Lucas Zhu — I build ventures on agents, and write the build notes.
Founder of IKIGAI AI Ventures (Sydney) and co‑founder of Frollie (Jakarta) — an agentic engineering & venture‑building studio, and the FMCG company it ships for. Before that, Director of Strategy at HelloFresh ANZ ($1B+ ARR), and seven years at McKinsey & Co. (2017 – 2024). I work as an agentic engineer and architect now, and write about what one operator can ship once AI does the work of a department.
Five threads — pick where to start.
Agentic-AI value creation for private equity portfolios and family-office holdings.
enter →Essays and field notes, written while the work was still in front of me.
enter →The products, the open-source skills that build them, and the stack underneath.
enter →Slides you can click through yourself, and what I said over them.
enter →Where the reps came from, role by role, with the dated outcomes.
enter →Mechanic, driver, dad, builder.
A four-phase analogy for the arc from servicing supercars to driving one to building one — McKinsey, HelloFresh, fatherhood, founder.
Read the essay →Where I am.
Last updated
Jakarta, August 2026. Frollie hit profitability inside 90 days and has stayed there. Three brands, seven channels, one repo. One of those channels is now a live outlet running on the POS we built and open-sourced, payment APIs wired straight in. I'm splitting time between operator work in Jakarta and IKIGAI AI Ventures in Sydney — advisory engagements where AI changes the operating model rather than decorates it. Writing here in the gaps.