Openhour: Building ‘AI Employees’ That Give Business Owners Their Hours Back

Openhour, a Charleston-based business, founded by Aaron Gallo and Evan Camire, prides itself on helping companies implement AI systems and integrations. Before its formation, Gallo and Camire both embarked on their own entrepreneurial journeys before colliding into a business partnership. They didn’t just like ideas; they liked building systems that worked. 

Camire and Gallo describe how they came together through real estate clubs and shared courses at the College of Charleston. Their conversations transformed into a partnership built around a concept: How could AI help business owners spend less time on redundant tasks and more time on the business and parts of their lives that hold a greater impact? They turned their combined strengths into something practical: AI agents designed to run repetitive, high-stakes business workflows. Not as a novelty or a “cool chatbot.” Their AI agents serve as an operational advantage. 

The clearest theme in Openhour is this: the point of AI is not to replace people. It’s to give people their time back. 

Camire’s path began in Pennsylvania where he later moved to South Carolina for college. “I did my first year at USC, and I thought I wanted the big football scene,” he recounted, later sharing how he wanted to build a portfolio in Charleston, started his own property management company, and handled vacation rentals. His property management company had six figures in gross revenue before he sold it.  “Towards the end of having my property management company, I had been self-teaching myself with AI for a couple of years,” Camire explained. He taught himself about AI, cloud infrastructure, and agentic technology, which made the decision to pivot into AI more practical for him.

Camire wanted to explore what AI could do when it became agent-focused and when it could work without being constantly prompted. While he still had the property management business,  he began exploring how those systems could function as a coworker, completing defined workflows, and guest communication, asking himself what AI’s capabilities were. After Camire sold his property management company, his newly acquired knowledge allowed him to continue pursuing his AI curiosities into Openhour with Gallo. 

Gallo joined with a complementary track. Originally from Chicago, Illinois, he moved around throughout his childhood and always knew building a business of his own was the goal – eventually a resort in the Caribbean with an attached marine animal sanctuary. Gallo started entrepreneurship with his DJ company, learned operations by evolving into an all-inclusive wedding agency. He also worked for a local politician and assisted her in the finance department. Through his work at Woodlock Capital, he gained experience and strengthened his ability to understand real estate investments, debt, financing, and underwriting. 

Those experiences, along with his interpersonal skills, became crucial once he met Camire through shared campus involvement: real estate club, classes, and coffee meetings. Their business partnership is more than shared interest. It’s work ethic, accountability, and a healthy disagreement style – where, if one founder doesn’t agree, they openly discuss the idea rather than letting it stall. Both expressed being committed to building practical systems for other business owners.

Openhour is built around a straightforward premise: most business owners in the market they’re aiming for are working more than they want to. Camire describes the target reality bluntly: “businesses with the size they want to help often run on grinds – 80 hours a week – and owners end up working significantly more hours than that." Openhour’s mission is to give owners their hours back and time added to their days and weeks. The founders want the benefits of automation to extend beyond a more efficient workday.

Gallo adds the broader vision: businesses that are ahead of the curve on AI now. He framed the timing as an opportunity window: “In 10 years, everyone will be on AI.” The difference today is that companies can move first and get operational advantage while implementation is still uneven. This is why Openhour isn’t selling “AI” as a category. It’s selling AI agents as infrastructure inside real workflows. 

Openhour’s work takes two related forms. For businesses that need a tailored solution, the company builds custom AI systems and integrations around their workflows. For those that need help navigating existing systems, Openhour provides ongoing implementation, training and support. In other words, Openhour can be like a business’ AI Implementation team; it can identify relevant tools, help utilize them across an organization, train employees, and keep up with developments that could benefit overall business growth. Custom development provides another option when existing systems cannot adequately support a workflow. Openhour’s technical team is composed of developers with master’s degrees in software engineering, as well as a developer with more than 20 years of experience in coding and AI development. 

One of Openhour’s early clients, a property management company based in Wilmington, North Carolina, needed help with revenue management. Reviewing information and adjusting rental prices had become a recurring demand on the owner’s mornings. “Agents are separate from ChatGPT or a Claude because they are a customized batch of code that’s written, has certain credentials and capabilities,” Camire explained. Openhour built a system that runs autonomously every day at 5 a.m. It draws on the client’s dynamic pricing platform and property management software, along with weather and news sources, and incorporates the owner’s own pricing logic into its decisions. The system brings those inputs together to support pricing updates across the client’s listings. “He has probably two hours back every morning where he doesn’t have to do revenue management anymore,” Camire said. 

Are any companies sharing an agent or are entirely new batches of agents created for each company? “Every time we build an agent, it’s fully customizable and created as a new agent for the client that’s deployed inside their company. There is never any co-mingling of data, credentials, or passwords,” they shared. To ensure the AI agents’ accuracy, they have an internally built dashboard where they can see all the output including “when the AI agents have been used, and what they’ve been used on,” they said. Aside from controlled data access, the connecting agents to the clients’ existing software require API keys, which allow the agent to read, view, and within defined limits – write changes back to systems. The founders emphasize that the access to existing software is configured around the workflow, allowing a system to read information or make changes within defined parameters. 

Although the AI voice and calling do exist and are capabilities, Openhour is not offering those services currently. Camire and Gallo discuss model upkeep and Gallo explained that Openhour keeps clients updated with the newest models, referencing how OpenAI and Anthropic release models frequently updated. Their approach is to update agents with the best model for the business at that time. The combination of controlled access plus frequent model improvements becomes part of their definition of reliability. 

With advanced technology comes skepticism and concern especially in terms of job security. Their responses are rooted in two beliefs: 1. Creativity is human, and 2. Automation should protect your life, not erase it. He argues that AI relies on historical data and pattern-based outputs, while true creativity involves generating something genuinely new. In addition, Camire explicitly cautions people to not automate their “whole life,” because it can cost something intangible. The goal is to create space for family, passions, and health while preserving the experiences and decisions that make time more meaningful.

Gallo compared responsible AI implementation to the precautions people take when driving. He said, “AI can be dangerous like driving a car – risk increases without seatbelts, but seatbelts reduce harm. Openhour is like the seatbelt, an expert layer that helps ensure AI is used safely, securely, and correctly.”

For aspiring entrepreneurs, the advice they would give is to take action and learn from experiences. “When you have (an idea) in your head about whether you need to do this or that, just (act on it). It’s quicker to do something, mess up, and then fix it, rather than to think about something and never do it,” Camire encouraged. Gallo shared the importance of having solid people around you:  someone who motivates you, holds you accountable, and helps refine decisions that turn ambition into progress. 

Openhour is not in the game of selling a future when everyone loses their jobs. They’re about building a present where business owners gain their time back, and where AI becomes hired help, not the boss. 

To learn more about Openhour and to connect with its founders, Aaron Gallo and Evan Camire, contact them directly at aaron@openhour.io and evan@openhour.io