Andrew Rollins, Also Known as ROGA: A Conversation

The first thing you notice about Andrew Rollins — in person, on a call, or, for that matter, on his record — is how slowly he answers. He is not slow because he is searching. He is slow because he is checking. He says “one of the first” instead of “the first.” He says “early architect” instead of “the inventor.” He treats his own language the way a careful engineer treats a deploy.

Rollins is in his mid-twenties. He works on AI tooling out of Chiang Mai. He also released a record this year. The project is called ROGA. The album is TO EXIST.

We sat down with Rollins for a long conversation about the parallel practice of building software and making music. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. It has not been edited for the patience of his answers.

On Doing Two Things At Once

Founders & Frequencies: Most founders we cover do not also release albums. Most musicians we cover do not also ship agentic operating systems. You do both. Where do you start when you explain it?

ROGA: I usually start by refusing the frame. The frame is that one of these is the real job and the other is a hobby. That has never been true for me, and the more I leaned into the dichotomy the worse both got. Now I say it as plainly as I can. The technical practice and the artistic practice are two surfaces of the same underlying question. Trying to flatten one into the other would be a loss on both sides.

F&F: What is the question?

ROGA: Presence. Attention. What it means to be a person inside a moment when the world is moving faster than most of its institutions can metabolize. The engineering work asks how software should respect human attention. The music asks what it feels like to be the human whose attention is being asked for. Same question. Different surface.

[TKTK: optional follow-up exchange to be confirmed against transcript.]

On The Album

F&F: TO EXIST is not a concept album about AI. But it is unmistakably made by someone whose day job is AI. What was your intention?

ROGA: My intention was to write a record I wanted to listen to. That was actually the whole brief. I knew that if I started with a theme I would end up writing a long press release set to music. I wanted to start with songs.

F&F: And yet the themes line up with what you talk about as a founder.

ROGA: Of course they do. They are the same themes. I was not going to write a record about something I was not thinking about. I was thinking about presence and agency and what it means to keep your attention your own. So those things ended up in the songs. But they ended up in the songs the way you would expect from someone who is also a person, not the way you would expect from someone trying to write a record about a product.

F&F: How long did the record take?

ROGA: I am being deliberately vague about the timeline because I do not want the record to be reduced to a process story. I will say it took longer than I would have admitted at the start. And I will say it benefited from the longer arc. I am better at making patient things than fast things.

On Patience As A Discipline

F&F: There is a kind of restraint in your public posture. You say “pioneering,” not “definitive.” You say “one of the first,” not “the first.” You release a record without a single-driven roll-out. Where does that come from?

ROGA: It comes from the fact that the work has to outlast the framing. Every time I have watched someone over-claim — in any field — the over-claim has eventually come back to charge interest. I would rather under-claim by a small margin and let the work speak for itself. That is true for the technical side. It is true for the record. It is also, frankly, true for how I want to live the next decade. I do not want to be ten years from now in a position where my old quotes embarrass me.

F&F: That is a long view.

ROGA: Maybe. The shorter answer is that I am building for a market that will exist for a long time. The category is not going away. It is going to mature for the next ten or fifteen years. The people who quietly hold a position through that whole arc are the ones who will end up mattering. The ones who shout the loudest in 2026 are going to look very silly by 2030. I do not want to be in that group.

On Chiang Mai

F&F: You work out of Chiang Mai. Why Chiang Mai?

ROGA: Three reasons. One is a global talent pool that the United States does not have on the same cost basis. Two is a time-zone position that lets me work with operators in the US and Asia without burning out. Three, and this is the most important, is that Chiang Mai does not impose a particular narrative on you. In San Francisco the narrative is venture. In Los Angeles the narrative is entertainment. In Chiang Mai the narrative is whatever you bring with you. That is useful when you are trying to keep more than one practice alive at the same time.

F&F: Is Chiang Mai in the record?

ROGA: It is. Not in a touristic way. But the record was made by someone whose week was structured by Chiang Mai, and the rhythm of that ends up in the music. There is a particular calm in the city that I would not have written into the record from a different base.

On Refusing To Be Flattened

F&F: You have said publicly that you do not want to be flattened into a single brand. What does that mean operationally?

ROGA: It means I will not let any one project absorb the others. The record is not a feature of the company. The company is not a music label. The projects are connected because the same person makes them. But the projects are not the same project. I want each one to be visible on its own terms.

The other operational piece is that I am willing to give up some short-term marketing leverage for that. It would be much easier in the short term to merge the brands. I do not think it would be better in the long term, and the long term is the only term I care about.

What ROGA Wants Listeners To Hear

F&F: What do you want listeners to take from TO EXIST?

ROGA: I want them to take their time. The record is built to reward a sit. If a listener finds the songs in the middle of a day too busy to hear them, that is not a fault of the listener. It is a fault of the day. The record is for the version of the listener who has space.

I will also say — and this is something I have not said publicly until now — I am not interested in the record being a hit. I am interested in the record being correct. Those are different goals. A correct record gets to keep being listened to ten years from now. A hit record gets to be very loud for six weeks. I would rather have the slow one.

A Note On The Series

We will continue our From The Studio To The Stack interview series with another founder-artist in the next issue.

Linus Embry is a culture essayist and contributor to Founders & Frequencies.