Join us for an inspiring episode of Prompted: Builder Stories featuring Ashna Thakkar, a trailblazer in the world of AI agents. Ashna's journey from a non-coder to an AI innovator is a testament to the power of curiosity and determination. Discover how she empowers startups with no-code AI solutions, transforming challenges into opportunities.

In this episode, Ashna shares her path from working in accelerators to becoming a key player building agentic tools, where she builds agents that support startups in branding, financial projections, and more. Her story is a reminder that you don't need to be a coder to innovate with AI. "Start small, start from somewhere and they would figure it out," she advises, highlighting the importance of delivering the first step to users. Ashna's agents are not just prompt hacks; they are research-backed tools that provide startups with clarity and direction. Tune in to learn how you can harness AI to enhance productivity and drive innovation in your startup journey.

Learn more and connect with Ashna Thakkar:

• Connect with Ashna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashnathakkar/ 
• Follow Ashna’s Profile on Agent.ai: https://agent.ai/human/thakkar_ashna 
• BonBillo’s Website: https://www.bonbillo.com/ 
• Build your Brand DNA Agent: https://agent.ai/profile/BrandDNA 
• AEO Advisor Agent: https://agent.ai/profile/aeo-advisor 

Subscribe for more Builder Stories and visit agent.ai to start building your own agents.

Who is your customer?

What can you do for your customer?

How do you make money off your product?

What we set out to build was to fill out the first blank page that the founders have.

There is always this fear that agents cannot do a better job than me.

Why should I use these agents?

There's always a reluctancy to be open to AI.

They don't realize how much of time saver this is.

We have about 10 agents now that we know we want to build because we got a request from startup founder.

And that's a real world problem.

They know that their product is amazing.

They know their USP is amazing, but they fail to convey, they fail to speak about it.

Like you rightly said, it's 70, 80% of the work done yet.

We still need human intervention.

We still need human experts.

We still need founders, tone founder's voice to make it their own.

But, like I said, it is the first blank page they're starting from level 6, 7, 8, and not one.

In this episode of Prompted Builder Stories by Aging AI, we're talking to Ashna Thokner, the program leader at Bondbillo.

Ashna is the brains behind the community award-winning build your own brand DNA agent.

And she just recently released an AEO advisor agent that is already making waves by helping companies figure out what to do to show up in AI answers from LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

We're going to get a demo of both of these agents in this conversation.

We'll also discuss why founders struggle with a blank page and how AI can help them get unstuck

faster.

A message that I think all of us can relate and take away from.

You're going to love this one.

So let's get into it.

Well, Ashna, thank you so much for joining this conversation today.

I'm excited to talk to you.

are a, well, you've won multiple awards for your agents.

Kind of the big community award, you've had how many weekly awards have you won through your agents?

It's been more than just a single one, right?

Yeah, so we have about 30 plus agents in One Below stack, and we have one about 12 as agent of the week.

Wow.

And I definitely want to make sure we dive into your newest one, the AEO one, because it's really hot right now, and you've created a cool...

agent to kind of do that.

But before we kind of jump into that fun stuff, tell people who you are.

Give them your background information.

How did you get here?

Because you weren't always an agent builder, right?

I am not at all a coder and never in my wildest dreams I thought that I would ever build an AI agent.

So thank you, agent.ai for that.

I started my journey back in 2016 when I was working in a startup.

And I would say that's when I fell in love with the chaos.

the speed, the constant problem solving that happens in a startup.

And I fell in love with it totally.

I think that's when I realized that founders can use any bit of help they can get from anywhere.

And even the smallest clarity makes a huge difference.

And so there on, I started falling in love with the startup ecosystem.

I then started working in an accelerator.

I was supporting European startups to help them expand in the Indian market.

And I was fortunate enough to work with Sustainability and impact startups there as well.

And from there on, I think my journey began into impact, supporting mission-driven founders in any way possible.

So in my previous accelerators, we used to support them in funding, mentoring, networking, branding, whatever help they need, we are there for them.

Even if we don't know, we will research for them.

So that's how the journey began.

And

I think my whole career was quietly pulling me towards mission-driven founders.

So Born Below felt like a natural step.

And Suraj being a visionary, Suraj was all over AI when it came.

And I think he's the reason I am into agent building.

So I feel overall, I feel quite lucky to have this kind of journey, exploring startup founders, exploring impact space slowly over the last few years.

And

I am more than happy now to know that I can support early stage startups, mission driven founders, even after, even though I'm not an expert, I know that I can research and build quality agents for them now.

So I feel happy that I am able to contribute to their mission.

You know, they are making the world a better place.

Even if I don't have a startup of my own,

I feel I am contributing to their mission.

So I think this was my overall journey in a nutshell, and that's how Agent.AI came into picture.

That's really cool.

And anybody that's been following this podcast for a while knows the Bon Bilo team really well, because we've had Julia, we've had Suraj a couple of weeks ago, and now you, because y'all have been one of the biggest successes.

I think I'm okay to say that, like on the Agent AI team, because y'all have built tons of agents in helping thousands of founders now.

kind of startups that have come through.

And if you want the whole history there, go back and listen to Suraj's episode because we really get into that.

But I want to, like you said something interesting I want to go back and double click into.

And me, I've been a multi-time startup guy, started my own company, all that stuff.

And I think it's really important to tease out, like people don't know what they don't know, right?

And I think that's a lot of what people that start companies run into.

Like they get into stuff like they're an expert at something, they're a subject matter expert, whatever the problem they're solving, but

They probably don't know anything about the finances of running a company.

the payroll, the tax implications.

Maybe they're not good at selling.

Maybe they're not good at marketing.

Maybe they're not good at product.

You know, they know how to solve the problem, but there's all these things that they need to figure out.

Maybe they don't know how to work with, you know, investors.

So there's all these different things.

And I imagine that creates a wealth of opportunity to kind of help create agents to kind of solve these because

Any sort of answer is better than nothing, right?

And if you can get them most of the way there through an agentic prompt, it starts the conversation, I imagine, right?

Exactly, So you said the exact correct thing, and this is what we set out to build at One Below.

After having worked with so many startups, me, Suraj, and our entire team, we now realize where the startups struggle.

We now realize the type of questions these startups have and at what stage.

Everybody at some point of time would think about their brand.

Everybody would think about content strategy.

Everybody would think about financing, what type of investors I should connect with, what type of grants I can get, what type of customers I should target, what kind of partners I should make.

All of these things, all of the startups would think at some or the other point of time.

And that's what we do at OneBido.

We know what stage the startup is at.

We know what kind of questions they have.

And we have an agent for them

for all of their questions.

Yeah.

What we set out to build was to fill out the first blank page that the founders have.

Not necessarily answer all of their questions for them because nobody can do that, but help them reach level six, seven, and eight and not start from level one, two, three.

This is what our agents do.

So we follow a set of structure.

We follow entrepreneurship books like Discipline Entrepreneurship that lays out 24 steps.

Who is your customer?

What can you do for your customer?

How do you make money off your product?

It has divided it into six themes.

And we have agents on all of those themes.

We have agent on all of those 24 steps.

So I think if a startup comes to one below platform, they would get some or the other help for sure.

And no matter what stage they are at.

And then I think that's the important thing too, is the agents are really good at solving specific niche things.

It's what is the thing that you need?

And then how do you ask that question?

Because someone that's thinking about brand building is very different than someone that's thinking about, how do I optimize my website, which is 2 things I know we're going to look at here.

Two very different questions, but they're both questions that startups are now like they have to figure out, right?

Absolutely, absolutely, yes.

Usually, how we target is we have divided our agents into a particular set of themes.

We have customer acquisition as a theme, so branding comes into customer acquisition.

How do we communicate our brand to the world?

It's customer acquisition.

The content strategy agent is another amazing agent which comes under acquisition, and...

A lot of these things, the startups don't realize they need.

So if they come to our page, if they go through customer acquisition section, they would see what all agents are out there.

They would see what each agent does.

And I think a combination of two to three agents would give them their answer.

If they start with brand DNA, they would get a mission vision statement.

They would get messaging pillars that they can speak about.

They would get

the content topics that would showcase their thought leadership in their industry.

Based on that, they can use our content strategy agent.

They would get underused angles that they can speak about.

They would get actual headlines that they can use.

They would get distribution strategy, which social media channels would be best for what kind of topics.

So all of these things, I think,

As and when the startup founders use the agents, they would realize what kind of solution they are getting from each one of them.

Definitely, they wouldn't know where to start, but I would say just start.

small, start from somewhere, and they would figure it out.

Yeah, well, and I imagine once they go and choose the first agent to run, it's got them started.

One, it makes starting easy,

But then there's a million questions that kind of come out of that, or it gets them thinking, and now they've got something to work on to mold.

Because a lot of people struggle with that zero to one of like, I don't know what to do, but once you give me something to do, I can tell you, I can look at it and say, this is right or this is wrong, or yes, these five things are right, but we need to tweak these two things, right?

Exactly.

They wouldn't know what to ask ChatGPT.

They wouldn't know what to do.

And that's where I think our agents help because

I would say we are research-backed.

All our agents are research-backed, and they are not just prompt hacked.

So we use entrepreneurship books, research articles, insights from our top faculties.

So all of this is inbuilt in our code.

So all startup founder needs to do is come on the agent, give their startup one-liner, give a website, give their target market, and that's all.

The agent does the rest for them.

So they need not worry about what to ask the agent.

We have taken care of that.

That's a great way to think about it, right?

Like you have through your smartphones or Google or these LLMs now, like ChatGPT,

You can ask pretty much any question in the world, but that does you absolutely no good if you don't know what to ask.

Absolutely, and then you can start with one of these agents that is purpose-built to solve kind of this piece of the equation that you need to go.

then you can tack on to it.

Like, all right, now I know what I need to clean up here.

I've got a foundation to build upon.

Let me work on it from what the problem I'm trying to solve and optimize it from there.

But yeah, if you don't know what to ask, like, the rest doesn't matter.

Absolutely.

Unlike ChatGPT, the agents won't hallucinate.

They know where to think, in which direction to think.

So I think that's a better way to start and not ask ChatGPT your first question.

I'm curious with you, like,

What was the particular moment or spark where you realized, oh my gosh, I could start building these things into agents?

Like you've been working with startups for almost a decade now.

And then really, because this has all come to light in the last year, right?

That y'all really started embracing this.

Talk to me like,

How did that change and how has that changed the way that you work with these companies and these entrepreneurs now?

Because you can give them these tools that they didn't have before.

It happened, I think, exactly one year before, November last year.

So November last year was me, Suraj, and all of our team members would get on a call.

And in the last 15 minutes, something or the other discussion would happen about AI.

And that was the phase where I used to attend AI workshops every weekend.

So every weekend, 3, 4 hours, I used to explore what AI tools are out there for personal and professional use.

And I found some pretty cool personal use AI tools as well.

And I was mind blown that, okay, there is something out there that I need to explore.

And I think by December end, Suraj came across Agent.ai and he said, this is what I'm going to mess with during my holidays.

And he created his first few agents.

January this year was when he showed his first agent, which actually won agent of the week as well.

His first or second agent won agent of the week.

And then he showed us how he built it.

And it was very easy to build on agent.ai.

But at that point of time, I still thought that, okay, probably Sooraj can because he's a coder and I won't be able to do that, no chance.

So I think a month went by where just Sooraj was building and he was showcasing how to build, what thought process went into it and stuff.

And then he said, Ashtav, why don't you build?

I'm like, what are you saying?

I don't know if I can build.

But once I saw his process, what all action steps went into it,

I read agent documentation which is out there.

I realized it's not so difficult.

It is quite easy for a non-coder like me to start exploring something.

And that's when brand DNA came in.

So that was my very first agent.

It was the very first one that I built.

And so how we went about is same, like I said, a bit of research, spend two to three days on research, know what good looks like.

After reading some reports, that these are the frameworks that one should follow, that these are the type of mission vision statements one should consider.

So, having all those insights into the backend, and I was mind blown with the output that it gave me.

and did one agent of the week.

So I think that motivated me a lot to build more agents and stick to it and keep building on and on every month, every week.

Yeah, so now it's on our team calls, it's like,

whatever issue we have, whatever request startup founder throws at us, let's create an AI agent for that.

Let's go to agent and build one agent.

So it's a, it's a go-to platform now.

It's like no questions asked.

If there is a problem startup founder is facing, we are building an agent for that.

If any problem we are facing, we are building an agent for that.

So it has become like that.

The transition.

How story is this how we started?

Let me ask you, because I think there's something really important that I want to make sure everybody picks up in there.

It's like the planning of it, right?

Like knowing what you want to build and thinking of it as a process or a workflow or whatnot to kind of come out with this output.

Talk me through that now.

Like how do you...

Like that is the most important.

I mean, what you actually get into the back end and start building it, that's pretty straightforward, but you got to know what you want to accomplish and how you want to get there, right?

So now that's second nature to you.

Like talk us a little bit through like how do you go through that thought process?

So there are two, three things that we usually do.

One is we follow discipline entrepreneurship, like I mentioned before, and it has 24 steps for a successful startup.

And the 24 steps are like, what is your beachhead market?

Who is your customer?

What's your messaging?

What is your USP?

Who are your competitors?

So, these are the steps laid out onto it, and every startup at one point of time would go through these steps.

So, we started by building an agent for every step of discipline entrepreneurship.

And from there on, once we had the 24 basic steps and the extremely good functioning agent for that, then on we moved forward.

So we speak with startup founders every week, every day almost.

So as and when we get to know about what they're currently working on, what are the challenges that they are facing, we suggest agents that we already have.

When they go through the agent, they feel that, okay, I love this agent, but I need something more.

And

We have a list of something more that the startup founders have.

So we now know that which of our existing agents need a one level deeper investigation.

So we have about 10 agents now that we know we want to build because we got a request from startup founder.

And that's a real world problem that would be helpful to many startups.

That's another way that we look about it.

The AEO advisor agent, I got two inquiries.

back-to-back.

Tuesday, I got one startup.

Wednesday, I got another startup asking, Ashna and Suraj, what is AEO?

How we can get on top of it?

How we can get ChatGPT to list our brand name when they search.

So that's when I came across Dharmesh's inbound session where he spoke about AEO.

I came across his newsletter where he listed few steps on AEO, read some more articles, came across HubSpot's AEO grader report, which excellently laid down

Where is one below?

What is one below doing good?

What is one below doing bad?

Where can we improve?

So as and when we come across new questions, we start researching.

And if we get into research, we know we are going to come out of it with an agent.

There is.

No other way out.

That's interesting, right?

Because traditionally, like as a digital marketer, we would always say, like, what are the questions that you're getting asked in sales conversation?

Or what are your customers asking your support team?

Well, let's write content around that.

And you kind of said, let's take that to the next level.

Like, yeah, we could create content, but why don't we just build something that like customizes an answer for you?

Maybe this is a good like transition.

Do you want to show off some of these agents?

Sure, let's do that.

You know, this was the one that won the community award.

So I think we've had a lot of the other community award winners on here.

And I'm glad that we could finally get you on here too, Ash.

And I know we probably needed to not have the bond billow all back-to-back to back-to-back to back.

This is an award with an agent, everybody, and excited to finally get it on the podcast and show everybody.

Yeah, so it's a very simple, yet very effective agent.

So what the startup user can do, startup founder can do, is enter on this agent, give their one-liner.

I have run it for Bonpilo.

So this is Bonpilo's one-liner, Bonpilo's website, and the target market.

That's all.

So just based on these three queries, the output that we have is we have 3 mission and vision statements.

And if you read the mission statement, it is quite accurate to what Bomb Below does and where we actually aim to be.

So the agent crawls the website and speaks to you in your own language to accelerate thousand plus mission-driven startups for 2030.

through AI-powered frameworks, expert mentorship, and global community, helping them collectively raise 1 billion in funding and create measurable progress towards the UN SDGs.

This is exactly what One Below is aiming at.

Yeah.

Three mission and vision statements, followed by messaging pillars and content topics.

These messaging pillars are mainly the ones that would showcase One Below's thought leadership out there.

what we are excellent at and how we can speak about it. AI-powered innovations are AI agents. We are good at it and we are supporting founders for it. A short description about it and some suggested content topics. How AI agents are revolutionizing startup acceleration, case studies of startups using AI for social impact, the future of AI in entrepreneurship education.

It's very practical guidance for Bond Below as to how we can showcase our brand on social media platforms. So it has seven messaging pillars and multiple content topics on these messaging pillars. This is what the agent does. Simple yet effective.

Well, and once again, I think it's important to always say these kind of things is like, this might not be 100% perfect thing that a brand

a marketer would give you, but it is at least 80% of what they would give you, right? And it gets the juices flowing to you as what you need to do. And let's be honest, in an entrepreneur startup land, 80% is good enough to ship, right? You've got to be out there shipping something. And from a small team, you need that core alignment, right? You need that core alignment of what's my mission and what are we trying to accomplish and what are these pillars?

To get, and as you go, you adjust them and pivot and change, but the speed of getting these kind of decisions and clarity out for teams.

I'm sure you've seen it too. How many startups have failed because they couldn't get this sort of alignment?

Exactly. Many. And they know that their product is amazing. They know their USP is amazing, but they fail to convey. They fail to speak about it. So this was the aim of this agent to give you some ideas as to how you can show up for the world, how you can talk about your brand. And like you rightly said, it's 70, 80% of the work done yet. We still need human intervention. We still need human experts.

still need founders tone, founders voice to make it their own. But like I said, it is the first blank page. They're learning from level 6, 7, 8 and not one.

They've got to get to a point where they have, where they can hire a brand marketer who can like make it 100% perfect, right? But like that's a great aspirational goal. You've got to go start selling product and hire and grow the team first. And getting 80, 90% there through this and some kind of some internal conversations, that's huge. That's huge when you can do it.

that quickly instead of needing to do it over weeks or battles and stuff like, no, we're taking everything we got. Here you go. You want to do you want to show the other one, the AEO advisor? Because you know it and I know it. Like generative engine optimization, answer engine optimization, whatever people want to call it, is a very hot subject right now. And people are trying to figure out, how do I make my content optimized to show up better than that? And well, you build an agent to help people do that.

Yes, and this is my favorite agent, new favorite agent. So the AEO advisor agent uses a lot of expert reports, including the HubSpot's AI search guide, which was out, including many other AEO reports that I have read, which helped me understand what exactly is AEO, how we can get practical insights into it, what step by step I can do to get

closer to being listed in ChatGPT. If not 100%, get their 80%. So what this agent does is I have put this default input to analyze my website and suggest modifications to improve AEO. I have again tried it for BonBelow. And this is an optional report. I have used HubSpot's AEO grader report as an additional context for

for my agent. But this is an optional field. If anybody wants to put in, they can. And what it gives is, based on the report, it has described what the report is about. It has researched my website, and it has told me where I am lagging, where I can make the improvements. It has given me develop cornerstone content hubs. It is suggesting to create two to three long form content and authoritative guides,

which helps models like ChatGPT to capture the direct answers. And whenever user asks, just paste the answer from Bonbelow and not create of their own. It is suggesting to have conversational FAQs, which currently we lack. So this agent actually gave a lot of things for Bonbelow to do as well. So all of these things are now on our roadmap that we want to implement on our website. It gave the importance of FAQs.

It gave, it researched that we have alumni case studies and how we can better make use of that. It has given me sample FAQs that we should put in on our website. Additionally, based on LMO principles laid out on multiple reports, it has, so these are the six LMO principles, and it is rating where I'm doing a good job, where I need an improvement,

and recommendation as to what improvement I want. So this is a very practical step-by-step guidance as to how I can come closer to being listed on ChatGPT. This is another run, and I wanted to show you this because I have specifically asked this agent to give me schema markup for my pages. So schema markup helps search engines to better understand

what my web page is about and give it as a response when the user asks the question. So it has given me a sample code which I can directly put in my header HTML and it would take care of the schema markup for my website. It has given me for SEA impact accelerator page. It has given me for homepage. So these are the two that I had asked. It has given me for accelerator pages. So these are exact codes which I can use on my website.

It's a very practical agent guide to get closer to AEO.

What is really powerful about this example, I mean, you said it earlier, you know, people don't know what to ask, right? Like they're getting into AEO or they know they want to figure it out. And you can't go to ChatGPT and ask, how do you solve AEO? Like it's not going to give you schema. You're not going to know to ask for schemas.

Where you've done that research and figured out some of this stuff, and then not only are you answering the question for them, but you're giving them practical, useful things they can take back and apply with some tweaking. But still, like perfect example of like, I know I need to figure this out. Anybody can go run this agent, right? Any marketer or anybody that has a website in general.

I feel this is still a level one agent on AEO. We can go a lot deeper on this.

we can have a lot more practical insights for the website. So stay tuned for that. Next agent is coming on AU.

Well, let's go in there deeper. Like, is that, what's on deck? What else is coming from you? What are you specifically building? Are you building a level 2, but what other agents are you thinking about now?

We have a financial projections agent, is what we call it. gives you projections for seven years. It lays down the ideas of profitability. It lays down ideas for increasing the revenue and profitability. And one of the feedback that we received from our startup is that it would be great if we can integrate the fundraising aspect to it. When do I need to fundraise? How much can be the debt component? How much can be the equity component?

And based on that, give me a financial projection planning for seven years. And for a startup, that would be an extremely helpful tool to have it all laid down in front of me and to know when I want to fundraise, how much can I fundraise, what exactly my burn currently is compared to my existing projections, and what the next seven years look like. So

That's one more agent that we would be working on very soon. So that's one level deeper on our agents.

Yeah, I'm curious, right? Like I imagine you probably get a lot of feedback, right, from entrepreneurs. You give these things, they play with them, and they're like, hey, I wish you could do this. I wish you could do that. And now that you've got 30 of these things built, I imagine from here on out, it's just iterating on them, right? Like taking that feedback and work them into the agent and expanding upon them. But how much easier is that, right? Like

Being able to go and edit, like you said, you're not a software developer. How often do you get something, a feedback back from somebody where you're like, I have no idea how we would do that versus like, oh, I think I've got an idea.

So feedback is the heartbeat of, I would say, all of our agents. And because it's a founder community, we thrive on it. As many founders use our agents and they give our feedback, it's better for us to understand them better.

So feedback is something we constantly ask for. And I would say it's fairly easy to implement the feedback because we understand what founders want. We ask them what exactly they need. We have our own insights as to this would be helpful. We refer to research reports and insights from top faculties as to what good looks like. And based on that, iterating on our existing agents

is not as difficult. I think over a period of time, it has become easy for us. Earlier it was to figure out how we can do it. But kudos to Asian.AI. I think they have made the job for us very easy. It's really easy to use the platform. They have so many different options to use LLM and knowledge bases. I think you guys have made it easy for us, I would say.

I want to make sure people understand what easy means, right? Like you've built a bunch of these things at this point. This AEO one that you recently launched,

How long did that take you from start to finish to build that thing?

Three days.

Three days. Three days. And you've got a super valuable, useful agent that literally anybody with a website can use.

Yes, exactly. So this is how our agents look like. Three days because I would say we did not go level 10. I think we are still at initial level on the AEO. Three days because we had to read research reports. We had to go through the existing AEO tools out there.

And then we knew what practical good agent would look like. And we wanted to get something out fast because our startup demanded it. So this is why the three days was the fastest, I think, that I have worked on AEO agent.

Well, and most of that time sounds like it was research, not even just building.

Yes, definitely.

Just finding the right resources.

Yes.

Yeah.

This AEO agent actually refers to a lot of, I think, top nine to 10 reports out there, and based on those reports, it is giving you the suggestions. So it's not me. I'm not an expert on AEO, but the reports that I have put in, they are experts on AEO. That's why it is actual, practical, real, and not just random, fluffy hallucinations advice.

I mean, even then, three days is no time at all to build something like this.

When you consider the ROI on it, like how many of your entrepreneurs, how many orgs that you work with have used it so far and found use that of it?

Many, many of our founders have used it, including Bond Below. We have also improved so much, so many things on our website.

So 3 days worth of work to get like an ROI, return on investment, that's kind of incalculable because it's been used by so many people and it's continuing to be used by more people. Right. Like that seems like a worthwhile endeavor.

We have now become experts. Again, thanks to Agent.ai. You guys have made it very easy for us.

Ashna, what has building these agents taught you? Like, how do you feel like it's clearly empowered you, right? But how has it done that? Like, walk me through like that change of like a year ago to today about how you...

take these problems and work with entrepreneurs and you're able to come up with solutions and repeatable things that you can do with them.

So the journey that I told you, right, from 2016 to helping startups, it is now my goal to be go-to person for startups. But I knew that there is some hurdle because I am not an expert on it. I don't have a startup of my own, but I understand it really well. And these agents have empowered me to support these startups.

I know that I can do research. I know that I can build high-quality agents. And I know that if I get on a call with any startup, I would run the agent for them. I would understand the inputs, and I can help them. So they need not run the agent every time they speak with me. I can do it for them. And I can help them in ways that I couldn't have even imagined a year ago.

So it has given me confidence. It has made me happy, like I said, that I can contribute to their journey. And being a generalist, I would say, is a plus. I'm not an expert, I would say, but I am a generalist, and it is my biggest strength.

What has been some of the most shocking or surprising bits of feedback that you've got from users so far?

I think shocking, not shocking, but it was...

Surprising, yes. We built few of our agents and when we asked founders for feedback and when we asked them to run the agent, they not only liked it, they were always on their toes to give more feedback and get it, get that agent from 80% working to get it to 98% working.

Oh, interesting.

They want the agent that they can exactly use and solve their problem like this.

Yeah.

Like I said, startup founders can use any help that they need.

So they are not really finding our agents useful. They are expecting more and more from our agents that we don't want 80%, we want 98% of our work done, which is quite possible. The 2% will always remain. The founders would always have to put in their expertise, their tone, their taste to it. But I think that was

surprising and good to know that they love our agents, they want more of it.

Well, I imagine too, if they're giving you that feedback to help make it that much better, that's exponentially more valuable because every other founder that uses it afterwards is getting that much better input too, or output.

Exactly. Yes, yes. That's cool. Most of the times we love their inputs and we feel that it is always possible to improve the agent.

So iterating feedback, iteration feedback is a constant loop for that we are always in.

Knowing entrepreneurs are very like, they're looking to build something, right? Like I'm curious, and part of the hypothesis I've always had is like anybody can become a user of an agent.

Yes.

And some percentage of those people will become builders of their own agent. That barrier to entry is so not hard. You just got to be willing to try it or have a problem that you want to solve that you need to solve over and over and over again.

How many of the entrepreneurs and founders that you work with have seen a light bulb go off that say, this is great, this is solving all my problems. I want to do this sort of stuff in my company for my customers. Have you seen that happen a lot?

Very less. Reason being, the founders are extremely busy with their own **** going on. They're extremely busy with their own product, their market, and what they're seeking from these agents is to make their lives easier.

We have not seen much that the founders want to build it on their own. They want us to do it for them.

I don't mean necessarily build these same agents, but they can take building agents to solve problems for their customers.

They ask that also for us, probably.

Oh, they want you, oh, interesting.

Yeah, So many a times we have seen that they want some sector-specific output.

and how can this exactly help my customers? How can this help my B2B customers? How can I reach out to them? So they always share feedback, but they have always seen that they would like us to build it for them.

The light bulb movement have gone on every call. On every call, they have loved the output of the agent. But whenever they want more, they always request us that build this for me.

Yeah, and I'm imagining it just because they've got 20 other things they need to work on. They don't have time. They would love to have time probably to figure it out.

Yes.

But they already know you can do it in three days. So why am I going to go like stumble my toes through weeks of trying to figure this out? But little do they know, it's not even that hard.

Yeah, it's not that hard. True. But that's what we actually also share with them, right? That Bondbillo as a community, we are here to support founders. So whatever you need, let us know. We are there for you. This is what we convey in our community.

Well, Ashin, as we start to wrap up here, I'm curious, and I always love to ask everybody, what if I not asked you that I should have? What do you want to share with the audience or otherwise that maybe we haven't dug into that's really top of your mind that you're spending a lot of time thinking about?

I think sometimes, so founders that we work with and founders that come across the agents, they love our agents. But other founders, I have seen that they are reluctant to use the agent. So there is always this fear that agents cannot do a better job than me. Why should I use these agents? There's always a reluctancy to be open to AI.

They are scared or they judge that, no, this is not as good. So I think that is something that we are still trying to figure out. And it's not a problem for OneBelow, but sometimes when I speak to other founders, probably not a part of OneBelow, probably some founders that I have previously worked with, they don't find time to work or try these agents. They don't realize how much of time saver this is.

So I think all of the founders out there need to spare some time to try out these tools and eventually they would know that it's freeing up time for them. It's not wasting time for them. It's freeing up time for them. I think that's the bit I would like to just say to the audience to just try out the agent and not be reluctant.

Yeah, that is a fascinating takeaway because, and we've

I've said this repeatedly through this whole conversation, I think. It gets you 80% of the way there.

Exactly.

Or some percentage of that, some most of the way there. And I think that's a fundamentally misunderstanding of this technology, if people think it's going to replace them. It's not going to replace them. It's going to speed up what they're doing and enable them to get to the goalpost faster. I think. That's kind of how I think about it, you know?

Exactly.

True, that is very true. That's what even we think about it. And I'm just hoping more and more founders use these agents and free up time for themselves.

Yeah, I 100% agree. Like, if you could get there faster, and it'll get you thinking about things that you didn't even think about because you didn't know to ask it, like, that seems like it's a win-win all around.

Exactly.

Well, how could the community help you? What's the best way to connect with you, Ashna?

And kind of what help are you looking for? You're looking for more testers feedback, I'm assuming, but what else?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for more people to use our agents, give us feedback. If the agent did not live up to your expectations, tell us what we can improve, and I will make sure that we work towards it. So like I said, for one big as a community, feedback, founder feedback is the heartbeat that we work on. So

more testers, more feedback, more founders using our agents.

I think that is my request to the community.

Love it, love it.

I will make sure in the show notes we have all those links for everybody so that they can reach out to you on LinkedIn, your Agent AI profile, or Bonbilo directly.

And yeah, love it.

A lot of agents, there's a whole 30 of them here kind of through y'all's community supported page here.

They're giving 100 plus soon.

Yeah, but I have a feeling everybody can go play with the AEO one because everybody's got a website or a company that has a website.

Definitely they should.

Once they know how easy it is to build on agent.ai and they can do so much more, I don't think they would turn back then.

Just one try.

They're the one to, they have to do.

Yeah, absolutely.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for joining me on this conversation today.

And everybody out there, if you enjoyed this conversation, please do not be afraid to like it.

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And until next time, go try something new.

Go run an agent that you haven't thought about running and keep building.

We'll talk to you next time, everybody.