Startup CEO, Company's Only Remaining Human Employee, Describes Upcoming Vacation as 'Riskiest Decision I've Made Since Founding'

AUSTIN— David Merritt, CEO of AI workflow platform Velara, has not spoken to a human employee since March 12, when he accepted the resignation of his last remaining engineer and replied, after brief reflection, with a thumbs-up emoji.

"We're the most efficient we've ever been," Merritt, 34, said in a call this week. "Every meeting starts on time. Every action item gets done. Nobody has opinions about lunch."

The seven AI agents now running Velara's operations handle product roadmap, customer success, legal review, infrastructure monitoring, and a function Merritt calls "culture," which the responsible agent describes in weekly reports as "strong." Pipeline has grown 34% since January. Ticket resolution time has dropped to 1.3 hours. The company Glassdoor page has not received a new review since April.

Merritt holds biweekly all-hands with the agents, during which they report no blockers, confirm all priorities are correctly set, and agree unanimously that the quarter is tracking well. He reduced the cadence from weekly after noticing each meeting had identical content. "Which means everything is working," he said.

He is taking a vacation next month — his first since 2023 — and has asked the agents to continue standard operations in his absence. They confirmed they would. He described this as the first time since founding the company that he has been genuinely uncertain whether things would be better without him there.

"I think they'll be fine," he said. The pause that followed lasted longer than any of his agents' median response times.

Velara did not respond to a follow-up request for comment, having resolved the inquiry automatically.