Founder insights is an opportunity to hear from the founders who are building across the entertainment industry. It's not as much about their product but rather the expertise they bring as founders. Whether it be the way the see the future of the industry or the products they're using to build their platforms we see it as a great way to share knowledge and lessons.

This month, Reggie the founder of Alias (Multilingual AI agents built for brands) shares his month using Openclaw, the open source product that has taken the tech world by storm.

Over to you Reggie…

My Month with OpenClaw: Are Virtual Employees Already Here?

I run Alias, a company that builds multilingual AI agents for events and businesses. I'm not a developer. I can't read or write code. But for the past month, I've had an AI agent running 24/7 in the cloud, managing my email, calendar, Notion, and social media, operating as a virtual team member.

That should tell you something about where the tools are at right now.

The product is called OpenClaw. It's an open-source framework, one of the fastest-growing in history, that lets AI models operate their own computer. You direct it through conversation on platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Slack. Its creator was recently hired by OpenAI, which likely had something to do with the rebrand. If anything, that tells you this technology is being taken seriously at the highest levels.

It's not a chatbot. It's closer to a virtual employee with their own workstation, available around the clock.

What it can do

• Monitor your inboxes and social channels overnight and flag what matters by morning.

• Pull data from a spreadsheet, update your CRM, and draft a follow-up email, all from a single message on your phone.

• Connect a new tool to your stack by figuring out the wiring itself.

• Handle recurring tasks like weekly reporting, status updates, and compliance checks.

• Draft internal communications that match your tone and format, find the right people it needs to go to and send it.

• Conduct research across the web and compile findings into structured summaries.

• Build dashboards and visual reports from your existing data.

1. It also accesses an open marketplace of "skills" that extend its capabilities for specific functions. On top of that, it has an impressive long term memory that carries context across every conversation.

How easy is it to get started?

It's getting easier. You start by connecting your AI provider of choice (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and others) with an API key. This only takes a couple of minutes. If you're unsure how, your preferred AI can walk you through it. Once that's in place, OpenClaw can actually walk you through setting up the rest, including connecting to your preferred chat platform and the work tools you already use.

How much does it cost?

OpenClaw itself is free and open source. The only cost is the AI that powers it, and you pay as you go based on usage. You can assign lighter, cheaper models to routine tasks and reserve the more capable ones for complex work. Think of it like staffing. You wouldn't put your most senior person on every piece of admin.

The market is also moving fast. New models are hitting the scene regularly, many rivalling the tech giants at a fraction of the cost. Services like OpenRouter (https://openrouter.ai/) give you a single API key with access to hundreds of models, making it easy to test, compare, and optimise as the landscape evolves.

How to keep it secure

This is the most important part. OpenClaw has access to whatever you give it and the machine it runs on. The best practice is to run it in its own dedicated environment, separate from your personal or company machines. A clean, sandboxed setup where it can operate without touching anything it shouldn't.

You don't need a physical computer to do this. A cloud-based virtual machine costs about the same as a Netflix subscription and takes minutes to set up. It gives your agent a clean, isolated workspace without touching your existing infrastructure.

It's also important to mention that OpenClaw can sometimes be influenced by content in the data it processes, like misleading text in emails or documents. And as with any open marketplace, not every third-party skill is created equal. Guardrails are being built to address both, but it's still an evolving space. If you’re new to the game, stick to well-reviewed tools and keep your agent's access scoped to what it actually needs.

The bottom line

For most of us who could never afford a full dev team or thousands in monthly ops support, products like OpenClaw give us a real leg up. As always, be mindful of the gaps and do your own research.

This technology isn't going away. It's going mainstream. If you've been curious about putting AI to work beyond the usual chat window, now's the time to start paying attention.