Our Journey, Our Team, Our Way of Life
So, there I found myself, at the very Genesis of AI, on the back of a pandemic and the threat of WW3. These were a series of unfortunate events that were both catastrophic and infinitely opportunistic paradigm shifts. A perfect storm in the making. Imagine what would happen if a group of software engineers decided to build an online music store. What if everything about that 'shop' was AI assisted? What if we did all the design with AI? Well we thought we should find out.
Our Journey
We hate DevOps, startups and standups. They are a pointless waste of time to force the illusion of a team filled with innovative energy, perfect synthesis and continuous delivery of value, so that a group of otherwise very different people might endure a series of rounds to collect funds to be able to scale. It's like gearing an investment, except not really. The risks are very different. User centred design means building people into the core of a business system, and that is just a fundamentally terrible idea. The risk of the loss of critical human capital, churn, and so much more that really just makes us human (human error). We started needing nobody to operate the business and that is how we intent to stay. Enter NoOps, a concept nearly 10 years old and laughed out the door in its time. But not without reason, it was not possible to fully remove people from the day to day operations of a business... until AI that is. We have found a way to run everything using AI, and every solution we build has AI at its core and one fundamental rule, No People.
Our Team
Well almost no people, somebody still needs to write code, guide the AI on our brand and message (they struggle with this at the moment) and to be a real person where we are obligated to have people. Banking, Payroll and Tax and areas that must be done by people and finally to make sure that there is a person with their fingers on the kill switch. Just kidding.
Design | Content | SEO
Gina Kashuk is our head of design content and SEO. A master designer, mother and former soldier. She is both tough, creative and responsible and has an impressive freelance design portfolio. She is a prolific idea factory, has an eye for simplistic and well-rounded design and just gets things done, fast.
Account and Office Administration
Natasja van der Worp one of our very few people that will never be replaced with AI. She brings years of office work and general administration with her. First a loving wife and mother of two, then our accounts and office administrator. Natasja is responsible for our payroll, monthly submissions to SARS and bookkeeping.
Business Development
Brogan Reis, takes to the road until the robots can form relationships and create a sales pipeline. A drummer at his core and keen martial artist, Brogan brings youth and energy and is the very persona of our youthful target market.
Software Engineering
Tristan van der Merwe is our frontline AI solutions engineer. A lover of a chilled weekend of sport and the company of friends, Tristan brings with him his love for API-first design principals, brutal honesty and insatiable hunger to grow his knowledge.