The best AI companies won't use LLMs. Here's why most founders are building the wrong thing...

Everyone's chasing ChatGPT wrappers while the real money is buried inside boring businesses making $100M a year. Cabinet factories. Paint mixers. Ball-bearing manufacturers. They're sitting on decades of proprietary data, proprietary SOPs, chemical formulas, machine configurations, and nobody's talking to them because software engineers and cattle ranchers don't hang out at the same bars.

The kids at Stanford and MIT are building for space and quantum computing while ignoring AI for actual industries. There's a class divide keeping founders away from the unglamorous problems that print money. Meanwhile, these factory owners would love to partner, you just have to show up, tour the facility, and actually talk to the people doing the work.

Here's the play: Find a lower-middle-market company with unglamorous IP. Tour their factory. Don't waste time with the sales team, talk to the guy making $20/hour who actually runs the machines and fixes things when they break. That's where the real value lives. Give key partners early equity tied to sales milestones. Build ONE hyper-specific feature—so niche you can describe it in five words or less. Then sell one enterprise license for $83K/month. That's $1M ARR from literally four lines of code packaged as an executable.

Before you even start, check three boxes: Do you have distribution on your cap table? Do you have defensible IP? Do you have an industry expert involved? If you can't check all three, don't build it.

So ask yourself: Are you building a company, or are you just building your ego? Because the real arbitrage isn't in the technology, it's in the relationships nobody else is making.

That's from Josh Furstoss, exited founder, CEO advisor, and the guy who launched four companies last year by finding moats where nobody's looking.

This interview is for founders who want to escape the AI hype cycle, find distribution on their cap table, and build zero-to-one products that actually sell.

Ready to build differently? Head to aiforfounders.co for frameworks that 27,000 AI founders use to validate their next move. Every week. Zero fluff. Just builders building.

Drop a review if this made you rethink your whole strategy.

This show runs on Kitcaster, the podcasting platform that makes you sound professional without the headache. Record, edit, and distribute from one dashboard. Start free at kitcaster.com.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-furstoss/

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org

https://aiforfounders.co/

⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠

⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Hot take: AI isn’t killing creativity, it’s exposing how emotionally lazy founders have become.
Because most people use AI to move faster, not to feel deeper.
AI can either make you more human… or quietly turn you into a productivity zombie who panics when the tools shut off.

Then I met Ziah Orion from Deep Gem Interactive.
And instead of talking dashboards and prompts, we went somewhere unexpected.
He uses generative music to help people process grief, identity, love, even their inner archetypes.
Think songs for your dad, your partner, your future self.
Not content. Connection tech.

Founder takeaway: if your product only saves time, you’re competing on features.
If it helps people feel seen, regulated, or grounded, you’re competing on meaning.

So here’s the real question.

What part of your life or business are you trying to automate because you’re avoiding actually feeling it?

And here’s the twist.
This interview turned into less of a formal conversation and more of two curious humans going deep.
We barely scratched the surface of Ziah’s actual work, so we’re absolutely bringing him back to go deep on what he’s building at Deep Gem Interactive.

If you’re a founder, builder, or creator who wants to use AI for human growth, not just speed, this one’s for you.
We talk tools, identity, discipline, and how to build without burning out your nervous system.
If AI feels exciting and terrifying at the same time, aiforfounders.co is your weekly grounding ritual.
Real tools, real builders, no hype loops, just what actually works.
Subscribe at aiforfounders.co before your competitors copy the insights and pretend they discovered them first.

If this episode stretched your brain even a little, leave a review, it’s how the show survives in the algorithm wilderness.

https://deepgeminteractive.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ziah-orion/

https://aiforfounders.co/

⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠

⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

College didn’t get expensive. It got unnecessary for anyone who wants to make real money in the next 10 years.
Because the future isn’t “learn more.” It’s learn fast, get licensed, get paid.

America has about 700,000 registered apprentices. That’s roughly 0.4% of the workforce. Basically… nobody.
Meanwhile we’ve got over a million electrician jobs open, licensed workers retiring, and data centers sucking power like a black hole.

So the government did what it always does.
It didn’t “incentivize” apprenticeships. It basically said:
“If you want the juicy tax credits on big renewable energy projects… you need apprentices on the job.”

Andy Seth saw the mess up close. The tools were trash. The bureaucracy was thicker than a Denver winter.
So during COVID, he taught himself to build software, apprenticed under a real dev, and built apprentix.io.
Then he did the scary founder move. He niched down hard.
And it worked.

He hit $1M ARR with zero W2 employees. SaaS margins. Seven-day sales cycles.
Not because he “hustled harder.”
Because he found the hidden lever: businesses don’t buy training. They buy revenue and compliance that doesn’t ruin their life.

Founder idea: stop building better education.
Build less paperwork.
Every regulated industry has a compliance bottleneck begging to be turned into a software ATM.

If your product disappeared tomorrow, would your customers miss the value… or would they miss the relief?

If you’re a founder obsessed with leverage, niche strategy, and finding markets where demand is literally written into law, you’re going to want the full breakdown.

If you like founder stories with receipts and real numbers, get on the newsletter at aiforfounders.co.
It’s the closest thing to business school that won’t charge you rent. aiforfounders.co.
Your next unfair advantage might be one email away. Go subscribe: aiforfounders.co.

If this made you think, leave a review like you’re rating a rollercoaster you survived… and include one word: again.

Founders, quick reality check: being great at what you do isn’t the bottleneck.
Being known is the bottleneck.

And the fastest way to become known, trusted, and repeatedly referenced is still the same: go on podcasts.

Kitcaster helps founders get booked on shows your customers already listen to.
Not random podcasts. Not your aunt’s mindfulness hour.
The shows where buyers hang out, where deals start as conversations, and where credibility compounds.

Podcasts do what ads can’t.
They make you sound like the person who’s already won.
You get 30 minutes to explain your thinking, tell the real story, and build trust at human speed.

And if you’re thinking, “I don’t have time to pitch shows,” perfect.
Kitcaster handles the targeting, outreach, booking, and coordination so you just show up and perform.

If you want inbound leads that don’t feel like pulling teeth, go to kitcaster.com and get booked.

https://apprentix.io/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyseth/

https://aiforfounders.co/

⁠https://codestory.co

⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠

⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠

⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Business owners, I already know you hate taxes.

Not the “ugh, paperwork” kind of hate. I mean the kind of hate where you’d rather get dental work at a gas station than explain your P&L.

And here’s the part that should scare you a little: taxes aren’t just expensive. They’re sneaky. Most founders don’t overpay on purpose.

They overpay because they’re too busy.

And even worse, half of you are sitting there thinking, “I hope my tax person is doing it right.” Hope is not a strategy when the IRS is involved. Believe me, I know. I’ve been audited twice.

So listen, there’s finally a tool that makes this easy. It’s called deduction.com.

And yes, I’m shilling for it because it’s awesome. The founder, Sai, is a buddy of mine. He’s a Denver guy. Well, he’s British, but he’s here now, so we’re claiming him.

For $500, Deduction.com’s agent will complete and file your return, and there’s a human reviewing it and signing it. And right now, Sai is onboarding every single customer himself.

You can say you knew him when.

At that price, and I’m being dead serious, I’d have them run it just to double-check your tax preparer. Because if you catch one mistake, one missed deduction, one “oops”… it pays for itself instantly.

Here’s the real question though: if taxes are the biggest bill you pay every year, why are you treating them like an afterthought?

So go check out deduction.com and stop donating extra money to the government like it’s a charity.

It ain’t.

And tell Sai I said what’s up.

https://deduction.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/saayuj/

https://aiforfounders.co/

⁠https://codestory.co

⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠

⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠

⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Hot take: Healthcare doesn’t have a diagnosis problem. It has a time problem. And that time problem is quietly ruining lives.

Most patients get 13 minutes with a doctor. That’s barely enough time to describe symptoms, let alone find the real cause. So you get pills, not answers. Not because doctors don’t care, but because the system doesn’t allow them to.

Haresh Patel learned this the hard way. He spent 12 years building a company, burned about $30 million, and still only won after years of pivots. His takeaway is painful and useful: building the tech is the easy part. The hard part is knowing who you serve, how you make money, and why your product should exist.

So this time he did something most founders won’t. He stopped building and spent two years just listening to doctors, patients, and anyone living in the gaps of modern medicine.

Founder use case: steal this method. Before you build your MVP, build your “13-minute advantage.” Create a system that turns messy records, wearable data, and life context into a clean story a human expert can use fast. AI isn’t here to replace doctors. It’s here to give them their brain back.

Deep question: What problem in your life or business keeps “coming back” because you’re treating symptoms instead of digging for the pearl under the mattress?

If you want the full breakdown on building in healthcare, validating before coding, and why rookie thinking beats resume thinking, this is for founders, operators, and anyone obsessed with solving real problems.

Three quick things: Go to aiforfounders.co and subscribe so your brain stays ahead of your calendar. Steal one idea per week and pretend it was your own, I won’t tell. If you’re building something big, you’re going to need a bigger mind, start there.

And if you like the show, leave a review. Write: “I came for the strategy, stayed for the uncomfortable truth.”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hareshpatel/

https://hareshpatel.ai/

https://aiforfounders.co/⁠

⁠https://codestory.co

https://warmstart.ai ⁠

https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠

⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

You know that moment when your “vibe coded MVP” finally gets users… and then it starts breaking in ways you can’t even explain?

That’s where Mike Vitez shows up.

Mike’s a computer scientist who was doing machine learning and building his own big data and clustering algorithms before AI was cool. Then he launched a software company straight out of school, watched the industry evolve from “just ship code” to “ship business outcomes” and built Saturnia Design for founders who realize: building is easy now. Building the right thing is the hard part.

Here’s the conflict Mike calls out.
Founders protect their idea like it’s a newborn. They build in isolation. They avoid customers because it hurts to hear the truth.
And then they burn months, sometimes years, on the wrong problem.

Mike’s fix is brutally simple.
Stop guessing.
Run real user interviews.
Turn the chaos into an audit with an action list.
Fix the bottlenecks that block revenue first.

A novel founder use case.
If your product spec is literally one sentence like “We need a launchpad,” Mike’s team will workshop it into market clarity, user personas, and a testable thesis before you waste a penny building from scratch.

Deep question for founders:
Are you building what feels impressive… or what your customer would actually pay for even if it bruises your ego?

Stick around and you’ll learn how smart founders validate fast, why UX is a revenue lever, and when you should not build at all. This is for builders with traction who need the bridge from scrappy MVP to real product.

Sign up for the newsletter at aiforfounders.co if you want founder stories that punch you in the brain.
Sign up at aiforfounders.co if you want the playbook behind the wins, not the highlight reel.
And yeah, aiforfounders.co if you’re done guessing and ready to ship with receipts.

And if the show has helped you even once, leave a review like you’re tipping your future self.

https://saturniadesign.com

https://medium.com/@saturniadesign

https://aiforfounders.co/

https://ambient.us⁠

https://codestory.co

⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠

⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠

⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

You ever watch a “non-tech” industry get quietly eaten alive by a kid with a phone and zero patience?

Kai Stone went from post-college degenerate mode to building Stone Systems. A $297/month “copy-paste” software stack that helps contractors run their whole business from their PHONE. Because most contractors aren’t at a laptop. Some don’t even own one.

Here’s the tension: marketing agencies lose either way.
If they don’t get contractors leads, they get fired.
If they get them too many leads, they STILL get fired because the calendar explodes.

Kai flipped the model.
Sell the baseline software first. Make it sticky. Then upsell services later, after trust.

The founder lesson: don’t build “better tech.” Build tech that matches how your customer actually lives.
Novel use case: if your buyers live on text messages, build your product so their phone buzz becomes the dopamine loop that keeps them paying.

Deep question: What part of your life or business are you avoiding fixing because failing at it would feel like failing at YOU?

What you’ll learn and who it’s for: you’ll learn Kai’s “meet them where they are” product strategy, his scrappy customer acquisition playbook, and how he thinks about churn, retention, and scaling. This is for founders selling to blue-collar, offline, or “non-tech” markets, and anyone trying to build sticky SaaS without a giant team.

https://stonesystems.io
https://www.instagram.com/kaistone808

https://aiforfounders.co/

⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠

⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠

⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

You raised a seed round. You sold the dream to investors. You sold the dream to your team.
And now comes the part nobody budgets for… the dream might be wrong.

Ali from Wednesday has seen this movie a thousand times. Founders obsess over signups, views, downloads… and then wonder why revenue is allergic to them.

His move is brutal and simple: Sprint Zero.
Audit the “pirate metrics” that actually matter: retention, referral, revenue.
Then force a 30–45 day roadmap tied to real outcomes.
Not vibes. Not vanity. Data. Customer pull.

Here’s the cheat code: record your customer calls, send them to Ali’s team, and they’ll help you separate insights from noise.
Because customers will say “yes”… while silently meaning “no.”

He even gives retention guardrails:
B2C: Day 1 = 50%, Day 7 = 25%, Day 30 = 10–15%.
B2B: 20–30% retention over the first 30 days.
If you miss that, you don’t need more features.
You need a new direction.

So here’s the founder gut-check:
Are you building what makes you feel smart… or what makes customers come back when nobody’s watching?

You’ll learn how to move from MVP to real PMF, how to cut your failure odds, and how to build around demand.
This is for seed to Series A founders who want momentum that actually sticks.

If you like founders’ playbooks without the motivational poster energy, go to aiforfounders.co.
Join the newsletter and I’ll send you tactics you can steal before your next sprint planning meeting ruins your weekend.
Sign up at aiforfounders.co and let’s turn your “big vision” into “customers who don’t leave.”

Leave a review for the podcast like you’re tipping a bartender for a dangerously good drink.

⁠https://wednesday.is⁠⁠

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alihafizji/⁠

https://aiforfounders.co/

⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠

⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠

⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Most startups don’t break because they lack talent.
They break because the product quietly splits into parallel universes.

One team ships a feature.
Another ships the same feature… differently.
Both are “right.”

Everyone’s moving fast.
No one’s moving together.

Chris Strahl saw this up close and decided chaos was not a growth strategy.

Before co-founding Knapsack, he watched high-performing teams drown in edge cases, forks, and silent product drift.
Same company.
Same roadmap.
Multiple realities.

The fix wasn’t more syncs.
It was fewer interpretations.

Knapsack became infrastructure.
A single system where product, design, and engineering agree before shipping.
Enterprise adoption.
Thousands of users per account.
Multi-x growth without burning people out.

And here’s the founder lesson hiding underneath.

Scaling isn’t about better judgment.
It’s about building systems so judgment isn’t constantly required.

So sit with this:

What part of your business only works because you’re still manually resolving contradictions every day?

Stick around and you’ll learn how real teams scale without fragmentation, why systems beat heroics, and how founders stop being the merge conflict.
This is for founders, operators, product leaders, and anyone building past the early chaos stage.ist the URLS

_

https://designsystemspodcast.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisstrahl
https://knapsack.cloud

https://wikimediafoundation.org
https://protectourwinters.org

https://aiforfounders.co/

https://ambient.us⁠

⁠https://codestory.co

a⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠

⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

What if the biggest AI risk in your company isn’t hallucinations… it’s that you’re quietly turning your team into button clickers.

Because right now, everyone’s “doing AI,” but most companies are just buying the same tools as their competitors and calling it strategy.

Geoff Gibbins from Human Machines is obsessed with the real advantage. Not better prompts. Better collaboration between humans and AI.

And here’s a novel founder use case you can steal today: an AI “collaboration coach” that watches how your team uses ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, then flags when you’re outsourcing judgment, missing the real question, or wasting time switching tools.

So here’s the question for you:
If you could test 300 ideas before lunch, see which ones actually work in the market, and only apply human judgment at the moments that truly matter… how would you redesign your week, your team, or your entire company?

https://human-machines.com

https://aiforfounders.co

https://kitcaster.com

https://corrix.ai

https://www.stjude.org

https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffgibbins/

https://ryanestes.info/