Building, Backing & Scaling in an AI-Native World with Kenneth Auchenberg, Partner @ AlleyCorp

Happy Wednesday from James Pringle, Hector Mason and the Riding Unicorns team!

In this episode we are joined by Kenneth Auchenberg, Partner at AlleyCorp — one of New York’s most prolific early-stage funds known for incubating companies like MongoDB, Business Insider, and Radical AI.

Kenneth’s journey from coding at 16 in Copenhagen to shaping global developer ecosystems at Stripe and Microsoft gives him a unique lens into the next generation of software businesses — and the rise of AI agents.

💥 In this episode, we dive into:

🤖 Why “agentic” workflows are changing everything — and how founders should rethink UX, infrastructure, and pricing
 🚀 The new founder playbook — how AI-native teams are replacing engineers with agents and scaling faster than ever
 🛠️ Building agent-first infrastructure — what Resend, Stripe, and Supabase are doing right (and why developers are no longer your only user)
 💼 The business model shift — why agents need their own payments, APIs, and enterprise stack
 🧠 From artisanal to mass-produced software — and what it means for defensibility, data moats, and GTM
 🇪🇺 Europe vs the US — the real difference in ambition, infrastructure, and what founders can learn from each ecosystem
 🧪 Inside AlleyCorp’s incubation model — how Kenneth prototypes ideas with vibe-coding and builds companies from zero to seed

This is a must-listen for anyone thinking seriously about the next wave of AI-native startups, especially if you’re building agents, infrastructure, or developer-first products.

🎧 Listen now:

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Have a great Wednesday, The Riding Unicorns team