Brandon MacKeff, CEO of Assemble, built a workforce-orchestration company using digital agents like Teddy and Rosa the recruiter. His team processed 18,000 applications and hired 117 people in 100 days. MacKeff argues digital workers need the same management as human interns: clear jobs, motivation, information access, and coaching, not just set-and-forget deployment.
Would you ever hire a human intern and say, "I'm never gonna talk to you again, good luck"? This is the same thing with AI and digital workers. Hi, I'm Brandon MacKeff. I work at a company called Assemble. We are a workforce orchestration company. I'm the founder and the CEO. So we launched the company in January of 2023, and then in 2024, we started to win some really huge contracts, and we needed to figure out how do we solve the demand that we had coming in with all the leads that were coming in, but then also how do we fulfill to fulfill all of the contracts that we were signing. Hiring a human workforce would have taken a lot of time, but it also would have taken a lot of money. So we wanted to stay profitable, cash flow positive, and not do a huge funding round. I mean, our philosophy on how to run a business changed the fastest after this because once you started to see the success of Teddy when he's being good and Theodore when he's being naughty and Theodore Frank when he's being very naughty, and then Rosa, our digital recruiter, When we were hiring 100 people in 100 days, she had like 18,000 applications and did, I don't know, like 1,800 prescreens, and we actually hired 117 people in 100 days. Truly deeply think about it as bringing on an employee. What's the job? What's the motivation for success for that job? How does it get the information it needs to do the job? Probably the most critical part, how are you gonna coach it, and how are you gonna manage it? 'Cause these are not set it and forget it type of things. Workers that, if nurtured in the right way, if managed in the right way, can produce unbelievable results. But they are not workers that you can just turn on and forget. So, you know, like an intern. Yeah.
