Everyone Gets A Software Company — Benjamin Guo, Zo Computer
AAI Engineer
Computing/SoftwareSmall Business/StartupsInternet Technology
Transcript
00:00:00Hello everybody, I'm Ben from ZoComputer. I just posted on X from my Zo. You know, I'll be
00:00:18giving away a hundred dollars in AI credits and I do all sorts of stuff with my Zo. This is my
00:00:24computer. My Zo is my computer. And before I get started, I made the site just now while I was
00:00:29waiting to get started presenting. This is a kind of overview of all the speakers in today's CLAW
00:00:34session. You can scan this QR code and check it out. I've got some useful links in here, but also
00:00:39I've got like some deep research on everybody presenting, including their recent thoughts,
00:00:44links to their profiles and websites, blogs, etc. So scan this. It's super useful. I just made it
00:00:51just now. This is my computer that you see right here, my Zo computer. I'll be talking about it. And
00:00:58a lot of things. It's also about kind of personal agents, personal cloud agents in particular, which
00:01:03though is one instance of and kind of the future and where I see all of this going. So a little bit
00:01:11about me. I'm the co-founder of Zo. My name is Ben. I started my career on the early Venmo team
00:01:18back in 2013. And I met my co-founder, Rob, at Venmo. And I left Venmo to work at Stripe quite
00:01:25early. I was the 80th engineer. And my co-founder, Rob, he went on to build Substack. He was the first
00:01:31engineer there. And a final fact about me, as you can see, is that I really love computers. I'm dressed
00:01:37up as a computer. And I like to start with this like fun fact about this finder icon. So this icon was
00:01:44designed by Susan Kare, an early graphic designer at Apple Computer. And many people don't know the story
00:01:50behind this icon, but it actually represents the human, this white face, and the machine, this blue face. And
00:01:57they're kind of like in happy harmony. And I think that is what we should aspire to as we build AI tools
00:02:04for people. Like humans love tools. Humans have always loved machines. And like when we feel at one
00:02:09with our machine, we feel like this. We feel happy. So who, like me, misses the way that computers used to
00:02:17feel? Raise your hand, right? Like the early internet, like your first website, your first PC, right? It used to
00:02:23feel different, right? Today, the internet and our computers feels more like this. We are swimming in
00:02:32the sea of applications and sites and services. And it's not great. And on top of all of that,
00:02:40they're jacking up the prices on these things that we use, often because of AI features that we didn't
00:02:45ask for. And I think quite reasonably, consumers, or I'll just call them regular people,
00:02:52are upset or confused or scared of AI. ZoComputer is based in Brooklyn. We're in Bushwick, actually,
00:03:00kind of like the heart of hipsters in New York. And, you know, there's a lot of this out there. I see a
00:03:07lot of this kind of vandalism over AI ads in the city. On top of all of that, this is what our industry
00:03:14looks like. But the deeper root of why this is bad is a structural thing. It's what we call techno-feudalism.
00:03:25So basically, feudalism was this, like, kind of shitty system back in the day. And though it no longer
00:03:32exists, it still is alive and well in our digital lives. So we are still the peasants. We pay rent to the
00:03:39SaaS providers, who pay rent to the cloud providers, who pay rent to the kings, who are, you know, like
00:03:44probably Nvidia these days. And because we are peasants, our lives are shitty. We are fragmented
00:03:51between all these different tools. There are various services that we use that lock us in
00:03:56and shitify over time. Like, that PM at that product that you use is not incentivized to make your life
00:04:02better. They are incentivized to improve their bottom line, to monetize your attention, to take your
00:04:07data, lock it in, and sell it back to you. And because you don't own anything, you are a peasant.
00:04:14So, our mission has always been to solve this by giving people a real home on the internet.
00:04:22And we believe that most people in the world are kind of living in the matrix. And we're trying to
00:04:27show people a better way.
00:04:31So, Zoe is alive and well. We've been out for about a year. And real people are using it. Real,
00:04:37regular people like Charlotte, this LA-based private chef and life coach. She hosts her websites,
00:04:43she has multiple websites now, on Zoe. Zoe manages her invoices, and her accounts, and bookkeeping,
00:04:50and her scheduling, and her notes. And it's just like an amazing system. It makes her feel like clear,
00:04:56and calm, and on top of the world. And it's fucking fun, as you can see this text that she sent me.
00:05:02So, what is Zoe? Zoe is a personal cloud. We've never really had a personal cloud before. But it's
00:05:09quite simple. You have your own home in the cloud. You're not using other cloud services. You have your own
00:05:14thing. You put your stuff in it. You put your AI in it. And because it is a place in the cloud,
00:05:21you can host stuff in it. You can host services, like websites or APIs. And they're all yours.
00:05:29And I think for people in this room, if you're interested in Claws and personal agents,
00:05:33your personal cloud might look something more like this. You might have a suite of local devices.
00:05:38And for me, I have this Zoe computer, this cloud computer as well, which has my Zoe agent on it.
00:05:45It also has a Hermes on it. And it has my services. I have many websites and APIs and things I've built,
00:05:52all hosted in the same place. And it can also talk to my laptop, or my Mac Mini,
00:05:57or I can use it on my phone. And that, collectively, is my personal cloud.
00:06:04So Zoe is a personal server with AI built in. It's quite simple. And it harkens back to a simpler time.
00:06:13So back in the day, this is actually how we built and hosted websites. We just FTP'd our files onto a
00:06:19server, and that updated our website. You were just shipping to prod. You're like, always doing it live.
00:06:26And that's actually, I think, how most people should build. I don't think it's necessary for
00:06:31a regular person like Charlotte to think about deployment. Unfortunately for many of us in this
00:06:38room, this is probably what your life looks like, actually. You're kind of just navigating between
00:06:44these different AIs and devices and SaaS services, and it's very confusing. Zoe is meant to be a simpler way. It's one place for all
00:06:55of your stuff, and your AI, and the stuff you host, all of your personal stuff in the cloud.
00:07:03Here's another case study that we'd like to talk about. This is Anthea. She was one of our early users.
00:07:07She's totally non-technical. She's a freediving instructor, and she's already on track to make
00:07:12$100,000 on Zoe. She used to use all of these different SaaS services to run her business and her life,
00:07:20like Squarespace, like Calendly, et cetera. And now she's replaced all of that with Zoe.
00:07:25She's canceled all of those SaaS subscriptions. She is no longer a peasant.
00:07:31Anthea went from this kind of being very confused and having her data in all of these different SaaS
00:07:38silos and not really being able to connect them very easily to this. So Anthea not only hosts her
00:07:45retreat website on Zoe on a custom domain. She has many different websites now. She has her personal
00:07:50workspace that looks like this. She's really into fairies and like drawing and mushrooms, and she's like
00:07:55expressing her whole self and her creativity online in this new way that we kind of really haven't had
00:08:01as regular people for a long time, since like the '90s. And under the hood, like all of those sites
00:08:09are just the tip of the iceberg. So when Anthea gets somebody who's interested in a retreat, Zoe texts
00:08:15her with her number. Anthea now immediately calls them at that moment of intent to buy. She texts her
00:08:21Zoe, give me a payment link, and she closes the deal right then and there. And that is how she's actually
00:08:26booking much more revenue than before with these retreats. Like retreats are now like actually kind
00:08:32of hard to book because there's too much demand. And that's amazing. And out of the hood, she has a
00:08:37database for all of her retreats. She doesn't really know what a database is, but she has one. She has all
00:08:41of her notes, all of her accounting, and it's all in one place. If she has like some images from a retreat
00:08:46and she wants to put those on her website, she just tells her Zoe to do it. And it's like right there.
00:08:50She can like host files directly from her personal server. And she is self-hosting everything.
00:08:58So Zoe is made to be simple enough for anyone, for people like Anthea, for my parents, for other
00:09:02people's parents. People are always telling me on like LinkedIn or X that like they signed up their
00:09:07parent for their parents to Zoe and their parents are like five coding up a storm, which is awesome to
00:09:11see. I just got this message on LinkedIn the other day. Our caterer uses Zoe to kind of manage his staff at
00:09:17his restaurant. Our recruiter uses Zoe as well. He's really into it. He's like kind of building a
00:09:22whole -- he's like rebuilding a whole stack for his recruiting agency on Zoe. Our marketing agency
00:09:27has become Zoe-pilled. So it's made for everybody. But it's also powerful enough for the audience in
00:09:33this room. It can be the home for your OpenClaw or your Hermes. You can have a really nicely set up
00:09:39server to host your personal agent in if you use one of those tools. You can bring your codex or Gemini
00:09:45or et cetera, subscriptions, and you can build and host anything. You have like root access to your own
00:09:50server to this very nicely set up Linux VM where like the networking is also like very well set up and you
00:09:56don't really have to worry about any of it. You can SSH in and you can control your Zoe via API or MCP.
00:10:02So very flexible. So scan this QR code if you haven't yet to get $100 in AI credits.
00:10:11Just try it Zoe. I think you'll like it. And I'm going to do a little demo and then I'll have a
00:10:16little bit more to talk about after that. So really quick demo of Zoe. You already saw it in the beginning,
00:10:23but Zoe is this like nice kind of flat workspace. I made this website just now. I make all sorts of
00:10:28websites on the fly. You can chat with really any model as I mentioned. You can bring your own API
00:10:33key. You can even talk to cloud code in here. You've got this nice file system. Built-in cloud storage
00:10:39because it's your server. You can just like use it as a Dropbox. And you know you can obviously like
00:10:43work agentically in the chat with any of your files. You've got automations. So you can kind of run tasks
00:10:50on a schedule with AI. You've got tons of built-in integrations. So you don't have to set any of this up.
00:10:56We have lots of skills. A large skill library. There's a built-in browser. So you can log into
00:11:02sites and let your Zoe like buy things for you or do whatever. Actually, I always text my Zoe these
00:11:07days to buy stuff on Amazon. It's like really dangerous for impulse purchasing. I like see
00:11:10something. I'm like, let's buy it. And as I mentioned, you can host stuff. So you can really host anything,
00:11:16any arbitrary service, HTTP or TCP. And we also give you a really nice built-in personal website. This is my Zoe
00:11:23space. And this is all set up nicely. And it's got like, you know, nice kind of like vibe coding features.
00:11:28And you just chat with it to edit it. And I've built all sorts of cool things inside of here.
00:11:34This, for example, is like my Calendly replacement. People can book time with me. And it has just like
00:11:39this custom setup that I like. And my Zoe can like review the people that are interested. I don't want
00:11:44anybody like booking time with me directly. So that's kind of like what Zoe is. And I want to conclude by
00:11:50just talking a little bit about the future. So the reason we're building Zoe is to build a future and
00:11:57better internet, one that looks more like this, where everybody, every individual has a real home,
00:12:04a presence on the internet. And companies already have this. But like, we should interact directly with
00:12:09other people on the internet without middlemen. And we should also interact with like the various
00:12:14companies and their AIs. And it should be like more direct. Another way to look at this is that like,
00:12:22in the future, we will probably just be interacting mostly with agents. And the agents will kind of
00:12:27interact with the cloud, like these like software 1.0 things like websites and APIs.
00:12:35But if you dig a little deeper into here, what's probably actually going to happen is that
00:12:39most of these agents that we interact with will also be in the cloud. Some of them will be local,
00:12:43but many of them will be in the cloud. And when those agents are in the cloud,
00:12:47the question again is like, whose cloud is it? So Claude Tag is newly out. And Claude Tag is
00:12:56actually, if you think about it, a cloud agent. It's this like cloud, Claude. It's like a company
00:13:03level Claude that has like all the company's context, and anybody can interact with it. And,
00:13:08you know, it's an interesting and very like ergonomic model. Town and Victor are also kind of similar
00:13:12instances of this. But the problem with Claude Tag is this. Whose cloud is it? Whose Claude is it?
00:13:21It's not really your company's Claude. And as you kind of improve your Claude Tag setup,
00:13:27like what really improves is anthropic, right? Like the arrow is pointing the wrong way.
00:13:35And this is intelligence feudalism. The intelligence now is bubbling up the wrong way.
00:13:42And you are still a peasant again, or your company is still kind of a peasant in a way.
00:13:50And at Zo, we believe really strongly in changing the way that things work and giving people and
00:13:57companies more ownership over their cloud and over their intelligence. So we believe that the future
00:14:04should actually look more like this. Anybody, a company, or an individual should be able to publish
00:14:10agents and own them and have end users and like have the end usage of their agent improve, like self-improve,
00:14:18their own kind of published agent. And that is the future that we're building. We have a kind of beta
00:14:24version of this. So I'm going to go back to this ZoSpace and scan this QR code, finally, if you want to
00:14:31talk to me, get AI credits, sign up for the beta of this kind of new agent publishing platform.
00:14:39And yeah, also you can check out all the speakers that are presenting on this ZoSpace page.
00:14:45I'm Ben from ZoComputer. Thank you.