In this episode of The Everyday Founder, James sits down with Tomas Helgaš, founder and CEO of Sutro — the AI platform that turns a single text prompt into a full production-ready app.

Before Sutro, Tomas worked at Facebook (helping power the “People You May Know” feature), then went on to build and sell Sphere to Twitter after raising $30M.

Now, he’s back for round two — building Sutro to change the way the world builds software. This conversation dives into the mindset, mission, and mechanics behind one of the most fascinating builders in AI today.

We discuss:

- Why Tomas left his dream job at Facebook to start Sphere

- How he built a company that became the foundation for X (Twitter) Communities

- The early days of Sutro and building secure, production-grade AI tools

- The tradeoff between shipping fast vs. building safely

- Co-founders, hiring mistakes, and second-time founder lessons

- How AI will reshape how software is built — and why security is the next big frontier

Chapters:

00:00 – Mission: change how the world builds software

01:18 – Intro: Tomas Halgaš, Sutro, Facebook → Sphere → Twitter

02:08 – Why go back after a successful exit

03:10 – Early bet on OpenAI (GPT-2) and text-to-app ideas

04:02 – Viral demos: prompt → live front- & back-end, fully deployed

05:12 – Sphere origin story & community product

07:42 – From partnership talks to Twitter acquisition

09:24 – Post-acquisition & starting Sutro (overlap period)

11:05 – Co-founder transition; going solo as CEO

12:21 – Sutro thesis: production software with guarantees

14:02 – Security horror stories & why prototypes don’t cut it

15:42 – Comp landscape: “shipping fast” vs “building safely”

16:57 – The mission (again): security-first software at scale

18:13 – Sponsor: Opus

18:38 – From prompt links to better human–computer interaction

19:13 – Product/LLM inflection points; scaffolds & reasoning

21:13 – Moving upmarket: serious, enterprise use cases

21:39 – Raising capital: when VC makes sense

23:16 – What a “good VC” actually does for founders

28:15 – Second-time founder perspective on investor value

28:42 – Family roots, teenage hacking, first sparks

30:16 – Silicon Valley internship & mindset shift

31:01 – Leaving Facebook: parental push & perspective

33:02 – Hiring mistakes at Sphere: brilliant but hard to work with

34:12 – New bar at Sutro: great humans, ex-founders

35:04 – Remote vs in-person; hiring uncommon talent

37:41 – Advice to younger self: read deeply, then build deeply

41:01 – Working with people: persuasion vs. coaching

42:03 – Coaching someone with a “dream job” to leap

43:18 – Calibrate at the best; then go build

45:21 – CTO vs CEO: different learning curves

46:04 – Big tech cycles & urgency vs comfort

47:03 – Co-founders: marriage, commitment, alignment

49:13 – The “F-you number” & exit alignment

51:21 – Host anecdote; aligning on outcomes

52:19 – Post-acq reality: agency & decision-making changes

54:21 – Corporate planning constraints & politics

55:24 – How to set better terms for future acquisitions

56:10 – Where Sutro is going

57:16 – Better models, but HCI is the hard problem

59:16 – English is ambiguous: need precise interfaces

1:00:19 – The compliance/security wave is coming

1:01:27 – Sutro’s advantage: guarantees, compliance, real software

1:01:54 – The next interface: text + visuals + flows

1:02:17 – AI moves fast; strategy expires quickly

1:02:39 – Luck vs talent vs hard work

1:03:39 – Where to follow Tomas & try Sutro

1:04:03 – Outro

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