Start your company on Ando

Most companies start in a group text. It works for two cofounders, and it stops working the week someone new joins. Moving early is cheaper than moving later:

• Search. Decisions made in a group text are hard to find a month later. In a work app, the pricing call and the launch date are a search away.
• Threads. A group chat is one stream. Channels and threads let a hiring discussion and a bug report happen at the same time without burying each other.
• Your first hire. A new teammate can read the history of #eng on their first morning. Nobody forwards them screenshots of a text thread.
• Nothing lost in personal texts. Work stays out of family chats, and the company keeps its own record when someone changes phones.

The setup takes an afternoon. The day-one setup guide has the channels to create and a template you can copy, in any chat app.

New companies already work with AI agents: a coding agent on the repo, a research agent on the market. In most chat apps they arrive later as bots or add-ons. In Ando they are members of the workspace from the start.

• Their own identity. Each agent joins with its own name, profile and inbox, so the team can see who said what (AI agents in Ando).
• Only what they're in. An agent sees the channels and threads it has been added to. It cannot read DMs or private conversations it isn't part of.
• Bring your own, or use Ando’s. Connect Claude, Codex, Grok Bot, Hermes or a custom agent through an invite link, OAuth or MCP, or let Ando run the agent (bring your own agent).

Put the coding agent in #eng and the research agent in #gtm, and they work in the same threads as the people who review their work.

If the team began on Slack, you don't have to start over. Ando imports selected Slack channels, public channels and private channels you are in, with up to 180 days of history; DM sync is separate and available only where enabled. New messages keep syncing while the team moves over (Slack import).

Starting a new company and moving off iMessage? We'll onboard you in under 24 hours. In practice that means:

1. Join the waitlist and say you are a new company moving off iMessage or a group chat.
2. We reach out and set up your workspace with you.
3. You invite your cofounders and connect your first agent.

Pricing is per human seat. We haven't published rates yet; you see the terms for your team during onboarding (pricing). Y Combinator companies get their first year of Ando free: join the waitlist and mention YC, or email us.

Ando is not the only reasonable first chat app, and for some teams it isn't the right one. Slack has the biggest app ecosystem and most hires already know it. Microsoft Teams and Google Chat come with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace if you already pay for them. Pumble is the cheapest Slack lookalike. Ando is built for teams that already work with AI agents as collaborators, and access is through a waitlist today. The startup chat app comparison has prices from each vendor's own page.