This as-told-to narrative is drawn from an in-depth conversation with Claudio Fuentes, aged thirty-one, the cofounder and Chief Operating Officer of CompAI, a rapidly growing startup that designs artificial intelligence–driven software solutions to ensure corporate compliance. Fuentes recently made headlines by posting on the social platform X, announcing that CompAI will no longer hire employees who are unable or unwilling to work in-person, full-time, at the company’s New York headquarters. While this story has been edited for brevity and coherence, it captures his reasoning, experiences, and reflections concerning work culture.
Fuentes explained that he has dedicated the past decade to the technology industry, the most recent four years of which were spent immersed in Silicon Valley’s ecosystem of startups and innovation. In February, he decided to return to New York, marking a personal and professional transition. CompAI was founded in January, and by April, the team successfully launched its first product, experiencing what he described as an extraordinarily steep and swift growth trajectory—proof, in his eyes, of the team’s momentum and synergy.
The company initially operated under a remote model, born out of necessity and geography. Fuentes’s cofounder, who is based in the United Kingdom, plans to relocate to New York soon. The expanding team also includes a sales representative located in France and a customer success manager working from Illinois. Even as the founding group dispersed across continents, Fuentes shared that the fundamental aspiration was always to bring everyone together physically. For him, the logic was simple yet powerful: sharing a workspace accelerates progress, streamlines communication, and fosters creativity in ways that virtual collaboration struggles to match.
When he publicly endorsed a return to in-person work, much of the online community of remote tech workers reacted harshly, criticizing what they perceived as a regressive stance. To Fuentes, this backlash was surprising. From his perspective, it should not be considered controversial for a company to choose a local hiring strategy that prioritizes physical collaboration. Nonetheless, his stance tapped into a broader cultural debate about the future of workplaces.
Reflecting on his years in the Bay Area, Fuentes spoke about witnessing numerous startups that began as small teams and evolved into formidable enterprises, securing Series A, B, and C funding rounds before achieving runaway success. Companies such as Cursor and Bland represented, to him, the quintessential Silicon Valley story: friends and colleagues uniting in one space to build extraordinary products together. The prevailing ethos he absorbed there was that innovation thrives when passionate individuals can exchange ideas spontaneously, without the friction inherent in remote interactions.
Before his Silicon Valley chapter, Fuentes had already spent six formative years working in New York. Notably, in 2016 he was employed at WeWork during the zenith of the Adam Neumann era—a time characterized by extraordinary growth, unrelenting ambition, and a distinctive emphasis on company culture. Although WeWork’s later history is well-documented, Fuentes still regards that period with admiration. He recalls the sense of community, loyalty, and unrestrained creativity that Neumann managed to inspire. Stripping away the economic and strategic complexities, Fuentes focuses on how powerful that cultural energy was—how it galvanized employees to pour themselves fully into a shared vision. Whenever possible, he aspires to recreate even a fraction of that environment in the organizations he builds.
When the pandemic struck, everything changed. Fuentes left New York for Miami, his hometown, seeking refuge during lockdowns. He spent one year working remotely from Miami and another doing the same from the Bay Area before ultimately committing to full-time entrepreneurship. In hindsight, he describes those two years as among the bleakest of his life. While remote work had its obvious advantages—flexibility, autonomy, and comfort—the absence of human interaction gradually eroded his well-being. Living day after day inside the same four walls, rarely venturing into sunlight or spontaneous conversation, began to feel profoundly unnatural. Humans, he believes, are wired for connection; without it, the daily rhythm of life loses vitality and meaning.
Fuentes emphasizes that work is not merely a transactional space where one completes tasks and receives payment; for many people, it forms the core around which much of life revolves. Historically, people made lifelong friends or even met their spouses at work—a reminder that the office once served as a significant hub of social and emotional connection. For that reason and many others, he finds it both logical and essential for CompAI’s team to gather in a shared space once more.
For the company’s current employees, this new in-office policy introduces both challenges and opportunities. Some team members plan to relocate to New York, eager to embrace the energy of in-person collaboration. With others, CompAI will attempt to find workable arrangements during the transition period. Yet going forward, Fuentes is clear: all future hires will be expected to join the New York office full-time.
Discussing the tangible benefits of in-person work, Fuentes shared an example that perfectly encapsulated what he calls “unstructured riffing”—the spontaneous, free-flowing conversations that often spark innovation. One morning around 8:30, a team member arrived early and casually approached his cofounder with an idea: “What if we built an AI agent to automate our customer support?” Within twenty minutes, that casual suggestion evolved into a functional automation integrated with Slack, capable of instantly responding to customer inquiries by searching the company’s existing knowledge base. The result was staggering—a 95 percent reduction in customer support requests. To Fuentes, this spontaneous moment of creativity could never have unfolded so swiftly in a remote setup, where every interaction requires scheduling, documentation, or an agenda.
He further explained that in virtual work environments, a subtle kind of inertia often stifles new ideas. Because communication requires intentional effort—be it drafting messages, setting up Zoom calls, or summarizing thoughts—employees often share only ideas that are already well-structured. The more tentative or embryonic ones simply remain unspoken. Yet, according to Fuentes, genuine innovation emerges precisely from those raw, half-formed notions that gain clarity through informal dialogue and collective refinement. The serendipity of hallway conversations, those “what if” moments exchanged over coffee, or instant brainstorming sessions around a whiteboard, all play irreplaceable roles in cultivating groundbreaking concepts.
Fuentes acknowledges that not every professional thrives in such an environment. For individuals whose work feels monotonous or isolating—those confined to cubicles who find little joy in daily commutes—remote setups might indeed provide greater satisfaction and autonomy. However, at CompAI, his vision is the opposite: to nurture a workplace that feels like the energetic, collaborative heart of innovation. He believes that having everyone physically together not only strengthens team cohesion but also signals commitment. Candidates who are willing to show up every day, he observes, tend to be more deeply invested in the mission. While this approach may cost the company the opportunity to hire certain highly qualified remote applicants, Fuentes has no doubt that the long-term benefits—creativity, unity, and rapid iteration—will far outweigh any short-term losses.
In his view, CompAI is not merely constructing a business—it is building a vibrant ecosystem where personal growth and professional excellence intertwine. In this context, bringing the entire team back into a shared physical space represents not nostalgia but strategy: a deliberate move toward collaboration that feels human, immediate, and electric. For Fuentes, that is where the real future of innovation begins.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/cofounder-remote-startup-now-hiring-in-person-office-workers-2025-10
