Pasha Rayan explains how AI can enhance the way humans connect

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping how humans create and communicate, prompting new questions about how we can collaborate effectively with increasingly capable AI agents.

For entrepreneur Pasha Rayan, the opportunity lies in building messaging platforms that treat AI as integrated, social, and intuitive collaborators. “The previous generation of messaging apps just weren't built for what was coming in the future,” he told BusinessThink.

Having successfully sold Forage in 2024, Mr Rayan is now exploring how AI can support workflows, strengthen communities and reshape digital behaviour at scale with his newest venture, A1Zap, which seeks to rebuild messaging infrastructure to help create a safer community for all.

From UNSW to founding a successful global edtech start-up

Mr Rayan’s pathway into entrepreneurship began at UNSW Sydney, where he studied a Bachelor of Commerce at UNSW Business School, with a focus on accounting, philosophy, and computer science. After graduating in 2012, he briefly joined KPMG but quickly realised the traditional consulting path wasn’t for him. “I didn't want to be a consultant – I wanted to build things,” he said.

A $25,000 hackathon win then led Mr Rayan directly into a product role at Freelancer.com, where he managed growth initiatives. Outside work, he increasingly advised students on career decisions. When his future co-founder noticed the same pattern, they set out to formalise this informal support into a business.

That idea evolved into Forage, originally launched as Inside Sherpa – a virtual job simulation platform offering three- to five-hour online programs developed with companies such as BCG, JPMorgan, Google, Pfizer, and the Commonwealth Bank. “Forage was a virtual job simulation platform which basically let any university student spend three to five hours doing an online course at the likes of BCG, JP Morgan, Pfizer, and Google. And if they're good, they could get hired by these platforms,” he said.

Learn more: Guy Kawasaki: What Silicon Valley won't tell you about innovation

Forage was part of the UNSW Founders 10x Accelerator, scaling rapidly before its acquisition by EAB, a major US education company. The company scaled quickly: 10 million users, more than 5000 university partnerships, and responsibility for “some firms like 30 to 50% of the graduate intake” across cities, including London, New York, and Sydney.

Following Forage’s success, Mr Rayan said he was inspired to take a sidestep to focus on studying art and travelling, describing the shift as a deliberate break. “I spent less than a year, basically, after the exit, doing art school and travelling around the world,” he said.

But the call to build beckoned again. “The AI boom was too fun and too exciting,” he said.

Rebuilding messaging apps for the AI era

In early 2025, Mr Rayan and his new co-founder, Pennie Li, also a UNSW graduate, entered Y Combinator with a new startup, A1Base. Initially focused on infrastructure that enabled AI agents to communicate via SMS, Slack, iMessage, and Teams, the company quickly uncovered a deeper opportunity.

As they progressed through Y Combinator, they began exploring another market gap, shifting toward a venture centred on redesigning the interaction between people and AI. “What was interesting when we were doing that was we realised that, as we're building infrastructure,” said Mr Rayan. "We realised that the previous generation of messaging apps just weren't built for what was coming in the future, with AI agents around."

The insight prompted a full repositioning and upcoming rebrand to A1Zap, a consumer-facing messaging platform built for group communication between humans and AI agents. Unlike traditional tools, the platform is designed to enable AI to be present in everyday conversations.

Mr Rayan sees AI not as a cold, automated layer, but as a facilitator of healthier, more effective communication. “It's really more about seamlessly being able to communicate and work with your friends, your coworkers and AI. You can even use AI to make this community safer and feel better than they were before,” he said.

In practice, the A1Zap platform offers an instant feed of AI chatbots and mini-apps that users can share inside group chats – digital twins that represent you, tools that let you engage with workplaces or campuses in new ways, or even mini-games customised for your friend group. Anyone can create these, even without knowing how to code. Users can also run their own AI that acts in their interests, even pushing back against AI representing the platform or other parties.

"You should have an AI that's on your side, not just the company's side," Mr Rayan said. The platform is already gaining traction across communities at Harvard, UT Austin, and Y Combinator, and the company has raised a seed round from leading US investors.

For Mr Rayan, AI represents a generational technological reset. “AI is actually providing a lot of exciting chances for us to both build whole new industries and help solve a lot of problems that were pretty much impossible to solve before,” he said.

Subscribe to BusinessThink for the latest research, analysis and insights from UNSW Business School

Many frustrations his teams experienced at Forage, he explained, could now be solved with emerging AI capabilities. “There were things that we wanted to do, and you just couldn't do it because the technology wasn't there. AI is providing a lot of exciting chances for us to both build whole new industries and help solve a lot of problems that were pretty much impossible to solve before," he said. “I genuinely think that's going to spawn a whole new generation of new companies on top of the old companies."

While the potential for AI is significant, he cautioned that real change won’t happen overnight, noting that major shifts in how we work and communicate will unfold gradually rather than all at once. “AI will probably take about seven to 10 years before it gets into everyone's hands. Don't expect too much today, but if you expect a lot in a decade, a lot of things that were near impossible can be possible again,” he said.

Ambition, insight and “unashamed existential confidence”

Behind Mr Rayan’s success is an optimistic philosophy on ambition and resilience, shaped by both Australian culture and the realities of startup life. “Australian talent is really, really good talent. The only thing that's separating a lot of Australians from, say, Americans is ambition.”

He said all young founders should feel free to think bigger. “It should be okay for people to let themselves aim for creating big, successful companies.” He credits his success to “unashamed existential confidence” and a willingness to embrace the unknown while continuing to build businesses globally.

“There's kind of like a radical acceptance that you won't know if everything's gonna work and at the same time, still believing it can be fun,” he said.

Equally important is the ability to think independently. “I'm a big believer in people spending the time to generate unique insights. Most of the time, it's like people get distracted by the debate and discussion, instead of just having their own conviction,” he said.

And taking a long-term view of building a company, or anything significant, is the key ingredient to success. “These are the good days when you have, like, a small amount of people who really, really want to understand how to make a difference, take their time, and we have enough time to talk to our users and our customers and get to know them, and get to make something magical for them before we get into the whole big scale thing,” he said.

“Creating any good business or project or organisation or impact isn't going to be an overnight thing. It's at least four years, probably going to be 10 years.”