-- Tandem Studio, the AI-native venture studio that opened to the public on September 24, builds software and systems for clients in sixty-day engagements. Custom conversational agents are the newest addition to that work. Each one is trained on the client’s business, answers in the founder’s voice, stays inside guardrails the client sets, and belongs to the client when the engagement ends. Two are open for anyone to talk to, Legendary Stakes and Tandem Studio’s own site, with others going live in November.
Most website chat makes the visitor do the work. A menu of buttons, a decision tree, a prompt box with no hint of what to type. People would rather ask a question in their own words and get an answer from someone who knows the business. That exchange is often the first conversation a prospect ever has with a brand, and a generic chatbot spends it sounding like every other chatbot on the internet.
Enterprises can build this in-house, with engineers and brand people assigned to it full time. Most organizations can't, and have been choosing between an off-the-shelf widget that sounds like nothing in particular and no front door at all. Tandem builds for the second group: companies where the expertise is deep, the voice is specific, and nobody on staff has the bandwidth to build an agent that does either one justice.
"Building an agent is easier now than it has ever been. Getting it to sound like the person who built the business is the work," said Jonathan Sasse, a Tandem co-founder who leads product and strategy. "We sit with the founders, ask the questions their customers ask, and learn how they answer. The bar is whether the founders hear it and say that's how I would have said it."
Legendary Stakes tracks all horses in western performance events including barrel racing, cutting, and roping, along with the earnings and competition records for both horses and the people connected to them. That record had never before been gathered in one place, at full scale, and made accessible to horse owners, breeders, and competitors of the sport. Tandem rebuilt the site this year, and the agent now opens with the statement the company was founded on: tell me about your horse. A visitor can talk about a stallion or mare the way they would at a show and get back what that horse and its offspring have actually earned. The voice is for horse people, written by horse people.
"A horseman can land on our site, tell the agent about their stallion or competing offspring, and see what that horse has earned and how they can now earn more than ever. It talks like someone who's been around these events. Nothing like it has ever existed before," said Shane Plummer, founder of Legendary Stakes.
ronin.ink is an agency of seasoned leaders used to working together across product, messaging, development, go-to-market, and sales, delivering both strategy and the ready-made teams to execute in real time. Its agent goes live at ronin.ink in November. Founder Aric Marshall, formerly head of audio products at Apple, holds a high bar for when technology is allowed to speak for his brand, and worked through a detailed interview process with Tandem before the agent said a word to anyone.
"At ronin.ink we know AI. We're often the ones people call to create systems that actually deliver on the promise. But that means we also know there's no AI that replaces a chat with a ronin. Tandem Studio's site agent for ronin.ink was built with the two teams in lockstep, for an interaction deeply rooted in our company, our capabilities, and the needs of our customers. It's the only AI we'd trust to answer the door," said Marshall.
Each agent is built on Knowledge Blocks, a structured record of what the company offers, who it serves, how it talks, and what its customers ask. The guardrails come from that same record. The agent answers from what the company actually sells, says so plainly when a question falls outside it, and doesn't invent something to fill the gap. The client owns the Knowledge Blocks and the agent, and both keep working after the engagement ends.
Tandem is taking on custom agent work now, priced the way the studio prices everything else, attainable for brands that don't have the resources to build on their own.
The fastest way to judge any of this is to talk to one. The agent at tandemstudio.ai works through what a founder is building and sends them off with a real next step, whether or not it involves the team at Tandem.
The first jump is with us. Every jump after that is yours.
A Tandem Agent can be built and ready to implement for your brand in a few short weeks. Start at tandemstudio.ai or send a request to [email protected].
About Tandem Studio
Tandem Studio is an AI-native venture studio in Bentonville, Arkansas, owned and run by five senior operators across product strategy, engineering, design, content, and growth. No junior staff, no account managers. Alongside client work, the studio designs and builds its own software, including Cherry, a screenwriting application now open to a first group of writers at cherrydraft.com. More products are in development. Learn more at tandemstudio.ai.
About the founders
Jonathan Sasse led technology at Rio, iriver, and Slacker Radio, where he was a founding executive, and most recently served as CEO of a software development firm. Scott Davis ran seller-side engineering at StockX and began his career building secure communications systems at the U.S. Department of Defense. Cade Collister was Chief Experience Officer at Acumen Brands, the company behind Country Outfitter, co-founded Scout Retail Ventures, and has led product and design engagements for Walmart and Microsoft.
Contact Info:
Name: Gary Bird
Email: Send Email
Organization: Tandem Studio
Website: https://www.tandemstudio.ai/
Release ID: 89207431
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