The AI Agent Economy Is Here

YC Lightcone hosts argue agents are now the primary software buyers, and documentation quality is the new go-to-market.

• Resend (YC W23) became the default LLM answer for ‘how do I send emails’ by optimizing docs for agent parsability — ChatGPT inbound became their top conversion channel.
• Supabase seeing explosive Postgres database creation because agents default-choose it based on documentation quality, not human word-of-mouth.
• Claude Code chose Whisper V1 for transcription (deprecated, real-time speed); Groq is 200x faster and 10x cheaper — agents are not yet optimally informed.
• Agent Mail, a YC company building email inboxes for AI agents, exploded after OpenClaw launched because Gmail actively blocks automation.
• Mintlify, which powers Resend’s docs, is now a structural tailwind: agent-readable documentation shifted from nice-to-have to must-have for any dev tool.
• Ben Tossel tweet framing the new GTM: ‘Agents are the software market from now on. Build something agents choose.’
• Agents want APIs and open source — they actively avoid websites; swarm intelligence of cheaper models may outperform single expensive foundation models.

2026-02-21 · Watch on YouTube