Yoann Defay

Founder, OpenLabor · Bali

I build AI employees.
And help operators ship theirs.

AI agents that run real workflows, so your business scales without growing headcount.

Building

The world's best minds, on your team.

Hire AI employees that run on your Company Brain: knowledge, skills, workflows. So your team operates like one 20× its size.

Currently Building OpenLabor (private beta) Advising 5 mid-market ops teams Writing weekly on AI implementation More →

Writing

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AUG 2026

How AI agents evolved: five rungs from a text box to a workforce

Raw API, agent library, code harness, personal OS, team OS. Each rung turns the one below it into a component, and the gaps between them shrank from two years to nine months.

AUG 2026

Your bottleneck isn't the model. It's the other 90%.

Every company has a top 10% who run Claude Code, OpenClaw and Cowork like a team of engineers — and a 90% still typing questions into ChatGPT. That gap, not model quality, is what caps output.

JUN 2026

The money meta: every online gold rush since 2010, and where AI agents really are on the curve

Casino, affiliate, e-commerce, crypto, courses, AI. Every few years the online money meta rotates. Here's the pattern, the law underneath it, and why AI automation is the 2018-e-commerce moment, not the top.

JUN 2026

Thin harness, fat skill: how to build AI agents your automation agency can actually sell

Agno and AgentOS are the old way of building agents. OpenClaw is the new way. Here's the thin-harness, fat-skill approach we use at OpenLabor — and why it's the right base for an AI automation agency.

MAY 2026

Token count is the new headcount

We went from $200/month of AI subscriptions to $12,500/month of token spend in 3 months. Same speed in humans would be ~$125K/month payroll. Here's the math, the pattern, and why most companies will miss it.

MAY 2026

Mac mini vs VPS for OpenClaw: which to buy in 2026

A real cost-and-performance comparison: when a Mac mini beats a VPS for OpenClaw, when the VPS wins, and the hybrid setup I run.

Work

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25 projects in the last 10 years. Some live, some sunset, all of them taught me something.

Working with me

Done-for-you AI employees, fixed fee. One AI employee from $1K. A full AI team from $5K. Built on your playbooks, wired into your stack, handed over running.

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About

Engineering at École Centrale in France. Dropped out at 22, started my first company, moved to Asia. Based in Bali. 10 years building: affiliate, media-buy, SaaS, fintech, Web3, AI infra. Three years ago I started automating my own businesses with AI. Then AI started running them. Now I help others do the same. Read full bio →