In ACT’s ‘Co-Founders,’ High Tech Meets West Oakland Hustle

In 2004, Freestyle Love Supreme, an experiment in improv, hip-hop and spontaneity featuring Lin-Manual Miranda, Thomas Kail and Anthony Veneziale, burst onto the scene. Inviting artists and audiences to spend a couple of hours in of-the-moment connection set to beatbox rhythms, FLS helped to cement Miranda and Kail’s theatrical trajectory, eventually leading to the creation and direction of Hamilton, the smash hit musical about the “founding fathers” circa the late 1700s.

Now it’s Veneziale’s turn (as a co-producer) to bring a cohort of founders to the hip-hop musical stage with Co-Founders, an American Conservatory Theater production in which contemporary West Oakland and Silicon Valley mix it up.

Spoofing Bay Area tech incubator Y Combinator, Co-Founders’ Xcelerator promises to turn “losers” (like Nikola Tesla) into the “1%” of innovators and entrepreneurs. With her family home on the line, and a self-developed interactive AI avatar based on her deceased father, Oakland-born hacker Esata (Aneesa Folds) bets on herself and applies to their 10-week startup program for aspiring unicorns.

By a quirk of chance and Uber Pool algorithms, she shares a ride with another applicant Conway (Roe Hartrampf) whose virtual vacation device AVreality lacks actual tech, but whose founder demonstrates the requisite amount of white-guy confidence to give it a chance to push through. Given their complementary strengths and weaknesses, the two soon find themselves agreeing to work together as co-founders rather than as solopreneuers, melding her Dadvatar into the AVreality world as a prototype guide for virtual reality tours of Paris, Mykonos and Oakland.

What follows is a somewhat predictable series of events culminating in our protagonists eventually learning to accept themselves for who they are while developing kinder, more ethical versions of their hi-tech dreams. But not before we’re treated to a variety of scenarios written to send-up startup culture in diabolical and delicious ways: a company called “Buttbit” (“like fitbit for your butt”), rounds of rooftop shots and preposterous PowerPoints.

There’s even a pre-show projection of startup ideas sourced from incoming audience members (shoutout to whoever submitted Scat-GPT on opening night). The musical’s plot includes development of an insidious surveillance app with the chillingly of-the-moment moniker of “Victory AI,” positioned to be the next soulless unicorn to advance onto the global stage.

A vocal powerhouse, Aneesa Folds embodies Esata’s intellectual virtuosity with warmth and depth. Her emotional arc travels from self-negating worrying about whether she will be accepted or rejected for who she is, to declaring herself a “Super Nova,” and captain of her destiny — which begins to look a lot more expansive once she successfully infiltrates the Xcelerator.

As her foil — and situational co-founder — Hartrampf exudes an awkward charm anchored by a steadfast tenor range. Their onstage relationship is fun without being flirty, and both their friendship and their inevitable falling-out and reunification feel logical and realistic.

Co-stars (and co-writers) RyanNicole Austin and Adesha Adefela imbue their characters with strong wills, side-eyes and a clear commitment to embracing the “yes” in every line. Austin, as Esata’s cousin Kamaiyah, is a quintessential Oakland hustler, whose many gigs include nail art, selling bespoke “Startup Founder kits” (complete with vape pens and mushroom truffles) and angel investing. Adefela as Esata’s mother and as potential investor Sandy Hill provides grounded doses of practical wisdom underscored by her smooth, R&B-channeling vocals.

Two members of Bay Area hip-hop theater company Felonius (Tommy Soulati Shepherd and Keith Pinto) grab attention and the mic as the video-game console controlled “Dadvatar” and insufferably smarmy Xcelerator bigwig Victor. And the pitch-perfect, Energizer Bunny–esque Deanalís Arocho Resto, as Victor’s sidekick Chadwick, steals every scene they’re in with a gap-toothed grin and unimpeachable charisma and dance moves. “Science has proven that you retain information better when you move your booty,” they remind us, as they shake their own to a syncopated beat.

It wouldn’t be a proper ode to technological advancement if the creative team at ACT hadn’t leaned into using as much fun tech onstage as possible. There’s the now-requisite background projections (designed by David Richardson) and a bonus second projection screen set up at the front of the stage displaying avatars, algorithms, and endless lines of code to complement the action (projection system designed by Frédéric O. Boulay). It gives Star Trek vibes as Folds swipes through her options and chooses her commands. Shepard operates his “Dadvatar” character from backstage with an Xbox controller, and tech lingo flavors the lyrics to every song like a sprinkling of sea salt on a high-end cupcake.

The show’s reliance on creative tech offered the opening night audience an impromptu lesson on its limits after a projector failure resulted in a 30-minute delay halfway through the first act. But rather than derailing the show’s momentum, it merely offered a pause to reflect on how ultimately the technical difficulties mattered far less to the show’s overall message. That the Bay Area is a place of innovators and dreamers, that our superpower is our ability to think and act outside of the (X)box and make a viable hustle out of any possible pursuit. While hi-tech is here to stay, without people to activate it, it’s just a construct wrapped in an empty platitude of a better world.

In Co-Founders, as in life, it’s the people who hold the power to move and unite us.

‘Co-Founders’ plays through July 6, 2025 at American Conservatory Theater (Strand Theater, 1127 Market St., San Francisco).