How to Build a Business That AI Can’t Replace
Podcast Summary
In this episode of STR Global Unlocked, I sit down with Siddhi Mittal, co-founder of yhangry, a Y Combinator–backed hospitality marketplace scaling across the UK and US.Together, they explore what AI-first hospitality really means beyond faster guest messages, automation tools, and surface-level efficiency.
Siddhi shares how yhangry is rebuilding parts of the company around AI-native workflows, including an internal agent that reached 75% autonomous bug resolution in under 14 days.
This conversation dives into the future of hospitality, marketplaces, operations, AI agents, customer experience, and human value in a world where execution is becoming automated. We discuss why average businesses are becoming more exposed, why technical competence alone is no longer enough, and why the next competitive advantage may come from judgment, taste, curiosity, trust, and emotional intelligence.
Which questions are answered in this episode?
- What does AI-first hospitality actually mean beyond faster guest communication?
- How is AI changing the way operators, founders, and leaders think about work, value, and execution?
- Why is “being good” or technically competent no longer enough in an AI-native business environment?
- What happens when operational consistency, SOPs, and execution become easier to automate?
- How can hospitality companies use AI to remove manual workflows without losing the human experience?
- Why does Siddhi Mittal believe curiosity, judgment, taste, character, and emotional intelligence are becoming more valuable?
- What can operators learn from yhangry’s AI-first rebuild across product, operations, and customer experience?
We Say What Others Won’t
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Resources mentioned in the show:
Connect with Siddhi Mittal on LinkedIn to learn more about yhangry and how AI-first companies are changing hospitality, marketplaces, operations, customer experience, and the future of human value in an automated world.
Guest Appearing in this Episode
Siddhi Mittal
Siddhi Mittal is the co-founder of yhangry, a Y Combinator–backed hospitality marketplace redefining how people experience private dining, events, and human-led hospitality. With a background in artificial intelligence and a strong technical foundation, Siddhi combines deep domain expertise with a clear vision for how AI can reshape modern business operations.
At yhangry, she is helping build one of the fastest-growing hospitality marketplaces across the UK and US, while actively rebuilding parts of the company around AI-first workflows. Her work focuses on using automation, agents, and AI-native systems to remove repetitive tasks, improve operational efficiency, and allow teams to focus on higher-value creative and strategic work.
Siddhi is especially interested in the intersection of technology, marketplaces, customer experience, and human connection. She believes that as execution becomes easier to automate, the real competitive advantage will shift toward judgment, curiosity, taste, trust, emotional intelligence, and character.
Through her work, she shows what it means to build a company for the AI era: not by replacing the human side of hospitality, but by using technology to make it more personal, efficient, and memorable.
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