How to Build an AI-Native Company in 2026

There are people that are spinning up agent workforces with hundreds of agents and sub-agents, and they're getting incredible amounts of work done. But how do you do it? And how should you think about it? And what are the strategies to actually create an AI agent workforce that under promises and over delivers? Well, today I brought on Ali K. Miller, and she's one of, one of the most well-known AI voices ever. She's worked with IBM, she's worked with AWS, and she's managed multi-billion-dollar P&Ls in the AI space. I asked her a simple question, "How do you manage your fleet of agents?" In this episode, we cover a lot of ground. But by the end of it, you're gonna understand how should you sh- strategically think about spinning up AI agent workforces, where there's opportunities to create startups in the B2B space with AI agents, and a lot more. Enjoy the episode, and I'll see you at the end. Today's episode is brought to you by Brex. My company's been on Brex for a year and a half, and I started because I kept hearing companies like Vercel, OpenAI, Anthropic were using Brex, and I figured if they're using it, why shouldn't I? It's been a game changer. The thing that got me is how smooth it is. It's got high limit cards. It's got banking. It's got AI that handles the back office busy work like expense reports, which I don't wanna do, on its own. It's really just built for this agentic world. If you're building something new, it's time to get Brex. Check it out at brex.com/solutions/startups. Link in the description.

[singing] The Startup Ideas Podcast. It's sippin' time, baby.

I can't tell you how excited I am to finally have Ali Miller on the podcast. I've been begging her to come on. She's one of my favorite people in AI, and I don't say that lightly. Um, welcome to the show, Ali.

Thank you, Greg. And you are also one of my favorite people, so like I'm actually very excited to, to talk about all the AI things that we're working on.

By the end of the episode, what are people gonna learn?

I hope-- Like, one of the biggest mindset shifts that I'm going through right now is I feel like the term managing agents is wrong. And my hope is that people will understand what that mindset shift is, see a few examples, and figure out how to start, how to make that mindset shift, what the first step should be.

Okay, perfect. So where do you wanna start?

So this is-- And, and I'm happy to, to debate you on this 'cause we haven't chatted about this. But I feel like managing agents feels like I'm their direct manager, and I'm like, "Susie, go over there, and Betty, go over there, and Jeremy, go over here." And I feel like I am three rungs above at like an SVP overseeing level, where I feel like I am setting up the infrastructure, and then they are figuring out the best way to execute within that. Um, and so I feel like I'm moving from managing to like waiting for escalations. Um, or I feel like I'm moving away from delegating and more just deciding what should or shouldn't happen. And so it's a little bit more of the like a, like a liability role where I just get to be the, the final say of what happens, um, and come in for like critical thinking stops. But does