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 [email protected] with your show, the angle, and a couple of dates.