How to Build Superintelligence Inside Your Company
In a Nutshell
The core message is that organizations can build superintelligence by treating AI as the foundational infrastructure layer rather than a copilot—recording all artifacts, consolidating data into unified systems, and creating shared agent skills that compound collective knowledge. Key enablers include a tool registry with 350+ functions, transparent agent conversations visible to all employees, and self-improving skills that automatically extract and codify successful workflows. This approach raises the organizational floor by letting new employees instantly access institutional context while requiring high trust, openness, and willingness to spend on tokens to leapfrog legacy competitors.
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The key is using AI not just as a copilot, but as the foundational building layer for everything. All artifacts must be recorded to create a shared organizational brain that connects collective skill and instinct across the organization. This approach enables everyone to improve using the combined capabilities of their colleagues.
Pete Kumman, General Partner at YC, created Optimizely, one of the first and best AB testing platforms for apps and websites. He subsequently built all of YC's agent infrastructure including harnesses and internal AI systems. YC has been funding primarily AI companies for the last few years and has iterated through multiple versions of advice for building AI-native companies. Internally, YC has been adopting the same tools and transforming from a pre-AI organization into a super AI-native organization.
The project began about a year ago when Pete and a few engineers started building YC-specific agents and harnesses. This infrastructure has since expanded with contributions from the broader engineering team and partners. The original impetus came from work with the finance team on building tools for workflows like booking journal entries and logging priced rounds.
The traditional loop involved finance teams describing complicated workflows to software engineers, who would then build deterministic purpose-built software, creating an inefficient cycle. At the same time, agentic coding tools like Windsurf, Cursor, and Claude Code were emerging and providing individual superpowers. This created a growing divide between the classical software-building approach at YC and the new agentic methods being used personally.
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