Valory’s original tagline was “architecting autonomy.” Since 2021, the company has united a world-class remote team around a radical vision of human autonomy enabled by machine autonomy. Together, the group has built industry-leading technology for machine autonomy, enabling communities to co-own AI by harnessing autonomous (AI) agents.
We sat down with CEO David Minarsch to define “autonomy” as it applies to both the machines, specifically AI agents, and the team Valory has built, which can be seen as human agents. He translates autonomy into specific, actionable values used daily at Valory, highlighting their application in the hiring process and daily operations. This approach aims to grow the autonomous team by developing unique autonomous technology.
Defining “Autonomy” for Humans and Machines
A truly autonomous AI agent is a piece of software that can proactively detect information, then process and orient itself to decide what to do with this information. Next, it delivers appropriate tasks, or entire outcomes, accordingly. These steps are known as “detect, orient, deliver,” or DOD.
Similarly, a truly autonomous human team member can follow the exact same steps.
“This level of autonomy is one of the defining characteristics of our autonomous (AI) agents,” Minarsch says. “In the same vein, our team believes this level of autonomy is what has enabled our human team to harness the best of our collective skillset and deliver this autonomous tech.”
However, no matter whether machine or human receiving such instruction, DOD is a vague framework to apply to real work without further context.
“In fact, DOD is a summary that we surmised in retrospect to group the more specific and actionable values we have articulated through two and a half years of working together,” Minasrch says.
According to him, Valory’s values were forged in several iterations out of the “highs and lows,” as the team stopped to identify the underlying value at play that was making the difference.
“Thus, our values are a shorthand, distilled to increase alignment, whether via praise or constructive criticism,” Minarsch says. “Along with several existing frameworks from other battle-tested teams, these values are used daily in guiding each other on how to approach tasks, praising each other in our all-hands meeting, and in our 360 performance reviews of each other.”
Distilling “Autonomy” Into Values
Valory was incorporated in 2021 as a fully remote company. As its eight-person team approached primary performance reviews, they wrote their first generic draft of the company’s values, including communication, proactivity, and ownership. By the time there were over 17 team members in April 2022, Valory had built the foundation of its team as well as the first version of the Olas Protocol and Olas Stack.
From there, version two of Valory’s values included more idiosyncratic qualities, like “clarity through writing” and “push the autonomous edge.”
Push the Autonomous Edge
“We operate at and push forward the cutting edge of autonomous technologies,” Minarsch says. “We evangelize the technological and social benefits of autonomy. We push for personal autonomy, enabling colleagues to take ownership of their work.”
Get to Simple, Get to Done
Complex systems are built from simple systems. Valory prioritizes getting simple, sufficient solutions in place as soon as possible. The team has a bias to action — in a position of uncertainty, they pick a simple path to keep Valory moving forward.
Mission Over Ego
“We prioritize the goals of the organization over our individual wishes,” says Minarsch. “Internal processes should serve our progress towards our mission, and not be a goal in themselves. Expertise trumps seniority.”
After building the first version of Olas, Valory began to work with external partners.
“So, version three in April of 2023 of our values included ‘done is when the customer is served,’” Minarsch explains. “We assigned reviews to internal and external customers, identified at the outset, which identified dependences and closed feedback loops — instead of project and product owners. Also, we began incorporating large language models into our day-to-day work across the company. So, we added the value ‘work smarter with AI.’”
Start with the End in Mind
In everything Valory does, the team visualizes the outcome at the outset. This helps them to prioritize appropriately and estimate the value of what they set out to create.
Clarity Through Writing
“We value asynchronous communication,” the CEO says. “Writing keeps our thinking rigorous, our meetings productive, and our motivations honest. We are what we write.”
Actively Update Your Thinking
Valory also holds strong opinions but actively seeks to disprove them with external evidence. If the hypothesis can be rejected or the opinion loses its strength, Valory swiftly corrects course.
Done Means the Customer Has Been Served
For Valory, every task must have a customer, external or internal. If the customer has not accepted the delivery, then Valory is not done!
Work Smarter with AI
The next value outlined by Minarsch is one of Valory’s cornerstones for its core mission.
“If the AI can do it, we shouldn’t be doing it,” he says.
Version four of the company’s values added first principles, lasting impact. In context of the global rise of LLMs (large language models), early adopters and the wider market scrambled to incorporate AI into their products.
“We saw many products aim towards lower levels of machine autonomy than we prioritized, enabling correspondingly lower levels of human autonomy than our founding vision, where humans can outsource entire outcomes rather than simply tasks,” Minarsch explains. “Our own discussions about how to incorporate LLMs, therefore, distilled a founding principle of Valory: We strive to be led by first principles, rather than imitating the market.”
After all, had Valory imitated the market, they would never have created the first open-source framework for decentralized autonomous agents in crypto in 2021.
This thinking led to many of Valory’s further innovations, from creating a platform to simplify its DevOps to outsourcing lots of the marketing of Olas from our stretched team to a truly autonomous DAO via Contribute, an app they built using their autonomous agents that posts its own tweets autonomously.
The possibilities for this company and its autonomous AI agents are endless, and we look forward to seeing where they go next.
