While 92% of Fortune 500s realize the surplus alpha that can be created from leveraging AI, only 25% of SMBs realize the same.

I sat with 6 founders who are building Agentic AI solutions: Jacky Wong (Nullify), Aria Attar (TensorStax), Max Ahrens (Maihem), Saurabh Sharma (You.com), Jonas Diezun (Beam AI), and Ashar Rizqi (Bounti.ai).

The key highlights from our conversation were:

- OpenAI’s function calling breaks down when scaling requires consistent outputs and error handling—just ask Jacky or anyone building enterprise agents.

- MongoDB could face disruption as AI agents take over infrastructure orchestration—Aria flagged it, and I agree.

- Calling agents "AI workers" simplifies adoption for hesitant enterprises—a shift that doubled Jonas Diezun’s sales.

- Agentic AI scales across verticals in months, not years—Ashar says the old SaaS scaling playbook is obsolete.

- Max at Maihem points out that building functional agents hinges on managing the edge cases that crash your system.

Let’s dive right in.

Connect with us here:

1. Jacky Wong- https://www.linkedin.com/in/wongja/?originalSubdomain=au

2. Aria Attar - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariaattar/

3. Max Ahrens - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximilianahrens/?originalSubdomain=uk

4. Saurabh Sharma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurabhs/

5. Jonas Diezun - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonasdiezun/

6. Ashar Rizqi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashar-rizqi-6614487/

7. George Bandarian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/

8. Untapped Ventures - https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/

00:00 Trailer

01:26 Welcome to the Agentic Podcast

02:21 Founder Panel Introduction

02:41 Founders' Backgrounds and Insights

10:08 Defining Agentic AI

20:00 Building Effective AI Agents

26:08 Challenges in Early AI Development

26:21 Human in the Loop: Enhancing AI Adoption

26:58 Debating the Importance of Evaluations

27:39 Technical Insights and Mistakes

29:07 Impact of Agentic Paradigm Shift on Infrastructure

29:52 Customer Adoption and Market Strategies

31:21 Go-to-Market Strategies and Early Stage Focus

39:18 Horizontal vs Vertical Approaches in AI

47:39 Final Thoughts

#ai #tech #podcast #vc