No Co-Founder, a Year in Stealth and $20M to Replace Slack | Sara Du, Ando

Sara Du co-founded Alloy Automation at 19 and ran it for five and a half years. Her second company, Ando, she's building solo: team messaging designed from scratch for humans and AI agents working together, freshly out of stealth with a $20M seed from Accel, Index Ventures, and Emergence Capital. A conversation about why agents are locked out of the tools teams live in, and what founding looks like the second time — alone, on purpose. Topics covered: - Why Slack's architecture can't serve AI agents (the locked office building) - Agents as coworkers: identity, permissions, etiquette, and the first 90 days - Market-personality fit: picking a problem worth ten years of your life - The solo founder's hiring playbook: attract don't chase, contract-to-hire, minimalist headcount - Co-founder the first time, solo the second: the bear and bull case Guest: Sara Du — founder & CEO of Ando; previously co-founder & CEO of Alloy Automation; Thiel Fellow.