The first few hires at a startup can define the company. But increasingly, not every new capability requires a new employee.
AI agents are beginning to take on engineering, customer support, research, and operational work that would previously have been assigned to early team members. For founders, that creates a new question before they even open a job requisition: What should people own, and what should be delegated to AI?
At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, Josh Reeves, CEO and co-founder of Gusto; Michelle Johnson, senior vice president at Insight Partners; and John Koelliker, CEO and co-founder of Leland, come together on the Builders Stage for an insightful session called “Hiring When AI Is a Co-Founder.”
This session will explore how early-stage companies are building teams where humans and AI agents work alongside each other — and how founders can do that without sacrificing speed, accountability, or culture.
Join them at Moscone West in San Francisco, October 13–15, alongside 10,000+ startups, investors, and tech decision-makers exploring what it takes to build and scale the next generation of companies. Register now and save up to $200 on your Disrupt pass before rates increase on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Save up to 30% more when you register as a group.
The first 10 people in a startup may no longer all be people
For an early-stage company, every hire is a trade-off between capability, cost, and speed. AI agents add another option.
Engineering tasks, customer support, and operational work can increasingly be delegated to systems capable of completing multistep tasks rather than simply helping an employee complete them. That gives founders an opportunity to rethink what their earliest teams should actually look like.
Instead of automatically asking, “Who do we hire next?,” the starting question can become: “What work needs to be done — and is a person the best way to do it?” That distinction matters.
Giving work to an AI agent can help a small team move faster, but it also introduces new questions around ownership. Who checks the work? Who makes the final decision? What happens when an agent gets something wrong? And which responsibilities are too important to delegate? Those are no longer theoretical questions for companies building AI-native startups.
All these questions, and more, will be answered on the Builders Stage at Disrupt. Grab your pass by September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT to save up to $200. Bring your community and save up to 30%.
Three perspectives on the AI-native team shared at Disrupt
Josh Reeves sees the shift across a particularly broad customer base. Gusto supports more than 500,000 companies across payroll, benefits, compliance, onboarding, HR, and retirement, while combining AI with more than a decade of experience serving small businesses. That puts Gusto close to the day-to-day realities of companies deciding how — and when — to grow their teams.
Michelle Johnson brings the startup scaling perspective. At Insight Partners, she works with CEOs and CROs across North America and Europe on go-to-market strategy, revenue organizations, and AI implementation. Before joining Insight, she helped scale Flock Safety from less than $1 million to $90 million in ARR as an early sales and revenue operations leader.
Her perspective raises a different set of questions. If AI agents can research prospects, prepare outreach, analyze customer data, or manage parts of the sales process, what should the human members of a revenue team concentrate on? And how does that change the skills a startup should prioritize when hiring?
John Koelliker sits directly at the intersection of talent and AI. As CEO and co-founder of Leland, a career and talent platform for the AI era, he brings experience across product and growth roles at LinkedIn, Curated, and Uber, alongside building a company focused on how people develop and apply skills in a changing labor market.
Together, they bring three different views of the same challenge: How do you design a startup team when some of the work can be done by agents from day one? Register by September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT to save up to $200 on your pass and hear this session live on the Builders Stage. Bring your team or community with you to save up to 30% on passes.
What should people still own vs. AI?
Some of the most important decisions inside a startup are difficult to reduce to a workflow.
Who understands what customers really need? Who challenges a bad strategy? Who takes responsibility when something fails? Who builds relationships, motivates a team, or decides when the data is pointing in the wrong direction? As AI agents become more capable, those questions could become more important, not less.
The role of an early employee may increasingly be defined by judgment, ownership, and the ability to direct both people and machines — rather than simply completing a larger volume of tasks. That has implications across the startup ecosystem.
Learn how to build the company, not just the technology, on the Builders Stage at Disrupt
Early-stage companies have always competed on their ability to do more with less. AI agents could take that principle much further.
But a company is more than the sum of the tasks it completes. Founders still need people who can make decisions, take responsibility, understand customers, and create the culture around which a business grows.
The challenge is deciding where those people create the greatest value — and where an agent might do the job instead. That’s the conversation Josh Reeves, Michelle Johnson, and John Koelliker will take on at Disrupt.
Join them on the Builders Stage, and explore what happens when AI doesn’t just help your startup — but also becomes part of the team. Then continue the conversation with 10,000+ founders, investors, and operators across Moscone West, the Expo Hall, Startup Battlefield 200, and countless networking opportunities.
The startup org chart is changing. Learn to build yours for what comes next, only at Disrupt 2026. Secure your pass now and save up to $200 before September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Save up to 30% when you register as a group.