Forethought was acquired by Zendesk today, and I wanted to say something about the people who built it.
I met Deon Nicholas at an engineer meetup. We were looking at candidates, he was one of many people in the room. A few months later he reached out about a company idea, and we met at Stable Cafe. He explained transfer learning to me in a way that made it land. How it solved a real problem, how you move from customer to customer without rebuilding the model every time. I remember pushing three or four questions deeper than I normally would. I wanted to see if I could put this two-time ICPC World Finalist through his paces. The answers kept coming at the same level. Detailed, clear, unhurried. Most people flatten out when you push past the surface. He didn't. What I remember just as much is how he answered, with genuine warmth and excitement, like he was glad I asked. Smart people often default toward pessimism because it's the easy way to sound credible. Deon never did. The ones who don't are magnetic.
What was unusual about his idea was how consistent it stayed. They called the first product Agatha, and the seed deck from January 2018 already had a slide called “Agatha for Zendesk.” The core of what it set out to do is essentially what the world is now calling agentic AI for customer support. He just had to wait for it to catch up.
Like every company I've been part of, this wasn't a straight line. There were real bumps along the way. At some point Deon made the decision to step back from running the company day to day and help set it up for what came next. That's a hard thing to do. It's also a noble thing to do, and not everyone does it well. I don't know Sami Ghoche as well as I know Deon, but becoming CEO and driving this home is its own chapter. He wrote it well.
A few months ago we had sushi in San Francisco. We're both seven years older. The kind of ride he'd been on changes people. It grinds some down, hardens others, and sometimes both at once. For whatever reason, Deon seems to have escaped that. Still that same warmth, still genuinely excited about what comes next. His optimism is probably what let him see what others couldn't in 2018. I'm sure he'd say it's tripped him up at times too. Most things cut both ways. But there's no prize for pessimism, and he's a genuinely lovely person to be around.
When he told me about his next thing, I was just excited to partner with him again.
Congratulations to Deon, to Sami, and to the whole Forethought team.