The most valuable startup employees ("10x joiners") leverage AI to execute at the level of a full team. Instead of looking to hire direct reports, they bring a suite of AI agents and workflows, enabling companies to achieve massive scale with tiny headcounts.

VCs traditionally advise against early product expansion. But with agentic AI, which leverages existing metadata to solve new problems without building new screens, startups can rapidly add capabilities to meet customer demand for a single, unified agent, accelerating the compound startup model.

To build truly effective agents, adopt a "founder's level of service" mindset. This involves an intensive discovery process to become a temporary expert in the client's business, culture, and brand voice. This deep, meticulous care ensures the final AI system is perfectly aligned with the client's intentions.

A successful startup CTO cannot remain solely a technologist. They must shift their mindset to deeply understand customer problems to ensure product value. Simultaneously, they must foster an environment where engineers find purpose and innovate, preventing them from becoming mere ticket-takers.

Selling foundational AI isn't a standard IT sale. It requires a dual-threaded process targeting the CTO, who builds the agents, and the CRO, who must monetize them. The key is educating the CRO to shift from selling seats against IT budgets to capturing value from larger headcount and outsourced labor budgets.

AI agents can manage the entire buyer lifecycle from first touch to upsell. This removes human capacity constraints, allowing companies to merge siloed go-to-market teams into a single, cohesive unit focused on the customer journey.

The perception that AI agents require a lot of time stems from a misunderstanding of sales management. A good human sales leader spends a huge amount of time coaching their team. AI makes this necessary process visible and measurable, forcing founders to engage in it.

The founder's number one piece of advice is to get the co-founder relationship right. While you can pivot ideas, raise more funding, or change markets, replacing a co-founder is incredibly difficult. A strong, complementary founding team is the foundation for overcoming all other startup challenges.

AI agents require deep, nuanced understanding of specific workflows. YC's methodology, which forces founders to intensely engage with customers and iterate rapidly, provides the perfect training ground to acquire this necessary domain expertise, making it an ideal environment for this new class of startups.