Mission
AutoText brings AI agents to the mainstream knowledge worker.
The Opportunity
Email is the main workspace for most non-technical knowledge workers. Yet, AI email tools today are where AI coding tools were pre-Cursor: shallow features far from what's possible.
The Approach
AutoText treats AI as part of the interface, not a separate feature you have to go find. We are starting with a step-change in AI-assisted composition and then adding agent workflows; the same arc as Cursor.
The Company
AutoText is the first product, but our true work is to build a company with a repeatable method of success, founded on people, processes, and priorities.
The Team
Small team.
Unreasonable standards.
Danny has been building startups for 13+ years:
- Founder at Conductor – bootstrapped to $275K ARR and growing, customers include Ramp
- Founding Engineer at Afresh – did it all
- Co-Founder at GreenChain
- Built an NLU engine from scratch – before LLMs made it easy
- Early engineer at Even – acquired
How We Work
Operating Principles
The beliefs and standards that define how we work. Non-negotiables.
01
A maniacal sense of urgency
- Bias toward action over deliberation. Decide at 80% confidence. Waiting for certainty is waiting too long.
- Measure tasks in hours instead of days. Time is the scarcest resource.
- Quickly recognize mistakes and correct course.
- Perfect opportunities do not exist; imperfect opportunities do not repeat.
- Beware of switching costs! Switching costs are significantly more costly than they appear and prevent flow state.
- Commit to deadlines. It's never okay to miss.
- It's okay to be wrong, just not confident and wrong.
02
Hire for attitude over skills
- Skills can change; changing attitude requires a brain transplant.
03
Olympian work ethic
- We dream big and are dedicated to winning. Startups are difficult and demand much work. We hire those who are committed to that.
- In-office culture. Proximity accelerates collaboration and forges trust.
- Effort and input dictate results. Dedication to be the top 1% of the craft.
- We only want people who opt-in and are excited about this culture to unlock intensity and velocity.
- Growth does not happen in comfort. Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.
- We are all committed to making a once-in-a-generation company, and this should be everyone's top priority.
- Deride the 9-to-5 rest-and-vest ethic.
- Peak performance requires ample sleep.
04
Small autonomous teams
- Small teams with total end-to-end ownership and independence are the fastest operators, catalyzing communication and decision-making.
- Remove any "process" and need for external approval.
- Trust the team to make the correct decision. "Disagree and commit".
- Managers exist to support and empower their direct reports, not vice versa.
- Big engineering teams are a symptom of bad architecture and weak leadership.
- The best engineers make PMs redundant. The PM role only exists elsewhere because most engineers are lazy about understanding the problem.
05
Protecting the underperformer punishes the performer
- Camaraderie is dangerous when it makes it hard to challenge people's work. Avoid the tendency to protect colleagues instead of holding them accountable.
- Being nice to one underperformer harms the dozens of people doing their jobs well who get hurt if we do not fix the problem spots.
- Conflict avoidance wrecks communication, blurs expectations, and breeds anxiety.
- Direct, assertive candor kills anxiety. Say what is wrong, say what good looks like, and do it early.
- "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent." ~ Adam Smith
06
Obsess over process, not outcomes
- Define success as process execution, not outcome achievement. Bad: "Hit $1M ARR this quarter". Good: "Run 10 qualified demos per week". Outcomes are diagnostic feedback on your process, not the objective you optimize for. When results disappoint, interrogate the process. Never just demand better results.
- Set one outcome goal for direction. Spend your energy designing the processes that make that outcome inevitable.
- Outcomes are lagging indicators you cannot control. Processes are leading indicators you can.
- Anxiety signals wrong focus. If your team is stressed about metrics they cannot control, you have set the wrong goals. Redirect attention to executable actions like improving your process.
- Small process wins compound. A 1% improvement to a daily process compounds to 37x over a year. A 10% improvement to an annual outcome is just 10%.
07
Limit the number of details, and make every detail perfect
- It is better to ship something small and incredible than something large and mediocre that we would need to rebuild later.
- "Speed vs. quality" is a cope for teams that are bad at both.
08
Internal improvements compound productivity
- Make short-term sacrifices as investments for long-term gains.
- All the real benefits in life come from compound interest.
- Improving technical foundations, infrastructure, and internal tooling is the only way for engineering capabilities to compound. Build the tools that build the tools. Multiply productivity.
- Most ontological systems and data models are handicapped and unscalable because engineers neglect modeling.
- Automate testing (after following Elon's algorithm for process refinement).
- Writing good code without tech debt is not enough. Take the opportunity while working in a module to make other improvements.
09
Recognize the heroes
- Recognize individuals who contribute beyond expectations. Absence of recognition breeds resentment.
- Celebrate wins publicly; shared triumph builds momentum.
10
Leaders lead from the front
- Leaders are directors, not facilitators. Consensus is a means to avoid accountability.
- Leaders hold an extremely high bar for talent and aim to be the best engineer on their team. Not secretly; openly.
- Managers should spend at least 20% of their time coding or reviewing code.
Join Us
We know this culture is not for everyone. That's the point.
We are a small team building a once-in-a-generation company. It's a wildly fun adventure. You'll learn more in two weeks than in a year at Big Tech. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who demand the same of themselves, reach out and tell us about a hard problem you've solved.