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Hey there, it’s tech reporter Alexandra Sternlicht filling in for Allie.
Everyone is talking about “vibe coding” (using LLMs to code apps, websites and so on), but no one is talking about “vibe business.” This is perhaps because all startups, to varying extents, are vibe businesses—operating on unspoken built-if-sold and ask-for-forgiveness-not-permission principles. But one startup founder is trying to monetize this reality.
“You just need to give us some general ideas on what to do, what to sell, what’s your goal and we’ll handle the rest,” says Xiaoyin Qu, founder of HeyBoss.AI, which helps clients build websites and businesses with teams of AI avatar executives. “We’re essentially a technology digital team for any business…with particular agents that have particular functions.”
Qu recently garnered attention for making an AI avatar to be her own company’s CEO and having it assist in negotiations for HeyBoss’$3.5 million seed round led by OpenAI Startup Fund.
HeyBoss aims to staff its customers’ businesses with similar AI employees, each customized for different roles and based on specific criteria—say, a designer named Nova with UX/UI skills and an artistic personality, or a brand strategist who can synthesize competitor strategies. These digital employees are essentially chatbots that a business owner converses and collaborates with from the PC or smartphone, similar to the way you might use ChatGPT. According to Qu, HeyBoss’s virtual employees are built with LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, as well as proprietary models.
When I met Qu over Zoom, HeyBoss.AI’s avatar CEO Astra, a red-skinned woman with striking blue eyes and donning a bodysuit, was positioned in a still frame on the wall behind her. “She’s faster, smarter, and more reliable than any human executive I’ve worked with,” says Qu in the company’s funding announcement.
HeyBoss is betting that people’s preference for human colleagues extends to human-esque avatars so that startups would hire it over a non-personified LLM like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Qu is targeting less tech literate people than those who are vibe coding their way into big tech jobs; people who might want to use AI to start a yoga business or bakery, for example.
With relatively low interest rates and ubiquitous AI tools that theoretically decrease the capital and time required to start companies, the vibe business phenomenon has the potential to grow, inspiring more people to start their own companies.
HeyBoss is not Qu’s first business. I initially met her in 2021 when she made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list (which I used to edit) for her virtual events company Run The World. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Run The World exploded—hosting 10,000 events in its first month post-launch and growing from five to 45 employees during that time with $15 million in funding from backers like Andreessen Horowitz.
Things went south for Run the World when society reopened and people absconded from virtual events. As Run the World dissolved via asset fire sale, Qu and her cofounder Xuan Jiang engaged in a legal battle. First, Run the World, then-helmed by Qu, sued Jiang for computer fraud, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty, per Axios. Then Jiang countersued Qu, RTW and a16z and others for discrimination. Ultimately, Qu, RTW and its investors effectively won the case.
This lived experience is maybe part of Qu’s decision to do things differently with HeyBoss. She’s hiring a human “vibe growth marketer” for HeyBoss. In a LinkedIn post about the job she says: “Fuck traditional job requirements: Majors, years of experience, degree, GPA, fancy schools etc. Don’t care. Your job: Make people talk about Heyboss all the time,” she writes. “Your only rule: 👉 Blow it up. But don’t get me arrested.”
See you Thursday,
Alexandra Sternlicht
X: @iamsternlicht
Email: alexandra.sternlicht@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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