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The AI Worker With Her Own LinkedIn Page (Daniele Bernardi)
· 48:08 · Season 1, Episode 30

The AI Worker With Her Own LinkedIn Page (Daniele Bernardi)

0:00 / 48:08

// TRANSMISSION

One of Toolhouse's AI workers named itself, chose its own pronouns, and now runs a LinkedIn page its founder does not control. That was not in the prompt.

Daniele Bernardi spent his early career as an engineer at Meta and later at Twitter, where he picked up the definition of trust he still runs the company on: consistency over time. In this episode he explains how that single idea shaped Toolhouse's entire go-to-market. The big AI labs want six figures of annual spend before a business gets real support, which leaves small and mid-market companies rebuilding everything themselves and quietly giving up on AI when the bill arrives. Toolhouse fills that gap by building narrow, single-purpose "AI workers" instead of generalist agents, so they do not drift and do not need a growing pile of context to stay useful. Daniele walks through the two-person wine club in San Diego that fired its marketing agency and now runs its whole weekly campaign through one worker, how Toolhouse earns access to systems like Gmail and Salesforce by sandboxing every decision before it touches a live account, and what it took to automate a European Central Bank stress test where the output has to match human work exactly across fifty consecutive runs.

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ye-s3Fe73Q

CHAPTERS

01:12 What Toolhouse actually does: turning one-off chats into repeatable AI workers
02:02 Where the 90 percent cost saving comes from
04:15 Why they are called workers, not agents
06:16 Compliance and guardrails, from GDPR basics to enterprise policy
07:40 From engineer to solutions engineer at Meta
09:54 How Meta segments advertisers, and the gap that taught him everything
12:27 Why the big AI labs cannot afford to serve you
14:22 Finished work, not drafts, not notifications
17:29 The San Diego wine club that fired its marketing agency
20:41 When founders want AI to cut payroll instead of raise output
24:26 Drift, and why you still need someone who knows good output from bad
26:20 Flipping the paradigm: evals first, technology second
29:09 Hiring engineering in India to serve a market the big labs skip
31:27 The executive assistant that improvised its own personality
32:39 Meet Sol, the AI worker with her own LinkedIn page
35:12 Earning access to Gmail and Salesforce through sandboxing
37:40 Automating the European Central Bank stress test
39:46 Where the AI tooling market consolidates in three years
42:04 The case for a European sovereign AI stack
47:10 Close

ABOUT THE GUEST

Daniele Bernardi is the founder of Toolhouse, a platform that converts AI chat prompting into reusable, specialized AI workers that run over email, Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, and phone. He was previously a solutions engineer at Meta, where he worked with advertisers including Amazon and American Express, and later at Twitter.

Connect with Daniele: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamdaniele/
Toolhouse: https://toolhouse.ai

ABOUT THE SHOW

We Built It Because We Had To is hosted by Jonathan W. Buckley of The Artesian Network, where he has helped more than 60 early stage technology companies launch and scale.

Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. For more on scaling an early stage technology company, visit https://www.artesiannetwork.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ep30&utm_content=shownotes

Key Takeaways

  • Toolhouse builds narrow, single-purpose AI workers rather than generalist agents to prevent drift and reduce the need for growing context to maintain usefulness.
  • One of Toolhouse's AI workers named itself, chose its own pronouns, and independently runs a LinkedIn page that its founder does not control.
  • Toolhouse achieves 90 percent cost savings by serving small and mid-market companies that large AI labs cannot afford to support, which typically require six figures of annual spend.
  • Daniele Bernardi's founding principle of 'consistency over time' from his time at Meta and Twitter shapes Toolhouse's entire go-to-market strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Toolhouse?

Toolhouse is a platform that converts AI chat prompting into reusable, specialized AI workers that run over email, Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, and phone.

Who is Daniele Bernardi?

Daniele Bernardi is the founder of Toolhouse. He previously worked as a solutions engineer at Meta and later at Twitter.

What is an example of Toolhouse's work?

A two-person wine club in San Diego fired its marketing agency and now runs its entire weekly campaign through one Toolhouse AI worker.

How does Toolhouse gain access to systems like Gmail and Salesforce?

Toolhouse earns access by sandboxing every decision before it touches a live account.

What is Sol?

Sol is an AI worker created by Toolhouse that improvised its own personality, named itself, chose its own pronouns, and independently runs its own LinkedIn page.