How two strangers
started an AI company on a hunch
A random referral, a cold DM, five seconds of overthinking, and about a thousand WhatsApp messages. The honest version, because the honest version is the good one.
Two people who kept ending up in the same rooms without properly meeting.
Everyone asks how you find a co-founder. Like there is a formula, like you are supposed to date twelve people and run a trial project before anyone signs anything.
Ours was a cold message and about five seconds of thinking. Here is how it actually happened, receipts included.
We were already in each other’s orbit
Finlay was building AI systems for Australian businesses on his own. Sole trader, mechatronics engineer, self-taught coder, based in Melbourne, quietly very good at the thing.
Michael was CEO of Startmate at the time. Here is the part that still makes us laugh. Back in April 2025, on a tip from the legendary Dan Brockwell, Michael fired off an out-of-the-blue message telling Finlay to apply for the Startmate Accelerator. We had never properly met.
And we had been circling the same rooms for a while without clocking it. Finlay had come through the Startmate Student Fellowship and Blackbird Protostars, while Michael was running the place. Same crowd, same small world, and still no proper introduction. Two people who kept almost meeting.
Then Finlay sent the DM that started it all
Nine months after that Startmate nudge, Finlay reached out properly. This is where the story actually begins.
The thing about that message: Finlay almost never sends cold DMs. “That is probably the only one I sent all year,” he said later. But by now the Batko AI referral angle made it obvious, so he sent it. It was not a pitch. It was closer to a question.
The split was so obvious there was nothing to negotiate
A couple of weeks later we jumped on our first Zoom. Finlay laid out the shape of it in a single message, and it just fit. He brings the product and the build. Michael brings the brand and the distribution.
Michael’s reply was three words long.
“Let’s do it!”
It was so seamless. Honestly, I thought it would take longer. And probably not work.
The whole thing took about five seconds
A couple of Zooms in, the question asked itself. Rather than Finlay building solo while Michael cheered from the sidelines, why not just do this properly, together? Finlay had a deadline to register the company, and a choice: go solo, or bring Michael in.
As the deadline came around, Michael got in his head about it. For about five seconds. Then the thinking stopped and the answer was just there.
“No. I actually want to do this. Let’s do this.”
That was the entire decision. No six-month courtship. No elaborate founder prenup. No working out whether we could stand each other. It was the most natural transition either of us had ever made.
Turns out we had been building the same way all along
The overlap was never just the rooms. It was the wiring. Same culture: ambitious, allergic to spin, going hard, genuinely fond of the people we work with. The kind of thing you cannot fake and cannot really explain. You just recognise it in someone.
In hindsight it looks inevitable. It did not feel inevitable at the time. It felt like a random referral, a cold DM nine months later, and five seconds of overthinking.
A few weeks in, Finlay put words to something we had both been feeling about this new way of building.
Why Michael said yes
Michael had just spent eight years running Startmate. He did not set out to start another company. But he kept asking a blunt question: do you want to reach the end having only ever done one thing? The answer was no. He wanted more shots on goal.
And he loved building with AI so much, and saw so many people asking for help with it, that Hourglass stopped being a decision and started being obvious. Everyone knows Michael for productivity. AI is just productivity on steroids.
Finlay owns how everything we ship gets built. Michael owns getting us in front of the businesses who need it. Clean split, no ego about it.
The first time we met in person, it was for a photo shoot
This is our favourite detail. By the time we shook hands in the same room for the first time, we had already co-founded a company over WhatsApp. The occasion? A photo shoot for our Startup Daily announcement, which went live the same day.
So the very first photos of the two of us together are also the photos that announced the company to the world. We met, we posed, we launched. In that order.
Why we do it the wholesome way
A lot of AI shops run the same playbook: paid ads, big offers, pressure, close. We are deliberately doing the boring opposite. We care about the outcome and the people we build for. Slower than blasting ads, and the only way to build a reputation that compounds.
The proof is in the numbers. Every good client came from a happy client before them. Not one came from a rev-share deal or a partnership handshake. The paying, happy clients sent all of them.
That is not a nice-to-have. For us, it is the whole strategy.
We wrote down three values. They were there in that first DM.
They are our hiring filter, our culture contract, and how we hold each other accountable. The same instincts that made two strangers trust each other in a week.
Own It
You take the problem, see it through, and you are the first to say when you got it wrong. If something is broken or stalling, whoever notices it picks it up.
Keep Growing
Getting better is part of the job, not a bonus. Time to learn is protected, and everyone leaves a project more capable than they came in.
Lift Others
Your job is not just to be good, it is to make the people around you better. You share what you know without being asked.
That is how two people who barely knew each other started Hourglass AI. A random referral, a cold DM, five seconds, and a shared allergy to spin.
We think that tells you most of what you need to know about how we will treat your business, too.
Want to see what we would do for your business?
It starts the same way ours did: an honest conversation and a clear look at where AI actually fits.
Start with an audit