Agents For Non-Technical Users
In a Nutshell
Emergent, the fastest-growing YC S24 company, enables non-technical users to build and ship production-ready software via advanced AI agents, with 7 million apps created in 8 months by domain experts from 190+ countries—80% non-coders running real businesses like lawyer CRMs and equine coaching apps. Founders pivoted from top SWE-Bench coding agents to a full-stack platform mimicking elite engineering teams (multi-agent systems, memory, verification loops, custom infra), outpacing prototype-focused rivals by prioritizing production deployment, security, and scalability. This empowers solopreneurs to bypass $500k dev shops for $5k solutions, sparking a Cambrian explosion of niche "intersection" businesses and agentic SaaS, as models advance toward 24/7 swarms.
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Emerging AI tools enable problem domain experts blocked by technology barriers to build solutions. Focus on AI replacing jobs overlooks empowerment for starting businesses and gaining autonomy.
Gary absent due to jury duty. Joined by twin brothers Makund and Madav Jar, founders of Emergent, YC Summer 2024 batch. Emergent platform lets anyone build and ship production-ready software using AI agents. Fastest growing YC company: 7 million apps built in 8 months since launch.
Started programming at age 12. Both came to US for PhDs. Makund dropped out, joined Google, ran Danzo (hyperlocal quick commerce in India, managed 300 engineers, became a verb: "done"). Madav at Zenz, started deep learning team at Amazon. Watching deep learning inflection point.
Software testing biggest bottleneck in shipping fast, observed managing large team. Started late 2023. Applied to YC and pitched VCs on automating software testing; seen as too crazy.
Building testing agents revealed solving verification (testing) enables automating all software engineering. Key insight: verification loop keeps agents running longer. Pivoted early 2024 to general coding agents.
Lovable not started, Kurs very early, Devon just out. Targeted SWE-Bench benchmark (now saturated). Four-person team cracked it, built coding agents #1 on SWE-Bench in 2 months. Discovered fundamental truths about building with LMs and agents.
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