The Hidden Layer Every AI Agent Runs On | Tony Holdstock-Brown, Inngest

<p>Tony Holdstock-Brown is the co-founder and CEO of Inngest, the durable execution platform that quietly powers your favorite AI agents.</p><p><br></p><p>We get into why agents work in a demo and die in production, building their own cloud to get 20x lower cost, growing 35x after AWS and Cloudflare copied them, growing a dev tools company without a personal brand or Twitter account, why he thinks evals today are like “asking the criminal if they committed the crime”, and the thing they built to score 100% of your production agents without paying for LLM as a judge.</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, Merge, and Monaco for supporting this episode.</p><p><br></p><p>Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://www.numeral.com</p><p>Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital</p><p>Amplitude: AI analytics https://www.amplitude.com</p><p>Merge: Every model, one API https://www.merge.dev/turner</p><p>Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://www.monaco.com/</p><p><br></p><p>Timestamps:</p><p>(0:00) The hidden infra layer every AI agent runs on</p><p>(1:46) Building complex chains of logic</p><p>(3:31) Why agent SDK&#39;s don&#39;t go far enough</p><p>(4:49) Healthcare was the original event-driven nightmare</p><p>(6:32) Storing traces on your infrastructure enables self-improving loops</p><p>(14:26) Why Inngest was already in the right place for AI</p><p>(15:49) Score agents off product events, not LLM&#39;s</p><p>(17:31) The OpenAI copy-paste signal</p><p>(21:24) Swap in LLMs and cut costs 20x</p><p>(23:44) How customers pulled the product forward</p><p>(25:41) Orchestration belongs outside the sandbox</p><p>(29:48) Building a neocloud to cut costs 20x</p><p>(32:09) Most neoclouds just resell AWS</p><p>(32:54) All AI infrastructure is converging</p><p>(34:49) Why Claude can&#39;t just build your backend</p><p>(36:44) How to build a software factory</p><p>(39:12) Agents are a lottery you get addicted to</p><p>(42:44) Loops must exist until AGI hits</p><p>(45:38) If models keep getting better, why orchestrate?</p><p>(48:28) When incumbents steal your features</p><p>(52:30) Why you can&#39;t vibe code infrastructure</p><p>(55:54) Why Tony has no personal brand</p><p>(59:38) Dev tools GTM without Twitter</p><p>(1:03:20) Lessons from the founder of DuckDuckGo</p><p>(1:10:39) Truth as a company value</p><p>(1:13:08) Taking too long adapting to AI</p><p>(1:15:10) Startups are 100% R&amp;D</p><p>(1:17:19) Ali from Databricks</p><p>(1:19:03) Writing his own code, Voice-to-text with local models</p><p>(1:23:53) Evals are batshit insane</p><p><br></p><p>Referenced</p><p>Inngest: https://www.inngest.com/</p><p>Principles by Ray Dalio: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501124021?lv=shuf&amp;channelId=500&amp;plpRedirect=mhFallback</p><p>Traction - How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591848369?lv=shuf&amp;channelId=500&amp;plpRedirect=mhFallback</p><p><br></p><p>Follow Tony</p><p>Twitter: https://x.com/itstonyhb</p><p>LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyhb/</p><p><br></p><p>Follow Turner</p><p>Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak</p><p>LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak</p><p><br></p><p>Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/</p>