Company profile · 3 min read
MadeThis: an AI team for launching and operating a business
MadeThis combines AI employees, business infrastructure, APIs and a local MCP server for founders building and running small businesses.
Cofounder of Lazyweb (a16z Speedrun). Previously grew subscriptions and built native ads at Duolingo. Writes First1000 (90,000+ subscribers).
Published · Updated
MadeThis is selling an AI team for launching and operating a small business.
What it does
The current homepage says MadeThis can build, market, sell and support a business through connected AI employees. Its examples cover dropshipping, agencies, online courses, SaaS products, clothing brands, photography, services and furniture. The company is not positioning itself as one narrow workflow. It is positioning itself as the operating layer around a new business.
The developer docs make the product more concrete for technical buyers. MadeThis exposes products, checkout, orders, email, leads, social publishing, ads, domains, webhooks and payouts through a documented HTTP API and OpenAPI schema. It also documents business-scoped API keys, idempotency keys for create requests, stable error codes and a local stdio MCP server for eligible developer accounts.
Why I’d look closer
The pricing is unusually clear for an autonomous-business pitch. Starter is $49/month for one business and 5,000 credits. Growth is $79/month for three businesses and 10,000 credits. Scale is $199/month for ten businesses and 30,000 credits. The plans include per-day safety caps, and Enterprise starts at $5,000/month. Those terms are published on MadeThis’s pricing page.
The founder context is also relevant. The YC profile describes Jacob Wright as a former founding engineer and forward-deployed engineering manager at RunPod who built and scaled an AI consumer app; Cambree Bernkopf is described as a product designer who worked on Remi’s consumer products; Santiago Gomez Paz previously founded Zaymo and researched synthetic data at MIT CSAIL.
What I’d ask
The breadth is the advantage and the risk. I would choose one business type and inspect its product, checkout, email, ad and payout permissions before turning on a broader AI team. I would also ask how a business owner reviews outbound messages, refunds, ad changes and payout actions. The docs’ idempotency and business-scoped credentials are a good starting boundary; they are not a substitute for reviewing every write path.
My editorial take
Shortlist MadeThis if speed-to-first-business matters more than owning a bespoke stack from day one. The $49 entry point makes the experiment legible. It is less compelling for an established operator who already has a reliable commerce, CRM and marketing stack and only wants one narrow automation. The real product is coordination across many small business surfaces.
Quick facts
| Field | Sourced detail |
|---|---|
| Product | AI employees and connected business infrastructure |
| Buyer | New founders and small-business operators |
| Pricing | $49 Starter; $79 Growth; $199 Scale; Enterprise from $5,000/month |
| Developer surface | HTTP API, OpenAPI, CLI and local stdio MCP server |
| Safety detail | Daily credit caps and idempotency keys are documented |
Sources checked
| Source | Checked |
|---|---|
| YC company profile | 2026-09-19 |
| MadeThis homepage | 2026-09-19 |
| MadeThis pricing | 2026-09-19 |
| MadeThis developer docs | 2026-09-19 |
Cohort context
MadeThis is listed in Fall 2025. In our 2026-09-18 directory snapshot, 90 of 146 listed companies in that cohort have YC’s primary industry label B2B (61.6%). This is a current-directory comparison, not an original intake count or a performance ranking. Nine-cohort dataset.
Public website snapshot
Observed 2026-09-19T16:15:09.547Z in raw homepage HTML. This records visible metadata and advertised links, not agent execution or product quality.
| Signal | Homepage observation |
|---|---|
| Product description metadata | Observed |
| Canonical link | Observed |
| H1 or H2 heading | Observed |
| Typed structured data | Observed |
| Docs/developer link | Observed |
| Pricing link | Observed |
| llms.txt link | Not observed in this response |
| Markdown alternate | Not observed in this response |
Public observations · Collection method. Missing links here do not establish that a capability or file is absent elsewhere.
About the author
Cofounder of Lazyweb (a16z Speedrun). Previously grew subscriptions and built native ads at Duolingo. Writes First1000 (90,000+ subscribers).
I cofound Lazyweb and publish Mudpie. This is an owner-written publication, not an independent testing organization. Research notes distinguish observations, sourced reporting and editorial judgment.
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