October 12, 2026
From a Ten-Hour Conversation to Building Beltic
Isha Bhatnagar and Mike Allan first met in person at SHACK15. They have since emerged from stealth with Beltic, a company building the trust infrastructure for an economy in which AI agents can act on our behalf.
Mike flew from Brazil to San Francisco after he and Isha had spent a week talking. They chose a couch beside SHACK15’s arched windows for their first meeting and made one rule: no talking about work. They stayed for nearly ten hours.
Within days, they had decided to build a company together. SHACK15 became their daily workspace and, through its members and conversations, part of Beltic’s early journey. We spoke with Isha and Mike about that first meeting, the connections that followed, and the question at the heart of Beltic: how can a business know whether an AI agent is authorized to act?
SHACK15: Take us back to the first day you met in person.
Isha Bhatnagar: Mike was living in Brazil, and I was in San Francisco. We met through a mutual friend, talked for about a week, and realized we needed to meet in person. Within ten days, he was on a flight here.
We sat on one of the couches by the arched windows at SHACK15. I think we arrived at 10 in the morning and stayed until around 8 that evening, eating, drinking, and talking until it was time to leave. Our one rule was that we couldn’t talk about work.
Instead, we talked about our families, our friends, and the experiences that had shaped us. We asked each other what we do when we’re happy, angry, or stressed. That conversation gave us a foundation we still come back to. We understood something about each other’s values and how we think before we ever decided to work together.
SHACK15: How did that turn into Beltic?
Isha: We worked together for the following month. I think we’d expected to make a decision after two weeks, but after about four days, we shook hands and said, “Let’s build this.” Mike sold everything he had in Brazil and moved to San Francisco in January 2025.
For a long time, we were at SHACK15 almost every day, from morning until evening. So many of the ideas, debates, and decisions that shaped the company happened there.
SHACK15: For someone new to Beltic, what are you building?
Isha: We’re building a way for businesses to verify incoming AI agents, monitor their actions, prevent fraud or mistakes, and safely accept agentic traffic. An agent could be acting for a person or a company, but the business on the other side needs to know who is behind it and whether it has permission to make a particular transaction. The business can then allow or deny specific actions based on its own policies.
We call that “know your agent,” or KYA. It’s a trust question that becomes more urgent as agents move beyond gathering information and begin acting on people’s behalf. The systems businesses use today were largely built around human activity, and all of that falls apart when you have an agent in place. Agents will require verification that can work at their speed and scale.
SHACK15: What makes this problem especially important now?
Mike Allan: Enterprises keep coming to us with versions of the same questions: Is this really my customer’s agent? Is it allowed to take this action? How do we stop a bad actor without blocking a legitimate one? Those are the questions Beltic is built to answer. If agents are going to participate in commerce, businesses need a dependable way to establish trust in each transaction.
SHACK15: What role has the SHACK15 community played as you’ve built the company?
Isha: The connections have been remarkable. One day I ran into someone I’d worked with at Coinbase. He had been one of the first people I worked with there, and he went on to write one of Beltic’s first angel checks.
We met other angels through the community, including Jørn and Bogdan. Our lead pre-seed investor also saw us pitch at an angel syndicate before offering us a term sheet. Those encounters mattered enormously to us, and many began as ordinary conversations in a place where we were already spending our days.
Jørn has been generous with his time, too. Mike and I have gone to him when we’ve been debating a decision or testing an assumption. It helps to have someone experienced whom you can talk things through with.
SHACK15: You also held one of Beltic’s first events here. What was that moment like?
Isha: Our very first event as a startup was at SHACK15 earlier this year. It was a panel about agent trust, with Jørn and other speakers. To have that conversation in the same place where Mike and I first met, and where we’d spent so much time building, felt special.
SHACK15: Beltic recently emerged from stealth. What comes next?
Isha: We’ve completed our seed round, and we’re ready to share what we’ve been working on. Beltic has raised $8.8 million across its pre-seed and seed rounds, including a $7.3 million seed round led by Norwest.
We believe we’re at a pivotal moment for the agentic economy. There’s enormous excitement about what agents might be able to do, but they need a foundation of trust if businesses are going to let them act. We’re excited to tell our story, bring more people into that conversation, and help build that missing piece.
SHACK15 will always have a special place in our hearts. It’s where our partnership began, where we spent so many days building, and where people became part of the journey.
Founded in San Francisco in 2025, Beltic builds infrastructure to verify the identity of AI agents, monitor their actions, prevent fraud or errors in transactions they initiate, and allow businesses to safely accept agentic traffic. Isha Bhatnagar is CEO and co-founder; Mike Allan is COO and co-founder.
