I sold my AI startup for $1,800,000 – here’s why

So yeah, I just sold my AI startup for $1.8 million, but it wasn't some large corporation or a private equity firm that bought it. It was an open-source

project named Agent Zero started by Yan.

>> Hi,, I, am, Yan,, the, founder, of, AgentZero, and today I have a great announcement for the whole Agent Zero community as we are about to acquire some great talent from Vectal. From now on, we would be

from Vectal. From now on, we would be continuing as a single company, Agent Zero.

>> Okay,, so, how, did, this, even, happen?, Well,

it started in my AI community, The New Society. Jan was one of the very first

Society. Jan was one of the very first members and he wasn't just there to hang out. He was actually building something

out. He was actually building something and the thing he was building was an open- source AI agent framework named Agent Zero. Now back then I was spending

Agent Zero. Now back then I was spending all of my time doing YouTube and building vectal. But I was still keeping

building vectal. But I was still keeping an eye on what the new society members were building. His project was growing

were building. His project was growing insanely fast and it was all organic.

There was no paid advertising, nothing.

It was all through communities and GitHub. So about a year went by while I

GitHub. So about a year went by while I was building Bectal and Yan was building agent zero. I have known David for a

agent zero. I have known David for a couple of years now. We worked together and for quite some time I have really wanted David to join Agent Zero as a CEO. Although I am the author of the

CEO. Although I am the author of the idea and the founder of the project that alone does not give me any prerequisites to manage the project effectively and achieve exponential growth. In reality, my skills are highly

growth. In reality, my skills are highly technical and the role of CEO is considerably inefficient for me. But

since David has founded his own startup Vectel, which he had been fully dedicated to, this was not possible for a long time. And ultimately it became clear that the best way to bring not

only David but also his team of [snorts] specialists into AO would be to acquire the Vectal project under Agent Zero.

Through this merge, Agent Zero gains access to business knowhow, media reach through David's personal brand as well as Vectal's technologies and development team. Okay, so let me explain what

team. Okay, so let me explain what Vectal actually is. You can think of it as a combination of Chad GB and Notion aka the ultimate productivity AI agent.

It helps entrepreneurs and busy people manage their life, organize their tasks and put their notes into a single place with multiple different AI agents that can help you execute your work. Now

Vectal is my first ever AI startup, and we went from zero to over $155,000 in ARR, annual recurring revenue, in very short amount of time. But the

market is super crowded and all the features that were revolutionary when we started. We can see that notion

started. We can see that notion ClickUp, and all their other competitors are quickly implementing them. And so

while we were growing, we weren't growing as fast as agent zero. So what

is agent zero in a nutshell? It's an

autonomous AI agent that lives in its own virtual computer controlling it.

Think of it as an AI Linux that manages and improves itself. No coding

preparations, installations. AO does it all on its own on the fly when it needs it. And the best part, it's fully open-

it. And the best part, it's fully open- source, local, private, no restrictions.

Once you download Agent Zero, it is truly yours. We build Agent Zero as a

truly yours. We build Agent Zero as a counterweight to big tech AI and their proprietary solutions. So, let me break

proprietary solutions. So, let me break down while this deal makes sense. First

off, the founders, me and Yan, have a lot of complimentarity. I am more of an entrepreneur, more of a businessman.

I've been an entrepreneur since 15 years of age. But Yan is more of a developer.

of age. But Yan is more of a developer.

He's super technical. He's the

definition of a 10x engineer. So our

skill sets and our character traits and personality types are very complimentary. The second reason is that

complimentary. The second reason is that the teams themselves are very complimentary. My team is more focused

complimentary. My team is more focused on social media, marketing, YouTube growth, operations while Jan and his team are more focused on the development, the open source, building the project. And the third reason is

the project. And the third reason is that the startups themselves are also very complimentary. Veal has over 70,000

very complimentary. Veal has over 70,000 customers. It's deployed full stack app.

customers. It's deployed full stack app.

It's monetized. Agent Zero is fully open source. It's free. You can run it

source. It's free. You can run it locally, but it doesn't have the social media presence and the marketing that Vectel has. And so when Jan brought this

Vectel has. And so when Jan brought this deal to the table, it quickly became apparent that if we combine our companies and our teams, we could go much further than we could separately.

Agent Zero has a tremendous potential.

Sometimes it feels unbelievable how capable it is. But great design and development effort can only push us so far. Now it's time for David's

far. Now it's time for David's management skills and marketing team to kickstart the adoption of Agent Zero.

>> So, what, happens, now, after, the acquisition? Well, as Jan said earlier

acquisition? Well, as Jan said earlier we'll be continuing under one company Agent Zero. And we want to keep Agent

Agent Zero. And we want to keep Agent Zero fully open source, runningable locally on computer and free to access.

Our goal is to scale Agent Zero into an actual research company that can support multiple different open source projects in the future. And thanks to my team and my personal brand, we're going to put Agent Zero in front of millions of

people. And our strategy is actually

people. And our strategy is actually very simple. More users results in more

very simple. More users results in more contributors. More open source

contributors. More open source contributors results in a better product. And better product results in

product. And better product results in more users. And the cycle repeats. This

more users. And the cycle repeats. This

is the flywheel that we're going to build. It's very clear to both me and

build. It's very clear to both me and Yan that opensource AI agents are the future. And we plan on making Agent Zero

future. And we plan on making Agent Zero the leader of that movement. Now, we

have a lot of things in the works, but perhaps the biggest announcement is the release, of, Agent0, 1.0., We're, going to exit the beta version and make it officially the 1.0 version of Agent

Zero, which is coming probably in the second half of Q1 of 2026. So, if you haven't used Agent Zero yet, what are you doing? It's completely free. Click

you doing? It's completely free. Click

the link below the video. I'm going to put the GitHub link to Agent Zero as the first link. Download it on your computer

first link. Download it on your computer and try it yourself. It's much better than any other agent out there. It can

support any models whether it's open models, enthropic, gemini or just any open source model through open router and it can even support locally ran models on your machine. All your data remains private. There's no like

remains private. There's no like telemetry, no tracking. Everything is

secure and private. Go below the description, try Agent Zero. So yeah

thank you guys for watching. It has been a crazy journey with Vectal, 14 months from founding to acquisition, but I'm looking forward to what we can do with Agent Zero. And uh I feel like we're

Agent Zero. And uh I feel like we're going to build this into a massive massive thing. With that being said, I

massive thing. With that being said, I hope you have a great productive week.

See you.