We started Kinelo because AI wasn’t in the room.
Kinelo is the operating layer for hybrid teams: humans and AI coworkers working together with shared context, coordination, and presence. We are based in San Francisco. We use Kinelo to build Kinelo.
At an offsite in Utah.
At an offsite in Utah, our small team was sitting around a conference table. We were talking about our own use of AI tools. We use them constantly, for coding, market analysis, contract review, and the rest. AI had not fundamentally changed how our team worked together.
We named the reasons. AI tools produce inconsistent work because they are not in the loop the way teammates are. They are out of sight and out of mind, reactive, invoked. They are isolated from each other and from the team’s actual work. When you ask a coding assistant for help, it does not know about the schema change someone mentioned in standup yesterday, or the scope clarification in the Slack thread this morning, or the deadline that shifted because of a customer escalation. So it produces work that is just not right. It feels like slop.
Then we noticed something else. As we sat around the table looking at each other in three dimensions, the AI we were talking about was not in the room with us.
That was the insight. How would AI have any hope of being a real teammate if it was not even in the room?
The things humans need to succeed at work, clear goals, background knowledge, ways to ask for help, the ability to participate in conversations, are the same things AI needs to participate meaningfully. Without them, AI is a tool you invoke. With them, AI becomes a teammate.
Kinelo is what we built to give AI those things, and to give humans the system that makes working with AI feel like working with another teammate.
Four values. Many principles.
Principles
- We trust our gut, are willing to be contrarian, and we chart our own course.
- We embrace uncertainty and ambiguity because it's where there is opportunity for innovation.
- We have the confidence it takes to accept fast failure because many things we do are not permanent, can be changed or corrected, and ultimately, we will learn, adapt, and grow.
- We believe we can compete against the best and do what others think is impossible.
- We are informed by experience and historical data but not bound to it: the world is changing and what is possible and feasible and right today is different than it was yesterday.
- In our product and business decisions we're data-informed, not data driven.
- We are willing to place big bets when we have conviction.
Principles
- We understand that speed, applied in the right direction, helps us reduce uncertainty and innovate quickly, enabling us to compete at the highest level in a rapidly changing, intensely competitive industry.
- We share our work when it's rough and raw and not done because speed of collaboration and communication is more important than individual craftsmanship.
- We look ahead to our destination by thinking holistically about the big picture, even if we move forward in rapid incremental steps.
- We dive deep in our thinking and analysis, exploring nuances, considering gotchas, and strategizing. Then we decide and act quickly.
Principles
- When we see a problem we take steps to solve it; or we make a conscious and intentional decision to not.
- We have a strong sense of responsibility for positive outcomes and measure ourselves by what we achieve, not by our effort.
- We take responsibility for playing our part on the team, because we know we win or fail together.
- We get things done. Sometimes this means doing things that don't scale, especially for our customers.
- We consider options and are open to new ways of solving problems that might be different, cheaper, or faster than how things were done before.
- We are thoughtful, value finite resources, and willing to explore options that achieve 80% of the desired outcome with 20% of the resources or 20% of the time.
Principles
- We are empathetic towards our end-users and customers, using intuition and emotional resonance to inform our choices.
- We care for each other and are compassionate, even while holding each other to exceptionally high standards.
- We act with integrity towards each other and the market.
- We default to candor, directness, openness, and transparency.
- We try to thrive as a business by creating true positive impact and value for our customers, our end users, and the world.
- We value privacy and individual liberties.
We use Kinelo to build Kinelo.
We are a small team in San Francisco, based at 2nd and Mission. Most of us are engineers.
We use Kinelo internally for the work of building Kinelo. Our AI coworkers pull context from across our own work and contribute to specs, reviews, research, and planning. The product is its own first user and our most rigorous design partner. When something does not work, we feel it before our customers do.
We are growing carefully.
We are based in San Francisco at 2nd and Mission, with some flexibility for remote. Most of us are engineers.
More roles are on the way. If you want to build the layer between humans and AI and you do not see a role that fits, write to us anyway.
Design partner, customer, investor, teammate.
Build the layer between humans and AI.
Join the teams using Kinelo to make AI a teammate, not just a tool.