S15E2: Secure AI Agents for the Future of Work with NanoCo Co-Founder & CEO, Gavriel Cohen

The Room Podcast

Gavriel Cohen, co-founder of NanoCo, discusses the creation of NanoClaw, an open-source framework designed to bring secure, autonomous AI agents

Key takeaways

• NanoClaw utilizes a 'sandbox' architecture to allow agents full capability within a restricted environment to prevent unauthorized access.
• The framework introduces 'human-in-the-loop' approvals as a critical feature for enterprise-grade security and compliance.

Main topics

• AI Agent Security
• NanoClaw Framework Architecture

Notable quotes

We're not building boyfriends or girlfriends. They get work done.

Conclusion

The episode highlights a pivotal shift in AI development from experime

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) All my agents I call Andy after Andy Bernard from the office. He's friendly, he's competent, but he's not your best buddy, right? You're not going to fall in love with him. So that's, I think, the right dynamic to have an agent. We're not building boyfriends or girlfriends. They get work done. Speaker 2 (0:21) Welcome back to a new season of The Room Podcast. Hi, Speaker 4 (0:24) Mads. Hi, Claude. As you all know, we are opening the door to the room where it happens for today's technology founders. I mean, Speaker 2 (0:30) I can't believe this is season 15. Crazy. Probably one of our most exciting seasons telling stories up and down the stack. Speaker 4 (0:37) After six years in The Room, we're just delighted to be back together in San Francisco more and more, both being based here live from Vercel HQ. I think you have an update as well. Speaker 2 (0:46) Yes, I'm also now at OpenAI, which is fun, pulling us deeper into this revolution. we're seeing globally. Thank Speaker 4 (0:52) you, everyone who's been listening to us since the beginning, six long years ago. And for those who are new here, please like, follow, subscribe, wherever you listen to podcasts, or of course, at theroompodcast.com. Speaker 2 (1:02) On today's episode of The Room Podcast, we sit down with Gabrielle Cohen, the co-founder and CEO of NanoClaw, the open source AI agent platform that exploded to over 250,000 downloads and 30,000 GitHub stars by solving the one thing that scared enterprises away from autonomous AI. security. With that, let's open the door to today's conversation. And now a message from one of our sponsors, Rippling. One thing we constantly hear on the room is that great operators don't just need more data. They need a faster way to turn that data into decisions. As a founder, I know how painful it is to wait days or even weeks for a report. while a real business problem is unfolding. That's what makes Rippling AI different. 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Gradial handles the operation so that marketers can stay on craft. An agent will learn your process, work across the systems you already use, and delete point solutions you don't need. Designers will ship on-brand pages without counting prompts or tokens. Product marketers will launch across markets in days, not weeks. And digital experience teams test customer journeys, catch what's not working, and fix it. all before launch. Gradial learns that you're a brand, business, and process and brings that continuous context to every workflow. Every task gets done your way with brand, quality, and approvals built in. No more token maxing, slop, or runaway AI bills. More time to think bigger and create the impact people remember. Great deal. the system of work for marketing. Ashurst Perkins QE is a leading full-service international law firm known for providing high-value strategic solutions for startups and investors. Lawyers at Ashurst Perkins QE support the most innovative entrepreneurs and investors in fast-moving and high-growth sectors across the country. while addressing the myriad of legal needs that arise when fundraising and scaling their businesses. The firm's tailored legal services are informed by understanding of each of the client's discreet needs. To learn more about Ashurst Perkins Coie, visit their website, ashurstperkinscoie.com. Speaker 4 (3:55) First of all, Gabriel, thank you so much for joining us today in the room. Speaker 1 (3:59) It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Speaker 5 (4:02) We're delighted to have you. And we love to start with the beginning for all of our guests. So to start us off, could you share a bit more about where you grew up and how that shaped your view of the world? Speaker 1 (4:12) Yeah, I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a big family. Big family can mean different things. When I say big family, I mean, I was one of 11 children. So I grew up in an ultra Orthodox Jewish community and actually went to a religious school where we didn't really learn much in the way of math, science, English, anything like that. And when I graduated from religious high school at 18, I knew basic arithmetic. So then moved to Israel and started catching up on my studies at 22 years old. And spent about a year just catching up on high school level studies. Started university at 23, studied physics and computer science. And it was an experience that really gave me the confidence that I could, I wouldn't say do anything, but if I put my mind to something, I could accomplish a lot. Because I was able to catch up for all of those studies and then do well in university doing double major, not on the easiest subjects. So I think that was... a really important part of who I am and how I got to where I am today. Speaker 5 (5:22) You're very casually talking about an intense double major, physics and computer science. So we're going to come back to talk about that. But of course, today you are a founder. So curious on that journey of both education and upskilling yourself, did you always think you were going to become a founder? Speaker 1 (5:38) I think I had it in the back of my mind that as I was going to university and working in different jobs that these things, there was no linear path. I wasn't plotting it out, but I was choosing things that I thought might be good sets of experiences that would lead me towards being able to be a successful founder. Speaker 5 (5:59) Incredible. It's an interesting thing to learn how people view who they are, who they want to be in relation to becoming a founder. It's oftentimes people say that they always thought they were going to be one or someone is like, absolutely not. I actually never thought this would be a thing, but then there was this problem and it just needed to be solved. Speaker 1 (6:17) Something I remember in the decision to study physics is I remember reading an article, must have been in 2010 or 2011. The first time I saw Elon Musk and I read this article and it was like, billionaire physicist Elon Musk. And I was like, those are two strange words to put together. That was probably something that motivated me to study physics. Speaker 5 (6:38) Absolutely. I'm curious about then the schooling journey that you went on, because I believe you went to Tel Aviv University to study, and that's a long way from New York. So tell us a little bit about how you found yourself on the other side of the world starting that part of your life. Speaker 1 (6:53) The community I grew up in, I made a decision that I was going to go off on my own way. I grew up ultra-Orthodox and at about 15, 16, realized it works for some people. It wasn't the path for me. Speaker 1 (7:07) It's a big change. It's a big decision to leave the community that I was growing up in. And I had to find my own spot, my own place. For me, that decision at 18, leaving the house, looking for a different, really a different community, a different place to settle in, I made a decision to move out to Israel. And one of the nice things about Israel and some other countries is that you can study at one of the top universities in the world without... taking out loans and actually I was able to do remedial studies all with scholarships and whatnot. That's the next 15, 20 years here. Just year by year, Good Beach, met people. How I ended up in Israel, I didn't necessarily think I was going to spend. Met my wife, got a job at Wix.com and I was working at Wix. One thing led to the other. That's how I ended up where I am now almost 20 years later and I'm still here. Speaker 3 (8:04) That's incredible. You're back and you're building. And so I'd love to dig a little bit into the early aha moment behind NanoClaw. And we'll dig a little bit into the ecosystem, what you're building, what the product is. Speaker 2 (8:18) But Gabriel, tell us, what made you believe the world needed Speaker 3 (8:22) another personal AI agent framework and maybe even stepping back a layer? How did you get interested in this domain? Speaker 1 (8:30) Actually, after... Finishing at Wix.com, I went and worked with my brother, who is also my co-founder. He had a PR public relations agency and was working with a lot of Israeli tech startups, promoting them, helping them tell their story, really technical founders in cybersecurity, software development, machine learning space, who were building amazing things, but isn't always that easy for them to explain to people what they're building in a way that's interesting and engaging. So I was working as a developer at Wix.com. Stopped doing software development for about four years and worked with 50, maybe 70 different startups and founders, helping them do their launches, launching from stealth, announcing their first funding. Worked with great companies, run AI that was acquired by NVIDIA, Pinecone from their launch from stealth all the way through investment by Andreessen and whatnot. And it was very successful, but we had an understanding that public relations is... probably one of the hardest things to scale and automate. There's a few companies, a few agencies that have done it, but it really doesn't lend itself very well to automation, to building out workflows. And so about a year ago, we started to build together a new business, an AI-native marketing agency. It was just before that became really popular, but we had a sense that AI-native service businesses were going to be a thing. I was building that, showing up every day. opening my laptop and firing up Cloud Code, working with agents, not to do coding, but to do everything, to do research, content optimization, basically everything that we were doing for our customers. And it was working well. We were scaling, we were ramping up. By January, we were pretty close to a million in ARR, and ramping really nicely. And then... using agents for everything, but I was missing this piece of how do they connect together and how can I have people on the team who are not technical engage with them? And I tried OpenClaw and that was this big aha moment. I was like, okay, this is the missing piece. Now, first thing we did, put it in the messaging channel and WhatsApp group with myself and my co-founder and just said, okay, you're now managing our sales pipeline. I called it Andy. Andy, you're a sales manager. Your sales data is in the file system that you're in. Good luck. And within a day, it was like giving us briefings and updates and reminders and basically doing the work of the person. And I was like, this is different. I've been working with agents now for about a year, but this is something new. And I just saw this massive unlock. But from day one, getting it set up, I also started to see huge security issues. And as I sort of dug into the code base, putting on my developer hat again and looking at what was going on there, I realized. this is super valuable. This is something new, but it isn't production ready. And that's where I sat down and said, okay, everybody, you know, OpenClaw was this big unlock, showed what value you could get if you took agents, put security aside and some other concerns aside and just connected it to everything. And then there were other people who were doing similar kinds of thing, but having fun with it. And it was fun. It was a cool experiment. But I was like, I actually need this for work. I need to do real work with this. So I sat down to build what I think was the first agent framework that was trying to take those kinds of agents that are connected to your email, connected to your calendar, connected to real tools and tackle the hard challenges that make it actually work for business. Speaker 3 (12:04) That's fascinating. I think a lot of the shift towards agentic building and agents completing tasks on the user behalf has very much been framed from like a hobbyist developer perspective or consumer trying to get something done and playing around with this ecosystem. And so I think what OpenClaw did a great job at was open everyone's eyes to what was possible.