START: Maximilian Arnold, Co-Founder, Ontora: “AI Employee Interviews That Map How Work Works”

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Most companies think they have a documentation problem.

They don't.

They have a context problem.

Every company runs on things that were never written down - they just live in people's heads.

That's the insight that led Max Arnold and his co-founders Leon Iwanowitsch & David Korn to start Ontora (YC P26).

Because AI agents can only be as useful as the context they're given.

And most organizations have never captured how work actually gets done.

Who owns what

Why decisions were made

Where critical knowledge lives

The result?

Teams spend more time searching than building.

More time aligning than executing.

More time asking who knows the answer than actually acting on it.

Ontora's AI agents interview employees across an organization and build a context layer that grows as the company grows.

What consultants have traditionally spent months uncovering through interviews, Ontora helps companies discover on an ongoing basis.

Because the future isn't just AI

It's AI that understands your company

🎙️ Maximilian Arnold, Co-Founder, Ontora (YC P26) on Fondo START
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0:00 — What Ontora builds: agents that interview employees to map how work gets done
1:32— Why most companies have nothing documented, and why AI needs that missing context
2:48 — The consulting tool that turned into the real problem worth solving
3:14 — Meeting the co-founders at CODE, and the pipeline from Berlin to Stanford
4:19 — How project-based learning turns students into founders
5:21 — Getting into YC on the first application, and skipping the German incorporation flip
6:37 — Going Delaware from day one, and interviewing with Tom Blomfield
7:21 — Helpful over friendly, and the real lesson of living with your co-founders
8:05 — Who Ontora is actually for, and where to follow the journey
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Check out at ontora.com