How to Build an AI-Native Company in 2026

**Greg Isenberg** (0:00)
There are people that are spitting up agent workforces with hundreds of agents and subagents, and they're getting incredible amounts of work done. But how do you do it? And how should you think about it? And what are the strategies to actually create an AI agent workforce that under promises and over delivers? Well, today I brought on Allie K. Miller, and she's one of the most well-known AI voices ever. She's worked with IBM, she's worked with AWS, and she's managed multi-billion-dollar P&Ls in the AI space. I asked her a simple question, how do you manage your fleet of agents? In this episode, we cover a lot of ground, but by the end of it, you're going to understand how should you strategically think about spinning up AI agent workforces, where there's opportunities to create startups in the B2B space with AI agents, and a lot more. Enjoy the episode, and I'll see you at the end. Today's episode is brought to you by Brex. My company's been on Brex for a year and a half, and I started because I kept hearing companies like Vercell, OpenAI, Anthropic were using Brex, and I figured if they're using it, why shouldn't I? It's been a game changer. The thing that got me is how smooth it is. It's got high-limit cards, it's got banking, it's got AI that handles the back office busy work like expense reports which I don't want to do on its own. It's really just built for this agentic world. If you're building something new, it's time to get Brex. Check it out at brex.com/solutions/startups.
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I can't tell you how excited I am to finally have Allie Miller on the podcast. I've been begging her to come on. She's one of my favorite people in AI and I don't say that lightly.
Welcome to the show, Allie.

**Allie K. Miller** (1:55)
Thank you, Greg. And you are also one of my favorite people. So I'm actually very excited to talk about all the AI things that we're working on.

**Greg Isenberg** (2:03)
By the end of the episode, what are people going to learn?

**Allie K. Miller** (2:05)
I hope, one of the biggest mindset shifts that I'm going through right now is I feel like the term managing agents is wrong. And my hope is that people will understand what that mindset shift is, see a few examples and figure out how to start, how to make that mindset shift, what the first step should be.

**Greg Isenberg** (2:26)
Okay, perfect. So where do you want to start?

**Allie K. Miller** (2:29)
So this is, and I'm happy to debate you on this because we haven't chatted about this, but I feel like managing agents feels like I am their direct manager and I'm like, Suzy, go over there and Betty, go over there and Jeremy, go over here. And I feel like I am three rungs above at like an SVP overseeing level where I feel like I am setting up the infrastructure and then they are figuring out the best way to execute within that. And so I feel like I'm moving from managing to like waiting for escalations.
Or I feel like I'm moving away from delegating and more just deciding what should or shouldn't happen. And so it's a little bit more of the, like a, like a liability role where I just get to be the final say of what happens and come in for like critical thinking steps. But does it, like, am I the only one that feels like that is happening? I just, it feels like that word is wrong. Like I see managing agents everywhere and it just feels like anyone that is still talking about, you should manage agents, feels like early 2026 talk.

**Greg Isenberg** (3:40)
Also, like, do we want to manage agents is also the question. Like managing people is hard, you know what I mean? Like a big reason I think a lot of people like AI to do stuff for us is so we don't have to manage things, you know? So that's something else I've been thinking about.

**Allie K. Miller** (4:00)
Like I ran an org of about 100 people at AWS. The parts of people management that I loved, it was the making them better and empowering the shit out of them and seeing them completely blow past their ceiling, watching them get promotions, like that was the fun part and also seeing what we could do together. Things like, oh, we have to fill out this thing with the paper and the button and get me out of there. So I think the admin side of people management and the admin side of agent management, I want that fully gone. The things that I love about people, I'm bringing that over into agents, which is just like, how do I act as ambitiously as possible and get you to break through your ceiling? And one of the best prompts that I have done with my AI workforce is three words, and with like a little bit of explanation, but like at its core, it is three words that is the best prompt ever. So I have, my AI chief of staff is Simon. Simon runs like this whole org. And so I have 34 AI agents that work in this workforce. And it dawned on me that I was already functioning at the limit of my own imagination in my business. And that I could be doing way more ambitious things if only someone could manage me, right? Like could break, help me break through my ceiling. And obviously I have a lot of mentors and you're amazing at shaking people up and making me second guess how I'm doing things. It's really helpful. But it dawned on me, I was like, why am I not leaning on the AI agents to help me with this? Like why is everything that they're working on initially prompted by me? Even if it's a scheduled task, I still had to come up with that task and tell it to do it. So the best prompt, three words, and it's just do smart things.