
Ben Guo: Yep, that's right. Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay. Wow, that's great. So saves a lot of time of extra work and effort to make sure that things are going to be connected. At the same time, it sounds like you have a little more control of where your data is and your infrastructure and you can decide if you want to move it from one cloud provider to another without a lot of issues.
Ben Guo: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Cool. That's great. All right. So, vibe coding is one area as an ICP for you. What's, talk about like the market? What, where, where's your focus? Where do you want to go the next 12, 24 months in terms of growth? What's that look like for you?
Ben Guo: Yeah. So, I think that there's a whole world of people that have not really experienced kind of like agentic AI. They're kind of like stuck in the world of like chatbots that just like kind of answer questions for you. But I think the next phase, as, as like you know and many people know, it's just about kind of like building tools for yourself. And I think the people that like really are attracted to Zo are people that like maybe have always wanted to like have like personal website or have always wanted to like automate this thing in their lives. And, and those people like often they're like solopreneurs, um, or like kind of non-technical founders or, um, maybe they're like SMB owners. And I think there's like a big, big opportunity there that, um, I think a lot of these like kind of companies maybe don't see or like are not serving very well. And I think there's a, a whole, a whole world of people out there that like just haven't really woken up to the, the potential of like, of building with AI and kind of really owning your kind of like own agent infrastructure.
Um, and I think like owning it is, is something that I think people are waking up to the, the, like power of. Like through tools like OpenClaw like popularizing this. Like when you own your agent and like really customize it to your like personal needs, um, it becomes this really like powerful extension of you. And it enables like just being like a, a more full kind of like member of the internet. Um, which, which a lot of us haven't really experienced before. Um, I, I think because of SaaS over the years, like we've like entered this world of the internet where we just like kind of like interact with the internet pretty lightly, um, by like using apps or websites, but we don't have our own presences, our own like infrastructure and APIs and like websites on the internet. And then that's...
[Market Focus and Growth Strategy]
...really like the big idea with Zo, is enabling people to like really have homes on the internet. And I think that's really important for the future because the internet is becoming more agentic. Kind of lots of services that are like, uh, built for agents and are kind of like intermediated by agents. So like agents interacting with each other or like you like talking to somebody else's agent. And that's kind of like the next phase for Zo, is like enabling this kind of like more social kind of like agentic publishing on the internet.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's amazing. Let's talk about Zo in terms of how long you've been around, funding, and people. People really are the core to any company. You know, you have a great idea, you can build a lot of things, but if you have the right people, it really scales. And when you don't, it's a lot of reworking and challenge. Walk us through your mindset when it comes to where the company is today, how big it is, and the type of people that fit into your organization today.
Ben Guo: Yeah, good question. So, we started building it, um, early last year in April, um, and we did a friends and family launch in the summer, um, and then launched in GA, um, in November. Um, actually like before the whole OpenClaw thing took off, um, which was like kind of late November. So we think of ourselves kind of as the original OpenClaw in a lot of ways. We're like putting an agent in a computer a long time ago. Okay. And, um, yeah, it's, it's a really cool, um, moment for kind of like building a company. Um, as you know, like people are like so enabled with these tools. So people that like are like AI-pilled, as they say, are really good. Uh, the scope that they can accomplish is, is really like, um, incredible. Like both engineers and non-engineers.
So that's kind of like a lot of what we kind of look for as we're building the team. The core team is like me, my co-founder, we've been friends for a long time. A lot of the people that we've hired are also just like fellow friends, the super A's, so like our CTO, we worked with him together at Venmo. Um, and he worked with my co-founder at another company before that. Um, but um, he, he's really awesome. He's like incredibly AI-pilled and, and just like really, really good at kind of like orchestrating swarms of AI agents, which is like awesome. Like I think engineers that have that quality are like super valuable in this day and age. We've hired a lot of other kind of friends of ours that we've kind of accumulated over the years. So like, um, another person who just joined is our friend Shray, who was the first engineer at Venmo. He also co-founded a startup that got acquired by Google. Um, and then he was the co-founder and CTO of Maven, which is like a popular, uh, like kind of learning platform. Anyhow, so, um, on the engineering front, uh, a lot of it so far has just been like hiring our friends, which, you know, is always great. Like it's really fun to like build with your friends.
Um, and then on the non-engineering side, um, we have this bias for, for hiring people that are just Zo users. Three of our non-technical hires are just Zo power users that we found in our community. Um, and they were already like just really like excited...
[Team Building and Company Milestones]
...about Zo. They loved it. They're building really cool stuff with it. They're spreading the word. Um, and they just like naturally like kind of like bubbled up, um, to us as a team. Um, and we were like, "We should just hire you." Um, so, so that, that's kind of how we've discovered a lot of our non-technical hires.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I like that. Really from the ground up. It's about who you know first and then, you know, continue to build where there's a fit for the company. [clears throat] In terms of how you approach hiring, you know, at some point it is, it's outside of your network. Share with, with the audience what's worked for you, maybe even in prior companies when it's come to hiring. What's one hack or tool or, or, or skill that you've learned that has really helped in really making sure you get it right when you bring people on board?
Ben Guo: Yeah, it's so different now with AI. It's like, uh, the whole engineering interview process is totally different than before. Um, we interview a lot of engineers, and I guess like, you know, I mentioned this before, what we're looking for is people that are very like AI-pilled. Um, which means that you're not just coding with AI, but you are like, you have a deep understanding of how these coding tools work and you're like curious about it. You're kind of like building your own setup. Um, and you just have like all these ideas about like kind of how to like use this like incredible tool more effectively. That's a really good sign for us when we like talk to engineers who have like kind of built their own harnesses or like built their own kind of agent orchestration setups, and a lot of people are like that. A lot of engineers are like very curious and, um, just like exploring the space. So that's [snorts] been big for us in terms of like pipeline. Yeah.
I think a lot of it's just being like very present, um, outside, like on, on social media. So like I post a lot on Twitter and on LinkedIn, and that often relates to just like cool people who like, like the product and are excited about what you're doing. Um, and that's, that's really like I think like the best funnel for, for people, um, is people that like just are already excited about what you're doing. Um, obviously kind of like do like cold outbound and work with like recruiting agencies, but, um, the people that we often end up like going further with are people that like just are already excited with product or to use it. Um.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, really cool. What's been your experience working with recruiting agencies? We're on the recruitment side. We will help people find companies and companies find people, but you know, there's different mindsets and views about it. Just curious to get your thoughts.
Ben Guo: Yeah. Um, it's interesting. I think like now more than before, I think it's, um, more important to hire senior people at like a startup, and people that like have a lot of like these core engineering skills already, um, and, and can really kind of like, uh, work at this like increased kind of volume and velocity. I think like it is harder, there are like really, really strong kind of like junior folks as well out there, but, um, I think like there's a whole like realm of coding which was like kind of like smaller tasks that, that now just AI can do for us, um, or can do for kind of like a more senior engineer. Um, [snorts] it's harder to find kind of like the right fit on, on the junior side, but like for super experienced people, uh, we're very eager to talk to them. So that's, that's maybe like the main, main difference nowadays is like, we, uh, definitely biased towards people that are like experienced and maybe like have been founding engineers or like former founders, because they, they just are like so successful with these AI tools because they understand like the importance of, of leverage, and also like kind of have the like system design experience to like really just, just cook with AI.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, makes sense. You talked about OpenClaw kind of came out and you were there a little before them. How do you differentiate from OpenClaw when you just look at the market? I mean, they have a ton of visibility. They've got a lot of momentum. What, what does OpenClaw do differently than you do? And I'm sure there's a lot in there. So, just for the listeners that are trying to understand, maybe I already have OpenClaw, maybe using it, but maybe I should be looking at Zo for a different reason, or maybe it's something that's very similar, just I didn't hear about Zo.
Ben Guo: Yeah. Yeah. So, the cool thing about OpenClaw is it's open source. Um, I think there will always be like really cool like kind of open source developments in the space and there will always be something like OpenClaw, like a, a large open source community around like kind of like fully owning all of it and like running it yourself and hosting it somewhere like on a Mac Mini. I think that that is just like, as you, we said before, like kind of hard for people to set up, and Zo is really kind of like made for the people who like want that experience but don't want all of the, the pain of setting it up. A lot of people actually run OpenClaw inside of Zo. So Zo can just be the home for your Claw if that's what you want. A lot of people have come to Zo for that. Like maybe they had like a OpenClaw setup like on AWS or something that they took a long time to set up, but it was just like hard to maintain. If you run it in Zo like you don't have to maintain the infrastructure. We maintain it for you. Um, but it could be the home for your agent. And in addition to that, like Zo has a lot of the functionality and more, um, that, that OpenClaw has in that like it's an agent with like tools. Um, we give you a lot of like useful tools built-in, um, so you don't have to like go and install them or find them. Um, and also like Zo is like a full kind of like cloud hosting environment. So you can host a website. We give you like a default, um, personal website as part of your Zo, and you can also host anything on Zo, including like other websites. People are self-hosting things inside of Zo as well. So a lot of our users like self-host n8n for example. OpenClaw obviously is something that people self-host. Um, but you can self-host anything because this is like very like raw access to like cloud infrastructure.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's really cool. Maybe I should port my OpenClaw that's on my Mac over here to your Zo platform and give it a test and then we'll do an update and come back and I'll give you my feedback of what worked, what was easy, what didn't work or maybe why other companies should try and use, you know, your platform too. That'd be kind of fun.
Ben Guo: Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Cool. Well, I guess before we leave here, uh, I have a couple more questions for you. You're building, you're growing from where you're at today over the next 12, 24 months. What's on the map? What are you excited about?
Ben Guo: Yeah, so we're very much growing our team now. Um, unannounced, but we, uh, closed our Series A. We'll be announcing that soon, probably this summer. So, we have the capital to grow, uh, both the team and the product. Um, and really focused on just like scaling the product, um, to the masses. And also like building these kinds of like social features that, that I mentioned before, like letting people publish agents and, and many other things kind of on this like new agentic internet that, that Zo enables. With Zo, you have this ability to kind of like have a presence on the internet and just fully exploring that space and like what is possible when like all of these consumers have like their own servers. It is like really the mission of Zo is to like show people like what's possible when you like have a real home on the internet. And yeah, over the next 12 to 14 months, it's, it's all about growth, but growth in like a, a particular way. Um, we're very much all about kind of like word of mouth, kind of like organic growth. So, we're really leaning into kind of our ambassador program. We have a lot of like Zo power users that are helping us spread the word. They're basically like, you know, selling Zo to other people, setting up Zo, um, for other people. Similar like how people are like having serv- like services businesses where they set up OpenClaw. A lot of people are also like setting up Open, uh, setting up Zo for people, um, or even setting up like OpenClaw inside of Zo. So, uh, really excited about kind of like enabling the community to help us spread the word about Zo.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's amazing. When you talk about community, communities are better to be built when it's coming from the user that talks about what your product does and they want to collaborate with other users, and that community organically builds. How did you start about building your community?
Ben Guo: Yeah, so it happened pretty organically. Like I just started posting about Zo on Twitter and LinkedIn back last summer and people just came to us. They've like loved it and they're really pumped about like being part of this and helping us. And when you see that, you just have to lean in. And then we just like starting, started doing that kind of like one-off ways, and then like decided we have to like build kind of like a program around it. Now we have somebody on our team who's like managing that program, finding like people who are like really psyched about Zo and have like these like communities to help us distribute Zo to. Um, and we just want to like enable them with like everything they need, from like, you know, featuring them like in webinars that we run. We're like sponsoring them if they want to like run an event, um, or helping them like create content about it. So, so, um, still very early days, but, um, all about just like meeting our ambassadors where they are and helping them however we can.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Got it. And is that community on Slack or is it, you know, on an open forum? Like how do you manage, how do people, if they hear about this, they want to join it, where, where do they go?
Ben Guo: Totally. Yeah. So Discord is our main community forum. We have a bunch of people in there that are like chatting every day about their Zo use cases. And then we have the separate like ambassador program that we run where we like, like find like really passionate power users in that community base, um, and then like level them up to kind of like really help spread the word about Zo. Um, and we run like kind of like weekly build sessions with them. We like meet with them regularly and just like try to like give them everything that we can to support them. Often we like set up like dedicated Slack channels with them as well. We support their team.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Um, really cool. So, in some ways it's not just an ambassador team, but also a sales motion. I mean, if they're out there talking about your product and getting people engaged and involved, ultimately that could convert to a user, a paid customer.
Ben Guo: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We actually think about our ambassadors as kind of like dedicated, like kind of like delegated, um, sales associates for Zo because that's really what they're doing in a lot of ways. And yeah, I think like when you like really get that motion running, you can have like, you know, way more people selling your product than, than you would in kind of typical software sales motion. Um, which we're really excited about. So aiming to have like 100 ambassadors soon. Hopefully we'll scale it to like a thousand, and I think that'll be like a big part of our growth.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Um, wow, I love that. Well, Ben, super excited. Thank you for your patience. I know we've been trying to get you and me together on this for months now. We finally were able to get it done. So, really appreciate you spending your time with us today. And if anyone wants to find you, Ben, or wants to find your organization, Zo Computer, where do they go?
Ben Guo: Yeah, so zocomputer is our URL. And then you can find me on Twitter, uh, and on LinkedIn. I'm Othernet with a zero. Yeah, that's, that's me. Yeah. And always happy to chat with folks who are interested. So just, just ping me on, on either LinkedIn or, or Twitter, and I'm happy to chat.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Really cool. Well, Ben, thanks for joining. I really appreciate your time today as well as the listeners for listening. It means a lot to me you spend it with us on this Friday. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to catch up with you all in the next episode. Until then, Ben, the world, take care. If you like what we're doing, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and follow us on YouTube where we go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to be a startup founder.
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