Everyone Gets A Software Company — Benjamin Guo, Zo Computer

[music]

>> Hello everybody. I'm Ben from Zoho

Computer. I just posted on X from my

Zoho.

You know, I'll be giving away $100 in AI

credits and I do all sorts of stuff with

my Zoho.

This is my computer. My Zoho is my

computer. And before I get started, I

made the site just now while I was

waiting to get started presenting. This

is a kind of overview of all the

speakers in today's claw session. You

can scan this QR code and check it out.

I've got some useful links in here, but

also I've got like some deep research on

everybody presenting including their

recent thoughts, links to their profiles

and

websites, blogs, etc. So, scan this.

It's super useful. I just made it just

now. This is my computer that you see

right here, my Zoho computer. I'll be

talking about it and this talk is about

kind of Zoho and a lot of things. It's

also about kind of personal agents,

personal cloud agents in particular,

which Zoho is one instance of and kind

of the future and where I see all of

this going.

So,

a little bit about me.

I'm the co-founder of Zoho. My name is

Ben. I started my career on the early

Venmo team back in 2013 and um

I met my co-founder Rob at Venmo and I

left Venmo to work at Stripe quite

early. I was one of the first I was the

80th engineer and my co-founder Rob, he

went on to build Substack. He was the

first engineer there. And a final fact

about me as you can see is that I really

love computers. I'm dressed up as a

computer.

And I like to start with this like fun

fact about this finder icon. So, this

icon was designed by Susan Kare, an

early graphic designer at Apple Computer

and many people don't know the story

behind this icon, but it actually

represents the human, this white face,

and the machine, this blue face, and

they're kind of like in happy harmony.

And I think that is what we should

aspire to as we build AI tools for

people. Like humans love tools, humans

have always loved machines, and like

when we feel at one with our machine, we

feel like this. We feel happy.

So, who like me misses the way that

computers used to feel? Raise your hand,

right? Like the early internet, like

your first website, your first PC.

Right? It used to feel different, right?

Today,

the internet and our computers feels

more like this. We are swimming in the

sea of applications and sites and

services and

it's not great.

And on top of all of that,

they're jacking up the prices on these

things that we use, often because of AI

features that we didn't ask for.

And

I think quite reasonably, consumers or

I'll just call them regular people are

upset or confused or scared of AI.

So, Computer is based in Brooklyn, we're

in Bushwick actually, kind of like the

heart of hipsters in New York, and you

know,

there's a lot of this out there. I see a

lot of this kind of vandalism over AI

ads in the city.

On top of all of that, this is what our

industry looks like.

But the deeper root of why

this is bad is is a structural thing.

It's what we call techno-feudalism.

So, basically, feudalism was this like

kind of shitty system back in the day,

and though it no longer exists, it still

is alive and well in our digital lives.

So, we are still the peasants, we pay

rent to the SaaS providers who pay rent

to the cloud providers who pay rent to

the kings who are, you know, like

probably Nvidia these days.

And because we are peasants, our lives

are shitty. We are fragmented between

all these different tools. There are

various services that we use that lock

us in and and shitify over time. Like

that PM at that product that you use is

not incentivized to make your life

better. They're incentivized to improve

their bottom line, to monetize your

attention, to take your data, lock it

in, and sell it back to you. And because

you don't own anything, you are a

peasant.

So Zo, our mission has always been to

solve this by giving people a real home

on the internet.

And we believe that most people in the

world are kind of living in the Matrix,

and we're trying to show people

a better way.

So Zo is alive and well. We've been out

for about a year, and real people are

using it. Real regular people like

Charlotte, this LA-based private chef

and life coach. She hosts her websites,

she has multiple websites now, on Zo. Zo

manages her invoices and her accounts

and bookkeeping and her scheduling and

her notes. And it's just like amazing

system. It makes her feel like clear and

calm and on top of the world, and it's

fun. As you can see this text

that she sent me.

So what is Zo? Zo is a personal cloud.

We've never really had a personal cloud

before, but it's quite simple. You have

your own home in the cloud. You're not

using other cloud services. You have

your own thing. You put your stuff in

it. You put your AI in it. And because

it is

a place in the cloud, you can host stuff

in it. You can host services like

websites or APIs, and they're all yours.

And I think for people in this room, if

you're like interested in clouds and

personal agents, like your personal

cloud might look something more like

this. You might have like a suite of

local devices. Um and for me, I have

like this like Zo computer, this like

cloud computer as well, which has my Zo

agent on it. It also has a Hermes on it,

and it has my services. I have many

websites and APIs and things that I've

built, all hosted in the same place, and

it can also talk to my laptop or my Mac

mini, or I can use it on my phone.

And that, collectively, is my personal

cloud.

So, Zoe is a personal server with AI

built in. It's It's quite simple.

And it hearkens back to a simpler time.

So, back in the day, this is actually

how we built and hosted websites. We

just FTP'd our files onto a server, and

that updated our website. You were just

shipping to prod. You're like always

doing it live. And that's actually, I

think, how most people should build. I

don't think it's necessary for a regular

person like Charlotte to think about

deployment.

Unfortunately, for many of us in this

room, this is probably what your life

looks like, actually. You're kind of

just navigating between these 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 of your stuff and your

AI and the stuff you host, all of your

personal stuff in the cloud.

Here's another case study that I'd like

to talk about. This is Anthia. She was

one of our early users. She's totally

non-technical. She's a free-diving

instructor, and she's already on track

to make $100,000 on Zoe. She used to use

all of these different SaaS services to

run her business and her life, like

Squarespace, like Calendly, etc. And now

she's replaced all of that with Zoe.

She's canceled all of those SaaS

subscriptions. She is no longer a

peasant.

Anthia went from this,

kind of being very confused and having

her data in all of these different SaaS

silos, and not really being able to

connect them very easily,

to this. So, Anthea not only hosts her

retreat website on Zo on a custom

domain. She has many different websites

now. She has her personal workspace that

looks like this. She's really into

fairies and like drawing and mushrooms

and she's like expressing her whole self

and her creativity online in this new

way that we kind of really haven't had

as regular people for a long time since

like the '90s.

And under the hood, like all of those

sites are just the tip of the iceberg.

So, when Anthea gets somebody who's

interested in a retreat, Zo texts her

with their number.

Anthea now immediately calls them at

that moment of intent to buy. She texts

her Zo, "Give me a payment link." And

she closes the deal right then and

there. And that is how she is actually

booking much more revenue than before

with these retreats. Like her retreats

are now like actually kind of hard to

book because there's too much demand.

And that's amazing. And under the hood,

she has a database for all of her

retreats. She doesn't really know what a

database is, but she has one. She has

all of her notes, all of her accounting,

and it's all in one place. If she has

like some images from a retreat and she

wants to put those on her website, she

just tells her Zo to do it and it's like

right there. She can like host files

directly from her personal server. And

she is self-hosting everything.

So, Zo is made to be simple enough for

anyone, for people like Anthea, for my

parents, for other people's parents.

People are always telling me on like

LinkedIn or X that like they sign up

their parent for their parents to Zo and

their parents are like five coding up a

storm. It was awesome to see. I just got

this message on LinkedIn the other day.

Our caterer uses Zo um to kind of manage

his staff at his restaurant. Our

recruiter uses Zo as well. He's really

into it and he's like kind of building a

whole He's like rebuilding his his stack

for his recruiting agency on Zo. Our

marketing agency has become Zo-pilled.

So, it's made for everybody.

But it's also powerful enough for the

audience in this room.

It can be the home for your Open Claw or

your Hermes. You can have a really

nicely set up server to host your

personal agent in if you use one of

those tools.

You can bring your codex or Gemini or

etc. subscriptions and you can build and

host anything. You have like root access

to your own server to this very nicely

set up Linux VM where like the

networking is also like very well set up

and you don't really have to worry about

any of it. You can SSH in and you can

control your Zo via API or MCP. So, very

flexible.

So, scan this QR code if you haven't yet

uh to get $100 in AI credits. Um

just try Zo. I I think you'll like it.

And I'm going to do a little demo and

then I'll have a little bit more to talk

about after that. Um

>> [snorts]

>> So, really quick demo of Zo. You already

saw it in the beginning, but Zo is this

like nice kind of cloud workspace. I

made this website just now. I make all

sorts of websites on the fly.

Um

you can chat with really any model as I

mentioned. You can bring your own API

key. You can even talk to Claude code in

here.

>> [snorts]

>> You've got this nice file system,

built-in cloud storage because it's your

server. You can just like use it as a

Dropbox.

Um and you know, you can obviously like

work agentically in the chat with any of

your files.

You've got automations. So, you can kind

of run tasks on a schedule with AI.

>> [snorts]

>> You've got tons of built-in

integrations. You don't have to set any

of this up.

We have [snorts] lots of skills, a large

skill library. There's a built-in

browser, so you can log in to sites and

let your Zo like buy things for you or

do whatever. Actually, I always text my

Zo these days to buy stuff on Amazon.

It's like really dangerous for impulse

purchasing. I like see something I'm

like, let's buy it.

>> [snorts]

>> Um and as I mentioned, you can host

stuff. So, you can really host anything,

any arbitrary service, HTTP or TCP. And

we also give you a really nice built-in

personal website. This is my Zo space

and this is all set up nicely and it's

got like, you know, nice kind of like

live coding features. Um and you just

chat with it to edit it. And I've built

all sorts of cool things inside of here.

Um this for example is like my Calendly

replacement. People can book time with

me and it has just like this custom

setup that I like. Um and my Zo can like

review the people that are interested. I

don't want anybody like booking time

with me directly.

Um

and so that's kind of like what Zo is

and I want to conclude by just talking a

little bit about the future. So

the reason we're building Zo is to build

a future and better internet, one that

looks more like this where

everybody, [snorts]

every individual has a real home, a

presence on the internet. And [snorts]

companies already have this, but like we

should interact directly with other

people on the internet without

middlemen. And we should also interact

with like the various companies and

their AIs. Um and it should be like more

direct.

Another way to look at this is that like

in the future we will probably just be

interacting mostly with agents and the

agents will kind of interact with the

cloud, like these like software 1.0

things like websites and APIs.

But [snorts] if you dig a little deeper

into here, what's probably actually

going to happen is that most of these

agents that we interact with will also

be in the cloud. Some of them will be

local, but many of them will be in the

cloud. And when those agents are in the

cloud, the question again is like whose

cloud is it?

>> [snorts]

>> So

Claud tag

is newly out and and Claud tag is

actually, if you think about it, a cloud

agent. It's this like cloud Claud. It's

like a company level Claud that has like

all the company's context and [snorts]

anybody can interact with it. And you

know, it's it's an interesting and very

like ergonomic model. Town and Victor

are also kind of similar instances of

this.

>> [snorts]

>> But

the problem with Claud tag is this.

Whose cloud is it? Whose Claud is it?

It's not really your company's Claud.

And as you kind of improve your Claud

tag setup, like what really improves is

Anthropic, right? Like the the arrow is

pointing the wrong way.

And [snorts] this is intelligence

feudalism.

The intelligence now is bubbling up the

wrong way.

And you are still a peasant again, or

your company is still kind of

a peasant in a way.

>> [snorts]

>> And at Zoe believe

really strongly in changing the way that

things work and giving people and

companies more [snorts] ownership over

their cloud and over their intelligence.

So, we believe that the future should

actually look more [snorts] like this.

Anybody, a company or an individual

should be able to publish agents and own

them and have end users and like have

the end usage of their agent improve,

like self-improve their own kind of

published agent. And that is the future

that we're building. We have [snorts] a

kind of beta version of this. So,

um I'm going to go back to to this Zoe

space uh and scan this QR code finally

if you want to talk to me, get AI

credits, sign up for the beta of this

kind of new agent publishing platform.

>> [snorts]

>> And uh yeah, also you can check out all

of the speakers that are presenting on

this Zoe space page. Um I'm Ben from Zoe

computer. Thank you.

>> [applause]