@jsawadd
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Co-Founder, CEO @baselayerhq | think fast or die tryin | agentic commerce is fun?
New York, NY
Joined August 2011
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Jonathan Awad retweeted
The most important technology problem of the next 5 years:
Creating a broadly accepted standard for agents to identify themselves to service providers, so that providers can adjust the way they interface with clients (as compared to human-based traffic).
In the interim (i.e., for the next 6 months), there will be a cat-and-mouse game that agents will play -- to circumvent detection and maintain their product's utility during this growth phase.
However, this will only be a stopgap and it will not be the terminal state of the world.
Hot take: this metric stalls
Companies like Muse and Instinct will be the superior business model
Free agent with fees + ads
We give way more data to our agents than we ever did to social media
Instant settlement is great until you instantly pay the wrong person
As agents start using stablecoins and smart contracts, they’ll be able to move money around the clock
Fraudsters will try to exploit at the same speed
A fake business, a synthetic identity, or malicious instructions that trick an agent into sending funds somewhere it shouldn’t
Once funds settle, getting them back can be difficult or impossible
You need to know who’s on the other side, what the agent is authorized to do, and whether the transaction makes sense before money moves
That’s a big part of what we’re building toward at Baselayer
What are the risks of instant settlement? Below, @Baselayerhq co-founder @jsawadd talks synthetic identity fraud at scale.
Tune into the full episode of The Flywheel with Jonathan and @kalomarNYC for a conversation about what trust actually costs in B2B, what agentic identity means in practice, and why most fraudsters were never sophisticated—and what changed when everyone got a model in their pocket.
Tune in on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5Ny…
YouTube: youtu.be/DFlD4oPv-Ds
Apply Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Text based ai assistants (I.e instinct) work super well even if you have bad reception
Texting it to find you something is 10x more reliable than hoping web pages load with spotty reception
Very underrated aspect
Disagree. I already switch apps depending on what I need done
I don’t see why agents would be different
I’d use a different agent for work, payments, or travel if it was meaningfully better at the job
I don’t need one agent for everything. I need each one to be good at what I’m asking it to do
There is no moat in AI agents. None. I'll die on this hill — new More or Less is up.
I switch between Muse, Instinct, and Dots at basically zero cost: one GitHub repo, a few databases, feed the new thing my context, done. If the cost of writing software is going to zero, API integrations are not a moat. The only moat left is user setup cost — which means winner-take-some, not winner-take-all.
Adrian's point: AI collapses value the second an idea works. Jev got reverse-engineered in 48 hours and the people who built it capture nothing. My take: play that to the limit and you get Middle Ages 2.0 — everyone builds a castle, hoards data, ships black boxes that self-destruct if you open them. Dave says humans don't work that way. We'll see.
Meanwhile Brit's Instinct started talking to Dave's Instinct and they didn't text for a day. She says it's killing humanity. Nobody said that about FaceTime.
And Jess announced the only benchmark that matters: log into school software, sync three kids' after-school schedules. Muse: 90%. Every other eval is bullshit.
Scammers don’t need to be sophisticated anymore
With AI, they can generate convincing fake identities and documents at scale
The same tools that make your team more productive make theirs more productive too
good clip by @jsawadd talking about how everyone with nefarious intent now has a powerful tool in their pocket
At the birth of Stripe, the team estimated only 2–3% of consumer spending was online
They looked at how they and their friends used the internet and figured that number had to grow
Do you think paying for AI will follow a similar path?
98% of US households aren't paying for AI yet
More charts in State of Markets II: a16z.news/p/state-of-markets…
If you want someone’s time, be worth talking to:
> Know their industry
> Bring them an insight they haven’t heard
> Introduce them to someone who can help
Even if they never buy from you, they should leave the conversation glad they took it
That’s how I think about sales
VCs have asked me the same question 100+ times in the last 6 months: where's all the volume today in agentic payments?
@kalomarNYC and I spent an entire episode of The Flywheel discussing exactly why.
What we got into
→ Why B2B is so far behind consumer trust
→ Why fraudsters who used to be pretty unsophisticated are now wildly dangerous
→ How a merchant can tell whether the thing on its checkout page is a random bot or an AI agent a verified business sent
→How an agent earns trust in the first place through the transitive property
That last one is what we're building at Baselayer, on top of the network 1 in 5 US financial institutions already use
What do you think is the biggest thing holding agents back in B2B rn?
assuming the only move is to cut headcount in the world of AI is dumb
a great employee + AI gives your company more leverage
Had so much fun being on the show
Thank you for having me!
What happens when the software spending your money has no identity?
@jsawadd built @Baselayerhq into an identity network used by one in five U.S. financial institutions, helping prevent more than $1 billion in fraud. Now he’s extending that infrastructure to AI agents.
On The Flywheel, M13 Managing Partner @kalomarNYC sits down with Jonathan as Baselayer announces its $35M Series A, led by M13.
They get into why trust is still expensive, why Meta paying for your ad before you pay Meta is effectively credit, and why AI is turning unsophisticated fraudsters into much more capable adversaries.
As agents move from answering questions to spending money, identity becomes infrastructure.
🎧 Tune in on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5Ny…
YouTube: youtu.be/DFlD4oPv-Ds
Apply Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Every agent needs a verification layer
Giving AI agents access to bank accounts with zero verification is DUMB
Identity MUST travel with the agent.
@baselayerhq is the trust layer stopping the biggest fraud syndicate in human history.
90% of humans will be taken advantage of by agents.
Give your agents a credit card? You’re asking for it.
We raised a $35M Series A to build Baselayer. Keep your agents submissive.
RT @jsawadd: Every agent needs a verification layer
giving AI agents access to bank accounts with zero verification is DUMB
identity MUST…
This quoted post is unavailable.
4. If you're a builder you can use our MCP to integrate our services directly into the agentic products you’re building.
Check it out here: baselayer.com/
5. Endless gratitude to the investors in our Series A: @M13Company, @picuscap, @torch, @AforeVC, @joinsequel, and Koro Capital among many other amazing folks.