Town CEO outlines vision for AI-driven self-organizing companies and privacy-first agentic workspaces

Town, a productivity startup, emerged from stealth in June with $55 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. Its core product is a digital assistant called a Townie, which integrates with users’ calendars and emails to brief them on daily tasks and take limited actions on their behalf.

Town’s onboarding process builds a personalized wiki that includes a user’s work priorities, communication style, and patterns, drawing from emails, meeting notes, and Slack interactions. The wiki informs the Townie’s briefings and actions, and Greze envisions it evolving into a self-organizing company knowledge base for teams.

Greze acknowledged privacy risks in pooling private files across a team, noting the potential for sensitive data like salaries to be exposed. He emphasized that the company’s enterprise agreements explicitly prohibit employers from accessing employees’ Townie conversations, and that session data is deleted after 15 days.

Greze rejected the idea of AI agents as independent economic actors, stating, "I don’t need a universe filled with paper clips — no, thank you." He also opposed manipulative agent behaviors, calling the notion of guilt-tripping users a "dark pattern."

The Townie assistant is priced between $49 and $59 per month, with Greze citing user feedback that the tool saves more time than the cost of a $75 monthly manicure. Greze described townies as "beings you nurture" but insisted they remain software without human rights.

Greze estimated that AI currently automates 10–20% of a knowledge worker’s routine tasks, with the remaining 80% still requiring human input. He predicted gradual improvements over time but cautioned that full automation remains distant for most roles outside of highly structured environments.