Founder thesis · Spring 2026

Shared Intelligence is the next collaboration layer.

Private AI made individuals faster. The harder, more interesting move is shared context - where people and AI teammates work from the same room, with visible memory, real human authority, and bounded follow-through.

Start with the manifesto

Or skim who I am, or see what I'm building at Sociail.

Mustafa Sualp, founder of Sociail, in a black-and-white portrait.
Mustafa Sualp · Philadelphia
About

I build companies that change how people work.

AEFIS spent a decade rewiring how universities assess student learning. We bootstrapped it from three founders into a market-leading EdTech platform serving 55 institutions, and exited to private equity in 2021.

Sociail is the second act - a shared AI workspace where people and AI teammates stay in the same room, drafting against the same memory, deciding against the same history. This site is where I think out loud about the category we're building toward: Shared Intelligence.

Selected results. AEFIS bootstrapped 2012, scaled to 55+ universities, 4.8x return at PE exit in 2021. Philadelphia 100 in 2016 and 2017. Drexel commerce and engineering. Bilingual EN / TR.

What I'm building

Sociail - a shared room for people and AI teammates.

Drafts, decisions, memory, and approvals live in one place, not split across a dozen tabs and a hundred prompts. AI teammates appear as first-class participants in the room - visible, named, accountable - not as a tool you reach for and then forget you used.

The wager is simple: most of the value of AI at work isn't faster solo prompting. It's whether your team's context, judgment, and follow-through compound across the people and AI teammates doing the work. We're building for that.

June 1, 2026 · Early Access opensSociail Early Access

Recent thinking

Notes on AI-native work, trust, and the operator path behind Sociail.

All insights →
  1. 06 May / 2026

    Shared Intelligence Starts With a Shared Room

    Private AI made individuals faster, but work still fragments across tabs, meetings, and memory. Shared Intelligence starts with a simple shift: people and AI teammates working from the same visible, permissioned room.

    Manifesto / 8 min
  2. 21 May / 2026

    The Cascade: When AI Collapses the Distance Between Idea and Consequence

    AI compresses the distance between strategy, implementation, security, finance, operations, customer experience, and accountability. The advantage belongs to teams that can keep that cascade shared, inspected, and governed.

    AI Collaboration / 8 min
  3. 01 May / 2026

    What Trustworthy AI Collaboration Looks Like

    Trustworthy AI collaboration is not about trusting the model. It is about designing the system around context, roles, human authority, memory, and accountability.

    AI Collaboration / 7 min

Team

My team is my superpower.

Pictured here with the AEFIS team just days before the COVID-19 lockdown. A difficult, transformative time - but also one of our most inspiring chapters. I am forever grateful to those who helped shape that journey.

AEFIS team gathered for a group photo in March 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic.
AEFIS team, March 2020 - just days before the world changed.
We don't just think, therefore we are. We share intelligence, therefore we become.
Mustafa Sualp
Founder Notes from Mustafa Sualp