# Mahmoud Zalt

Solo founder building an AI workforce platform. Happy to join your podcast or show and talk shop, no pitch, just what I've actually learned.

## About me

I have been writing software professionally since 2010, mostly backend, infrastructure, and developer tools. A couple of the open-source projects I built along the way, Laradock and Apiato, ended up in the daily workflow of millions of developers. Since December 2022 I have been building Sistava, an AI workforce platform, alone: no team, no funding. I use my own AI employees to run the company itself, so most of what I talk about is not theory, it is whatever actually worked (or broke) for me that week.

## What I can talk about

- Running a company solo with an AI workforce: what it actually looks like day to day to hand real work to AI employees instead of hiring humans for it.
- Building AI agents that finish the job, not just chat: why most "AI agents" today are chatbots with better branding, and what changes once they have to complete real, multi-step work.
- Bootstrapping without funding: building and running Sistava alone since December 2022, no investors, no co-founder, no team.
- What 15+ years of developer tools taught me: lessons from building Laradock and Apiato, open-source projects used by millions of developers.
- Where software is actually heading: why the next shift is software that just does the work for you, not another AI feature bolted onto an app.

## Introducing me on air

My guest today is Mahmoud Zalt. He's a solo founder who has been writing software professionally since 2010, and built Laradock and Apiato, two open-source projects used by millions of developers. Since December 2022 he has been building Sistava, an AI workforce platform, entirely alone: no team, no funding, no investors. He also runs the company itself through a team of AI employees he built, so today we're going to talk about what that actually looks like in practice.

## Past appearances

- All from my earlier tech career (backend, DevOps, open source), nothing about Sistava or AI, that's new territory.
- Conference, 2017: IT-Konekt, Belgrade, Serbia.
- Meetup talk, May 2016: Vagrant vs Docker, MENA Dev Tech Meetup #1, Altcity, Beirut.
- Podcast, May 2016: Adventures with Laravel, Coder Voice podcast episode 6.
- Conference, autumn 2015: HTML5 DevConf, San Francisco, California.
- Conference, ~2013: Web Summit, Dublin, Ireland.
- Conference, ~2012: GITEX, Dubai, UAE.
- Also mentored and ran workshops at startup weekends and hackathons in Beirut (2016), and spoke at various meetups, webinars, and startup events over the years, including in Florida.

## Book me

Email press@sista.ai with your show, the angle, and a couple of dates.