About Marko Kraemer
Marko Kraemer is the founder and CEO of Kortix, which builds an open-source AI operating system. The project has more than 20,000 stars on GitHub. He describes his work as "building software that will replace us." Before Kortix he started SoftGen, an AI web app builder, which he says he sold for seven figures.
In 2026 he was second runner-up in Kill My SaaS, a challenge from swyx of Latent Space and AI Engineer to replace Sessionboard, the event software AI Engineer was quoted $43,000 a year for, with an app built by AI agents. His entry, TrackStage, an open-source tool for calls for papers, agendas and speaker management, won $1,000 for the cleanest drag-and-drop scheduling experience in the field. swyx also recommended its repo to anyone who wants to learn how to run an agent fleet.
Career Highlights
- Founder and CEO of Kortix, an open-source AI operating system with 20,000+ GitHub stars
- Founded SoftGen, an AI web app builder
- Built TrackStage, second runner-up in the Kill My SaaS challenge
Notable Positions
On Planning Before Prompting
Marko has cloned apps for clients before, and his rule is to plan everything first. Once the UX and UI are settled, he sits down for eight or nine hours and plans the data schema, the business logic and the pseudo code in the most granular way. For TrackStage he fed swyx's walkthrough video and Sessionboard's API reference to Claude, along with his preferred stack, including Convex for a real-time database.
On What Agents Can Now Do
He contrasts this with how long the same work took a few years ago: "you literally put it into an LLM and you walk away for like two hours, like three hours. You just get the entire thing, pixel perfect build."
Key Quotes
- "In the most granular way, I plan out the entire data schema, the business logic and like literally pseudo code." (on spec-first agentic coding)
- "Convex just gives you a real-time database. It's super simple." (on his stack choice)
Related Reading
- Kill My SaaS: Replacing a $43K Sessionboard with AI Agents - The challenge where TrackStage placed third
- SaaS-to-AI Transformation - The broader shift behind replacing SaaS