From Student to CEO
How Jon Ortega Built Wrappers AI in One Year
When most people his age are finishing university, Jon Ortega is running his first company.
At just 20, he’s the co-founder and CEO of Wrappers AI, an AI startup built in Spain’s Basque Country that’s already helping small and medium businesses adopt AI faster and smarter.
Wrappers AI isn’t another chatbot.
It’s a workspace where teams can use pre-built AI agents tailored to their brand, tone, and internal processes.
Think of it as AI for companies, not individuals — tools that work inside teams, across marketing, sales, and operations, with context and structure.
“Each agent understands your company’s voice, mission, and goals,” Jon explained. “We make AI useful from day one. No setup, no prompting, just work.”
From consulting to product
Before Wrappers, Jon worked on AI consulting projects across Europe and Latin America.
Clients kept asking for the same thing: “Can you build something personalized for our company?”
That demand became Wrappers’ origin story.
“We saw companies struggling to adopt AI,” he said. “They didn’t want to build tools. They wanted tools ready to use.”
Jon’s team built the product in just six months.
Today, Wrappers AI is used by marketing agencies and SMBs across Spain and Argentina, helping companies automate workflows and create tailored content that actually fits their brand.
Lessons from the early days
Like most founders, Jon admits the first version wasn’t good enough.
The onboarding process was too complex, and the UX too technical.
So the team rebuilt it from scratch.
“Companies didn’t want to build agents,” he said. “They wanted to upload a few files and start working.”
That insight became a turning point. Wrappers simplified onboarding into two steps: invite your team, upload your brand context, and adoption took off.
What he learned about over-engineering
Jon laughs when asked about technical debt.
“We overbuilt everything,” he said. “We started with a super complex RAG system that nobody needed.”
His biggest takeaway?
Don’t make it perfect, make it work.
Customers rarely care how elegant your backend is. They care how fast it helps them.
“We simplified it and no one complained,” Jon said. “That’s when I realized simplicity scales.”
On the future of AI
Jon believes the next big leap won’t be better chatbots. It will be infinite memory.
“In a few years, you’ll be able to ask your device what you said last week or what task you gave your co-founder,” he said. “That’s when AI becomes truly useful.”
He also sees a world where AI doesn’t just process data. It acts.
“Once AI can interact with the internet and physical world through robots, everything changes,” he said. “That’s the real revolution.”
Success, defined
When asked what success means to him, Jon doesn’t talk about money or funding.
“Success is working on something you’ve chosen, with people you’ve chosen,” he said. “Freedom to choose what, when, and who you work with.”
For now, Wrappers is bootstrapped. The team is growing carefully before raising funds, and Jon prefers it that way.
“We want to raise to grow faster, not just to survive.”
The underrated founder trait: curiosity
Jon started university at 16 and finished at 20.
That same curiosity drives how he builds today.
“If I could talk to my younger self, I’d say: stay curious. Build in public. Learn fast and share it.”
He believes curiosity, not discipline, is the founder’s real superpower.
“Curiosity drives growth. It keeps you moving, even when things don’t work.”
Why this matters
Wrappers AI is part of a bigger trend: the rise of AI-native startups built not around hype but around workflow.
These tools don’t replace people. They amplify them.
Jon Ortega might be 20, but his vision is mature: AI that quietly disappears into the background, helping teams work faster, smarter, and more human.
I’d love to hear from you, which founder should I bring next?
Drop their name (or tag them) in the comments 👇
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