Taking on ServiceNow: Coding Agents for the Rest of Us with Serval Co-Founder and CEO Jake Stauch
Jake Stauch, co-founder and CEO of Serval, joins Sarah Guo and Elad Gil to discuss how his startup is directly challenging ServiceNow by deploying code-generation agents into enterprise IT departments. Stauch details why code is the superior abstraction for enterprise workflows, how strict permissioning and SDLC-style guardrails make generative AI safe for large enterprises, and why background agents remain a major moonshot. He also outlines Serval's operational approach of eliminating traditional product managers in favor of product-oriented engineers embedded directly with customers.
- Jake Stauch, co-founder and CEO of Serval, calls autonomous background agents the "ultimate moonshot in enterprise software" because full autonomy triggers immediate security blocks from corporate IT. Read →
- Bring-your-own-agent setups fail in enterprise IT because real employees hold minimal permissions. If an employee cannot access a system, their AI assistant cannot touch it either. Read →
- Jake Stauch and his co-founder Alex chose to target ServiceNow on day one in Alex's living room, rejecting the small-business entry path used by Rippling and HubSpot. Read →