Ara Kevonian. AI, applied.

I bring AI agents into the messy reality of business — at the application layer, not the lab. Currently building NForce, an enterprise platform for deploying conversational AI across email, voice, WhatsApp, and webchat. Previously bootstrapped and sold SoundStage.fm to Audius.

20+
Years building
01
Exits
06
Ventures launched
Ara Kevonian
Currently building NForce
01 — About

Two decades
of shipping.
All in on AI.

I work at the application layer — taking frontier models and turning them into systems that businesses can actually deploy, govern, and trust.

Twenty years of full-stack engineering, product design, and founder reps means I see the whole picture — from prompt to pipeline to P&L.

2005 — 2015

B2B SaaS & The Generalist Years

Twenty years of full-stack consulting and shipping enterprise products. PoliSuite for mid-market insurance carriers, AMPSocial for marketing teams, CloudPal for SaaS subscription management. Learned every layer of the stack — and the business behind it — the hard way.

2019 — 2023

Real-Time & Immersive

Built SoundStage.fm — a 3D metaverse for live music with WebRTC videoconferencing and spatial audio, where artists and fans gathered in custom-branded virtual venues. Bootstrapped from zero, acquired by Audius in 2022.

2023 — now

AI at the Application Layer

All-in on enterprise AI. Founded NForce — a multi-tenant platform for deploying conversational agents across email, voice, WhatsApp, and webchat. Not a researcher. The person who turns models into deployed, governed, revenue-bearing product.

02 — Featured venture

NForce.ai

A multi-tenant SaaS platform for deploying conversational AI agents across every channel a business actually uses — governed by structured playbooks, grounded in real knowledge, and integrated with the systems where work gets done.

NForce dashboard
nforce.ai
Email
Voice
WhatsApp
Webchat
Frontend
Nuxt 3 / Vue / Pinia / NuxtUI / Tailwind
Backend
AdonisJS 6 / TypeScript / PostgreSQL
AI Engine
Python / FastAPI / LiteLLM
RAG
pgvector / BM25 / Cohere / OpenAI
Workflows
Langflow / Celery / RabbitMQ / Redis
Telemetry
Sentry / Langfuse / OpenTelemetry
Capability matrix
  • Multi-channel deployment — email, voice, WhatsApp, webchat
  • Human-in-the-loop intervention & live takeover
  • Analytics, KPIs & ROI dashboards
  • CRM-connected actions — Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Notion
  • Grounded in your data — docs, sites, products, CRM
  • Voice AI built for natural conversation
  • Versioned playbooks with content-safety guardrails
  • Visual workflow builder for complex journeys
  • Automated test lab — validate before go-live
  • Multi-LLM neutrality, on-prem or cloud deploy
What sets it apart

Most AI products bolt a chatbot onto a SaaS. NForce is the inverse — a governance-first platform where every agent action is shaped by versioned playbooks, executed through audited tool calls, and synced back to the systems of record. Built for enterprises that need to deploy AI without losing control.

Also building

SDRbot

sdr.bot

Open-source CLI agent for sales & RevOps. Free, terminal-native, MCP-compatible.

Open-sourceCLIMCPPublic beta
03 — The AI application stack

Models alone aren't enough.
The application layer is what makes them work.

Below is the toolkit I've assembled to take frontier models from experimental to deployed.

Agent Orchestration

Multi-agent systems with governance, not vibes. Stateless inference engines, in-memory guideline matching, dependency/priority/entailment relationship graphs, deterministic playbook resolution.

ParlantLangChainStateless enginesGuideline matching

Knowledge & Retrieval

Ingest from anywhere — Drive, Notion, websites, commerce catalogs, uploads — parse, chunk, enrich, embed, and serve with hybrid retrieval (vector + lexical + reranking) that actually surfaces the right chunk.

Hybrid retrievalpgvector + BM25Cohere rerankMulti-source ingest

Tool Use & Function Calling

Agents that do work, not just talk. Tool-calling bridges, callback-based execution, schema-driven definitions, 20+ production toolkits — CRM operations, calendar, storage, escalation, web browsing, custom integrations.

20+ toolkitsCallback bridgesSchema-drivenAction handlers

Human-in-the-loop & Interventions

Agents that escalate cleanly when they shouldn't act alone. Live takeover, supervised hand-off, intervention rules, and a real-time event bus that surfaces anything outside the playbook to operators.

Live takeoverIntervention rulesReal-time SSESmart tags

Intelligent Monitoring

Smart-tag system that detects situations, sentiment, and outcomes in conversations — automatically record KPIs, fire alerts on patterns, and surface anything that needs attention. No one has to read every transcript.

Smart tagsAuto-classificationKPI trackingAlert rules

Security

Securing the agents themselves, not just the infrastructure. LLM guards against prompt injection and unsafe outputs, end-user authentication, and access controls that let you scope agents private, public, or to specific user groups.

LLM guardsEnd-user authAccess controlsAudit trails

Performance & ROI

Agent performance metrics and financial-impact dashboards. Conversation KPIs, resolution rates, time saved, revenue attribution — the layer that proves AI is earning its keep, not just running.

Conversation KPIsROI dashboardsAgent performanceFinancial attribution

Governance & Test Lab

Production AI without the panic. Version-controlled playbooks (preview/released), automated test suites with AI-generated scenarios, smart-tag analytics, intervention/takeover, content safety filtering.

Playbook versioningAutomated test runsLakera GuardSmart tags
04 — Selected work

What I've built.

05 — Connect

Let's build
something great.

Whether you want to deploy NForce, need a fractional partner on a hard build, or just want to compare notes — let's talk.