What does AI staff for a startup actually cost?

From $29 a month for one agent. Three agents are $49 and ten are $99. Model usage is separate: bring your own provider key and pay them directly, or use the managed token allowance in your plan.

How long before it is doing useful work?

It answers on day one and gets genuinely good over a week or two of corrections, in the same way a new hire does. The difference is that corrections stick and apply everywhere at once.

Do I need an engineer to set this up?

No. Agents are created and configured in the dashboard, and the channels are connected with tokens you already have or can create in a few minutes.

What happens when it does not know the answer?

It escalates to whoever you nominate, on whichever channel you choose. You set what it may handle unsupervised before you set anything else.

Can it work with the tools we already use?

Yes. It answers in Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord and email, and connects to other systems through skills and MCP servers you attach.

What happens when we do start hiring people?

The agents keep the repetitive load and your first hires start on the work you hired them for, rather than on ticket triage.

IAI staff for startups

AI staff for startups that cannot hire yet

There is a gap between the work existing and the revenue justifying a hire. Most founders fill it with their own evenings. AI staff fill it with agents that cost less than a phone plan and answer while you sleep.

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Fig. 1. A small team of Clawployees agents working a founder backlog

A two-founder team, week one

Support agent: 61 tickets answered, 4 escalated to a founder.

Inbox agent: 212 emails triaged, 38 drafts written, 9 dormant threads chased.

Research agent: 14 competitor briefs, delivered to Slack each morning at 08:00.

Founder hours returned: the evenings.

Illustrative of the shape of the work, not a customer figure.

$29

Per agent, per month

24/7

Coverage from day one

Minutes

To your first hire

IIWhat it does

Work that lands on your desk (or doesn’t, because the agent handled it).

Support, before you have a support team
Answers the repetitive forty questions from your own docs, escalates anything it has not seen.
The inbox nobody owns
Triages, drafts, and chases the threads that go quiet, on a real mailbox on your domain.
Sales follow-up that actually happens
The second and third touch that founders always intend to send and rarely do.
Research on tap
Competitor moves, market questions, pricing checks, summarised to the length you asked for.
Onboarding and lifecycle nudges
The messages that turn a signup into a user, sent on a schedule instead of when you remember.
Operations glue
Standing reports, daily briefings, and the small recurring jobs that eat a founder afternoon.

IIISkills

Arrives knowing its job

Support triage
Email drafting
Lead follow-up
Web research
Daily briefings
Escalation to a founder
Scheduled jobs

IVIn detail

Hire in the order the pain arrives

First: the inbox. It is the thing that follows you home, and it is the easiest to hand over.
Second: support. Repetitive, documented, and the fastest to show a saved hour.
Third: follow-up. Revenue you already earned and lost to forgetting.
Fourth: research and reporting, once the first three have bought you the time to use it.

VIn detail

What this is not

It is not a replacement for the people you will hire. It is what covers the work until you can, and then covers the boring part of it afterwards. Founders who expect an agent to run a function unattended get the outcome they deserve. Founders who treat it as a very fast junior with perfect recall get a real week back.

VIIn detail

What it costs, plainly

Hosting is $29 a month for one agent, $49 for three, $99 for ten. Model usage is either your own provider key billed to you at their prices, or a managed allowance included in the plan, starting at 500K tokens a month. There is no per-seat fee and no per-channel fee.

VIIIn detail

Why startups specifically

Because the alternative for a large company is a team, and the alternative for you is not sleeping. Agents are a poor substitute for a well-staffed department and an excellent substitute for a founder doing triage at eleven at night. The smaller the company, the better the trade looks.

VIIIFAQ

Questions we hear a lot.

Your next hire doesn’t need onboarding.

Pick a role, plug in your API key, connect your channel. Live in five minutes. Free to start.

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IXKeep exploring