Aytekin Tank is the founding father of Jotform, an automation enthusiast, and an creator. Founded in 2006, Jotform is the pioneering WYSIWYG online form builder, which has grown to serve over 25 million users worldwide and employs a team of greater than 650. In 2016, Entrepreneur Magazine named Jotform one in all the “Best Privately-Owned Corporations in America.”
As CEO, he’s proud to guide the corporate’s ongoing growth and development, with an annual growth rate of over 50 percent and a commitment to introducing cutting-edge features and integrations.
Along with his role as CEO, Aytekin is a productivity and automation advocate and recently authored the WSJ bestselling book “Automate Your Busywork.”
Aytekin shares his philosophies as a business leader and CEO in columns in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company and Unite.AI.
Jotform was one in all the primary WYSIWYG online form builders. What inspired you to create Jotform back in 2006, and the way did you validate the necessity for it available in the market?
The concept for Jotform got here after I was working as a developer for a Latest York media company. Certainly one of my responsibilities was creating online forms from scratch. It was tedious and redundant, and never left me feeling particularly inspired. It was also time-consuming. At a certain point, I believed to myself: there must be a faster, more efficient way. So I began moonlighting as a solopreneur—constructing my online form startup on nights and weekends and clocking a 9-to-5 every weekday.
As for validating the thought, Jotform was inspired by a frustration that I used to be experiencing. I figured that anyone in my role—working as a developer for any organization—would greatly profit from it. I started with a freemium product to check out the waters. Then, as I spotted people were willing to pay for it, I developed a paid version as well. I made a decision I’d wait to quit my day job until my startup earnings equaled my salary. In the summertime of 2005, I turned in my resignation and went all in on Jotform.
You bootstrapped Jotform and grew it into an organization serving 25 million users. What were the largest challenges you faced within the early years, and the way did you overcome them?
Within the early years—and please bear in mind, this was well before the rise of AI—my biggest challenge was making time for the bigger-picture considering obligatory to take my company to the subsequent level. Busywork, like emails, scheduling, and on a regular basis administrative tasks, were monopolizing my schedule and quite frankly, left me feeling drained at the tip of the day. I felt like I used to be never doing enough, and at the identical time, I used to be running on empty. It was an actual conundrum. Worst of all, I knew we were missing opportunities to supply our users adjoining services that might make their lives easier.
Once I began in search of automation solutions in my very own each day processes, it was an actual watershed moment—for myself and the business. It didn’t change the substance of my work—it transformed my approach. As an alternative of trying to perform as many tasks as possible on my to-do list, my approach began with identifying redundant, time-consuming tasks that I could automate. Then, I discovered myself with more time for work that felt meaningful—like strategizing find out how to roll out recent products and break into recent markets. Not only that, I had more time to rest, which has been critical for long-term, sustainable growth.
How has the evolution of no-code and automation tools influenced Jotform’s product development and vision through the years?
The variety of no-code and automation tools available on the market has skyrocketed. It’s to the purpose where in case you’re not on board with the automation revolution, you’re doing a disservice to your organization and/or profession. But one thing that has served Jotform is our internal automation-first mindset. On an enterprise and individual level, we’re all the time in search of recent ways to automate manual tasks—in other words, we’re seeking to make our own work lives easier. And that speaks to our core mission—automating online forms and collaboration tools to make our users’ lives easier, and continually in search of recent ways to accomplish that. In a way, we’ve practiced what we preach because the onset of automation.
Jotform is launching its AI Agents on February 25, 2025. Are you able to give us an summary of this recent product and the issues it goals to unravel?
We’re really excited to supply this recent product to our users. I feel it can transform how people work. Essentially, Jotform AI Agents will help Jotform users create online forms and achieve goals requiring multiple steps. For instance, as an alternative of sending someone an event registration form, you send them a phone number. They call and supply the obligatory information by talking to an AI agent that understands natural language—so the person doesn’t need to keep on with a rigid script. For its part, the AI agent isn’t just filling out the shape, but it surely’s also updating the corporate’s internal records, answering the client’s questions, and more. Importantly, an AI agent can take the subsequent steps based by itself reasoning and decision-making, reducing the necessity for human input. And the perfect part: it doesn’t need rest or vacation time—it’s on call 24/7.
How do Jotform AI Agents differ from other AI-powered chatbots and automation tools available on the market?
For starters, Jotform AI Agents, like most agents, are more dynamic and autonomous. Their behaviors and actions aren’t conscripted. They’re reasoning, making decisions, executing tasks, and learning as they go—all on their very own. To interrupt it down a bit further, a chatbot responds to an easy decision tree with scripted responses. It must stay inside its scope. An AI agent, then again, can reason and act autonomously, making complex decisions about novel issues, accessing information across the business, and completing tasks accordingly. Google has compared AI agents to a chef—planning recipes, gathering ingredients, developing dishes, and tweaking as they go. In that case, a chatbot is more like a line cook following predetermined recipes.
Businesses often struggle with customer support automation. How do Jotform AI Agents ensure a more “friendly” and human-like interaction?
In our testing, we’ve actually found that users prefer AI Agent interactions for various reasons, probably the most obvious being the speed of response and round the clock availability. But interestingly, people also seem less inhibited when speaking with AI customer support agents. They’re not self-conscious about asking seemingly silly questions. They’re not anxious about asking the identical query repeatedly until they really understand something. In a way, they’re more prone to get the assistance and clarity they need. We’ve found that customers care more about efficiently getting the assistance they need than exchanging pleasantries, especially if it’s a problem that could be resolved relatively quickly.
Will users give you the option to customize and train their AI Agents to suit specific business needs, or will they follow pre-set workflows?
Yes. We’re rolling out hundreds of AI agents for an unlimited array of companies and roles—from customer support and sales AI agents to tattoo studio and college administrator AI agents. For its part, a business can interact with its AI agent in real time to refine its responses and improve its knowledge base. For instance, by adding relevant URLs, documents, and steadily asked questions, all aspiring to ensure agents provide accurate and helpful information. A method that agents differ from generative AI is their capability to retain information from past interactions. This permits them to coach themselves as well, offering a more personalized customer experience with each engagement. Finally, training an AI agent is intuitive and versatile—no coding experience is required.
You lately wrote about how AI Agents are transforming early-stage entrepreneurship. If you happen to were starting Jotform today, how would AI agents have modified your approach?
Once I began my business, I used to be pretty adamant about not accepting outside funding. I used to be confident in my idea, but I also felt that as a way to construct a business with endurance, I needed to grow it organically. Going the VC-funded route could have skewed the perception of Jotform’s validity. If I were starting Jotform today, I might have much more reason to follow the bootstrap route. As I’ve written, AI agents offer early-stage entrepreneurs so some ways to automate routine, administrative tasks and concentrate on improving their products and scaling their businesses.
So, to reply your query, I don’t think AI agents would have modified my approach, but I can imagine I might have scaled faster—and still not taken outstanding funding.
You’ve written extensively about automation, including in your book Automate Your Busywork. How do you personally use AI Agents or automation tools to administer your each day tasks as a CEO?
Relating to my each day workload, I begin with an automation-first approach—if there’s an AI-powered tool to perform a task that doesn’t need my personal attention, I’m probably using some version of it. I take advantage of AI Agents and automation tools for scheduling, brainstorming, tightening up my each day workflows, meetings, and more. Between time saved and impact boosted, the results of automation are compounded. Consider meetings: as an alternative of spending half an hour preparing the agenda, an hour within the meeting (where your attention is jumping between conversations and note-taking), then preparing a recap and drafting follow-up emails, an AI agent can tackle the entire meeting-related tasks and enable you to completely concentrate on the actual conversations. It’s a no brainer.
What advice would you give to startups and small businesses seeking to integrate AI into their workflows but unsure where to start?
If I were to provide startups and small businesses one piece of recommendation, it might be to watch the most recent AI tools, and carve out time for experimenting with them and incorporating them into your each day workflows to automate as many manual processes as possible. It might require constructing some slack into your schedule, but you’ll recapture that point and so way more once you start automating and delegating to AI agents. But perhaps crucial change shall be your energy: as an alternative of feeling frazzled by your continuously growing to-do list, you’ll have space and time to work on more meaningful tasks that leave you energized—the sorts of things that remind you why you threw your hat into the entrepreneurial ring in the primary place.
Thanks for the good interview, readers are encourage to go to Jotform, to read his book Automate Your Busywork, or to read a few of his writing on our website.
