How These 3 Founders are building on Open Claw | E2248

Welcome to the agentic revolution. We are no longer just chatting with large language models; we are handing them the keys to the kingdom. In a recent episode of This Week in Startups, set in the not-so-distant future of February 2026, the ecosystem has shifted dramatically with the arrival of Open Claw (formerly Clawbot). This open-source platform allows founders to create "replicants"—autonomous agents capable of executing complex, multi-step tasks across the web.

The days of AI being sandboxed in a chat window are over. We are witnessing a fundamental change in how startups are built, staffed, and scaled. Below, we break down how three different founders are leveraging Open Claw to automate operations, integrate visual perception into hardware, and build the infrastructure that powers this new wave of technology.

Key Takeaways

• Agents vs. Chatbots: Open Claw represents a shift from passive information retrieval to active task execution, allowing agents to access APIs, databases, and emails to perform work autonomously.
• The "Replicant" Workforce: Lean startups can now run multiple complex experiments simultaneously, replacing the need for large mid-tier staff with autonomous agents that handle diligence, content creation, and bug fixing.
• Visual Intelligence: Developers are bridging the gap between digital agents and the physical world by integrating Open Claw with smart glasses, enabling real-time visual analysis and commerce.
• Hosted Infrastructure: As local agent deployment remains resource-heavy and security-risky, a new market for secure, cloud-hosted agent environments is emerging rapidly.

Unlocking the "Keys to the Kingdom" with Autonomous Workflows

For years, Large Language Models (LLMs) were impressive but powerless. They were trapped in a text box, unable to affect the outside world. Open Claw changes this dynamic by authenticating with external services—GitHub, Gmail, PostHog, and Stripe—allowing the AI to act like a high-level employee.

Preetesh Kumar, founder of The Wellness Company, demonstrated how he utilizes an agent named "Awa" to function as a Chief of Staff. This is not about simple prompts; it is about complex, multi-step chain-of-thought reasoning.

Automating Due Diligence and Analytics

In one striking example, Kumar tasked his agent with a request that would typically require a data analyst hours to complete. He asked Awa to identify active users of a specific product ("Tempo") via PostHog, filter the data, export it to a spreadsheet, and draft emails to those users for reference checks.

"If you were to ask ChatGPT or Gemini to do something like this, they would say, 'Well, we don't have access.' If you use Open Claw and you authenticate, it not only will go in there and get the data, it's going to think of what other steps you want it to take."

The Self-Healing Loop: From Support Ticket to Code Fix

Perhaps the most profound use case is the automation of technical support and engineering. Kumar set up a "cron job" (a scheduled task) that monitors support emails. When a user reported a bug regarding water temperature detection on an Apple Watch app, the agent performed the following autonomous loop:

1. Identification: It read the email and identified it as a bug.
2. Investigation: It accessed the codebase via GitHub to locate the relevant API configuration.
3. Diagnosis: It messaged the team on Slack with a probability-ranked list of causes.
4. Resolution: A secondary agent (Claude) was tagged, fixed the code, and created a new branch for testing.

This reduces the friction of software maintenance to near zero, allowing founders to focus purely on product strategy rather than triage.

Bridging the Physical and Digital Worlds

While software automation is transforming the desktop, developers are also hacking Open Claw to interact with the physical world. Sean Luu, an independent developer, showcased a prototype integrating Open Claw with Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses.

Real-Time Visual Commerce

By using Gemini Live as a perception layer, Luu created a system where the glasses capture visual frames of the real world—such as a specific brand of lens wipes—and feed that data to the agent. The agent then searches Amazon, confirms the product with the user via voice, and adds the item to the cart.

This creates a two-layer agentic system:

• Layer 1 (Perception): Interprets the visual and audio input from the user's environment.
• Layer 2 (Execution): Open Claw takes the structured task and executes the browser automation to complete the purchase.

The implications extend far beyond shopping. In retail environments, a single manager walking through a store could verbally note inventory levels, with the agent visually confirming stock and placing wholesale orders in real-time. In security or law enforcement scenarios, such systems could provide real-time threat assessment, de-escalating situations by offering data faster than human cognition allows.

The Infrastructure Opportunity: Hosting the Revolution

Running powerful agents locally presents significant challenges. It requires substantial RAM (often failing on standard micro-instances) and poses security risks, as granting an agent "root" access to a personal machine exposes sensitive files and passwords.

Vishnu, a software engineer, recognized this bottleneck after his own computer was overwhelmed by running multiple agent instances. He pivoted to running Open Claw on a cloud-based Virtual Machine (VM). This solved the resource constraint but revealed a larger market need: "Agent Hosting."

"I was tired of typing it all the time... It told me, 'Hey, I don't have a key. Do you have a Deepgram key?' I provided it, and it just did all the setup itself."

Vishnu’s platform, Agent37, allows users to spin up secure, remote instances of Open Claw. This creates a sandbox where the AI can be powerful without being dangerous to the user's personal data. The rapid organic growth of his platform highlights that while the AI models are the engine, the infrastructure required to run them safely is a burgeoning industry in itself.

The Economic Shift: The Rise of the "Alicorn"

The operational efficiency provided by agents like Open Claw is fundamentally changing startup economics. Historically, launching a consumer app required a team of 10+ people and millions in seed funding. Today, founders can build, ship, and maintain multiple products with a fraction of the headcount.

This efficiency leads to the concept of the "Alicorn"—a unicorn company that has the wings of a Pegasus, allowing it to skip entire rounds of venture funding. By replacing mid-tier knowledge work with $40/month agent subscriptions, founders retain significantly more equity and extend their runway indefinitely.

Conclusion

We are entering a golden age for builders. The barriers to entry—technical debt, operational costs, and staffing requirements—are collapsing. Whether it is automating complex due diligence, integrating AI into wearable hardware, or building the server infrastructure to host these digital workers, the message is clear: the tools are ready.

The founders who embrace these "replicants" today will not just operate faster; they will fundamentally rewrite the playbook on how companies are built.