The Startup Ideas Podcast

The Startup Ideas Podcast

By Greg IsenbergBusinessEntrepreneurship
Download on the App Store
  • Favorites

    136

    Followers

  • Typical duration

    35 min

    per episode

Based on Podcast App listening data

The Startup Ideas Podcast episodes

  • The Next $100B Market: Selling To AI Agents

    In this solo episode, I break down the shift from a human-first internet to an agent-first one, where AI agents become the customers that discover, evaluate, pay, and recommend. I map the agent buying journey and the new infrastructure agents need: identity, tools, an inbox, memory, a wallet, and receipts. I ground it with concrete examples like AgentMail and Stripe's agent wallet, then show how to make your website agent-readable through structured docs, schemas, MCP tools, and executable actions. I close with rapid-fire startup ideas and my big prediction for the next ten years: build startups for agents.

    Timestamps:

    00:00 – Intro

    00:49 – The tweet: build startups for agents

    01:47 – Old web vs. agent web

    02:24 – The agent buying journey

    04:38 – What agents need: identity, tools, inbox, memory, wallet, receipts

    05:30 – Examples: AgentMail, Stripe agent wallet, support, procurement, MCP, travel agent

    08:24 – Building an agent-readable website

    09:31 – What does this change for Startups

    11:55 – Rapid-fire startup ideas for agents

    13:07 – Closing Thoughts

    Key Points

    • I explain that AI agents are becoming the primary customers online, with agent traffic set to outnumber human traffic.
    • I lay out the agent buying journey: finding, evaluating, transacting, using tools, and recommending to other agents.
    • I list what agents need beyond what humans need: identity, tools, an inbox, memory, a wallet, and receipts.
    • I walk through real examples like AgentMail, Stripe's agent wallet, support, procurement, MCP servers, and a travel agent.
    • I show how to make a site agent-readable with structured docs, schemas, MCP tools, SDKs, OAuth, checkout, sandboxes, and receipts.
    • I share rapid-fire startup ideas for the agentic era and frame my big prediction: build startups for agents.

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    14 min
  • Google's Biggest AI Announcements (I Was There)

    Live from Google I/O, I sit down with Logan Kilpatrick from the Google DeepMind team to unpack everything Google just announced and what it means for founders, developers, and anyone trying to build with AI right now.

    We dig into Gemini 3.5 Flash, the new Gemini Omni world model, the expanded Antigravity ecosystem, managed agents in the Gemini API, and the native Android app builder inside AI Studio. Logan breaks down how distillation is pushing Pro-level intelligence into Flash, where the biggest opportunities are for solo founders, and why the agentic era has finally moved from impressive demos to genuinely useful products.

    Thanks to Google for flying me out to Google I/O and making this conversation possible.

    Timestamps

    00:00 – Intro

    00:53 – Gemini 3.5 Flash: The New Workhorse Model

    01:49 – How Flash 3.5 Stacks Up Against Sonnet

    02:38 – Gemini Omni: A World Model for Any Input and Output

    06:18 – Building a Content and Creator Layer on Omni

    08:21 – What to look forward to

    10:53 – Google Spark and Managed Agents

    14:00 – The Agentic Era and Requests for Startups

    17:17 – The Antigravity Ecosystem Overhaul

    18:51 – AI Studio vs. Antigravity: Vibe Coding vs. Agentic Engineering

    21:31 – Native Android Apps Built Inside AI Studio

    23:44 – Closing Thoughts

    Key Points

    • Gemini 3.5 Flash ships as a Sonnet-level workhorse model tuned for long-running agentic tasks, coding, and tool use, available on day one to 900M+ Gemini app users.
    • Gemini Omni is a single model that takes any input and produces any output across video, image, audio, and music, fusing Veo, Nano Banana, Lyria, and TTS into one system.
    • Managed agents in the Gemini API let builders ship agentic products with a single API call, using skills and markdown instead of writing orchestration code.
    • The Antigravity suite now spans an IDE, agent manager, CLI, SDK, and API surface, all sharing the same agent harness that powers Gemini Spark.
    • AI Studio targets vibe coding and now builds native Android apps for free, while Antigravity targets production-quality, million-line-codebase engineering.
    • The cost of intelligence keeps dropping thanks to distillation, opening up smaller markets that previously needed a 40-person team and venture funding to address.

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    FIND LOGAN ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://x.com/OfficialLoganK

    Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LoganKilpatrickYT

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/logankilpatrick/

    26 min
  • 9 Huge Startup Opportunities in the AI Boom

    I sit down with my friend Jonathan Courtney, a.k.a. Jicecream, to dig into the 9 biggest startup opportunities I see right now across B2C, AI, mobile, and IRL. We each pick ideas, trade reactions, and pressure-test them live. The conversation ranges from agent-first "action apps" to elder tech, third spaces, hobby retreats, pet health, AI-native media, and the case for selling AI "junior employees" to small businesses. Listeners walk away with a concrete map of where to build in 2026, plus the framing I use to decide which niche is worth marrying.

    Timestamps:

    00:00 – Intro

    01:14 – Idea 1: Unscripted Creator Shows (Twitch model for tech)

    07:50 – Idea 2: Action Apps: AI Agent Native Apps

    16:39 – Idea 3: Loneliness and IRL Communities

    26:47 – Idea 4: Elder Tech: Building for 65+

    33:21 – Idea 5: Adult Hobbies

    38:17 – Idea 6: AI Employee and AI Agents

    45:33 – Idea 7: Personalized Nutrition/Health

    53:08 – Idea 8: Pet Health and AI for Animals

    57:34 – Idea 9: AI-Native Media Companies Done Right

    01:03:18 – Stacking Ideas: Live + Retreats + Entrepreneurs

    01:07:22 – Final Thoughts

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIAL

    Unscheduled CEO Podcast: https://www.unscheduledceo.com/

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jicecream

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/

    1 hr 9 min
  • Andrew Wilkinson: AI Agents run my business and life

    If you want more workflows and tactics to build a business with AI, check out this free workshop: https://www.ideabrowser.com/workshop

    I sit down with Andrew Wilkinson and we go deep on how he's restructured his work, his health, and his family office around AI agents. Andrew walks me through Deep Personality (an app he vibe-coded after running psychological screens on himself and his girlfriend), the autonomous SaaS business he runs through agent harnesses like Harbor, and the vector-database setup that lets him query Tiny and his personal holding company like an oracle. We cover where software is headed, why he's pouring capital into TSMC and data center stocks, and the daily AI workflows he's built around health, email triage, and a personalized morning podcast. Listeners walk away with concrete prompting tactics, agent architectures, and a frank read on where the moats are moving.

    Timestamps:

    00:00 – Intro

    01:50 – The OpenClaw and Claude Code Unlock

    04:53 – Demo: Deep Personality App

    10:38 – Harbor: An Agent Harness For Real Companies

    12:30 – Autonomous Companies: Hype Vs. Reality

    17:30 – Credibility As The Missing Layer For Vibe-Coded Products

    20:14 – Centralizing Data Pipelines

    21:35 – Vector Databases

    23:22 – Transitioning Companies to Agentic Companies

    25:22 – Where Andrew Would Build Today

    27:10 – The New Interface

    28:21 – Why build now

    30:59 – Replacing Adapar: A Networth Wealth Platform

    33:07 – Services As The New Software

    35:24 – G-Brain Explained and Andrew’s OpenClaws

    45:09 – Closing Thoughts

    Key Points

    • Andrew runs a SaaS business called Deep Personality almost entirely through agents, generating roughly $20K of revenue while debugging eats half his time.
    • Harbor (github.com/geekforbrains/Harbor) gives agents a GUI-style harness — dev, marketing, and support agents that can autonomously merge PRs and adjust ad budgets across PostHog, Meta, and Reddit.
    • Andrew's family office swapped headcount for a $40K/month Claude bill; his CFO, who had zero coding background, vibe-coded a replacement for Adapar (priced at $50K–$100K/year) in about two weeks.
    • Vector databases trained on Tiny and Andrew's holding company let him query 132 minority investments, P&Ls, and headcount data conversationally.
    • For builders today, Andrew suggests aiming for a $1M–$2M product, then parking gains in TSMC and data center exposure given how fast software moats are eroding.
    • His best prompting tip: ask the model to interview you with multiple-choice questions before generating any output.

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    FIND ANDREW ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://x.com/awilkinson

    Deep Personality: https://deeppersonality.app

    Tiny: https://www.tiny.com

    48 min
  • The $1M+ Solo AI Agent Business (Full Course)

    Nick agreed to personally set up your Orgo in a 15 min call: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/orgo_ai

    I sit down with Nick from Orgo to break down exactly how to run a one-person AI agent business that can realistically clear a few million dollars a year. Nick walks through the offer, the verticals worth chasing, the full software stack, and the live setup of an agent that manages other agents. We focus on tactics over theory, with specific tools, pricing, and the playbook for landing customers as a solopreneur. By the end, anyone with solid AI fluency will have a clear path from offer design to fulfillment.

    Timestamps

    00:00 – Intro

    02:54 – Designing the AI Agent Business Offer

    06:38– Selling an AI Employee, Not an Agent

    07:26 – Industries to Target (and Two to Avoid)

    14:54 – Content Is Overpowered and How to Get Customers

    17:51 – The Customer-Facing Tool Stack

    20:49 – Building Agents Stack

    25:51 – Model Picks: GPT 5.5, GLM 5.1, Kimmy, Opus 4.7

    27:08 – Nick’s Stack

    28:14 – Why Obsidian Is the Second Brain Layer

    30:22 – Live Walkthrough: Spinning Up a Cloud Computer in Orgo

    33:53 – Cloud Computers vs. Mac Minis

    38:37 – Building Agents and Structuring Workspaces for Customers

    43:56 – Watchdogs, Observability, and Reliability

    45:28 – Closing Thoughts on the Solopreneur Era

    Key Points

    • Sell unlimited agents, unlimited usage, and unlimited support to remove friction; most customers actually use one to three agents.
    • Avoid healthcare and finance to start; focus on legacy verticals like marketing, law, insurance, manufacturing, wholesale, and real estate.
    • OpenClaw agents go for around 5K a month; Hermes agents can go for 10K a month.
    • The full stack: Granola, Trello, Loom, Superhuman, Asana, Codex, Hermes, Orgo, Composio, Agent Mail, and Obsidian.
    • GPT 5.5 is the recommended default model for tool calling; GLM 5.1 and Kimmy work for lighter tasks; Opus 4.7 fits long-horizon coding.
    • Use agents to set up other agents — pair Cloud Code or Codex with MCPs like Perplexity, Context7, and X MCP for live docs.

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    FIND NICK ON SOCIAL

    Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nickvasiles

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nickvasilescu/

    Personal Website: https://www.nickvasilescu.com/

    48 min
  • 7 tiny AI agent ideas I built with Genspark Claw

    Get started building your tiny AI Agent business with Genspark Claw: https://www.genspark.ai/?utm_source=po&utm_campaign=GregIsenberg

    In this solo episode, I share seven tiny, cash-flowing startup ideas you can build with AI in just a few prompts. I walk through how to use Genspark Claw, Genspark's new in-the-cloud agent product running Sonnet 4.6, and demonstrate two ideas I have already built (a dead domain flipper and a local restaurant liquidation broker), build a third idea live on camera (a hiring-signal cold outreach machine), and hand you a five-step framework for generating your own ideas. The goal is simple: give you the creative juices, the framework, and the practical know-how to ship a $200-$1,500/day business with AI as your employee.

    Timestamps

    00:00 – Intro

    01:28 – Idea 1: The Dead Domain Flipper

    06:19 – Idea 2: Local Restaurant Liquidation Broker

    11:03 – Idea 3: Hiring-Signal Cold Outreach Machine (building live)

    14:30 – Prevent Sleep, Heartbeat, and Treating Genspark Claw Like an Employee

    15:52 – Skills, Local File Access, and What Else Genspark Claw Can Do

    17:24 – Reviewing the 14 Personalized Cold Emails It Wrote

    20:35 – More Ideas: Buy-or-Build Memos, Dead Product Hunt SEO, Forgotten Apps

    24:18 – Framework for finding ideas: Public Data, Neglected Assets, Clear Buyer

    26:33 – What Else Comes With Genspark AI Works Base 4.0

    Key Points

    • Tiny, boring, cash-flowing ideas beat billion-dollar ideas when you want to ship this month.
    • GenClaw plus Slack turns Claude Sonnet 4.6 into an always-on AI employee for around $25/month.
    • The repeatable pattern is: messy feed → mispriced asset → trigger event → obvious buyer → liquidity point.
    • Three hunting lenses: places of constant change, things people ignore, and assets with clear urgency and spread.
    • Talking to your agent in plain English ("strip the HTML entities, make the budget $2,500") replaces most engineering work.
    • Selling agents with outcomes is the new SaaS, and shifts the model from per-seat pricing to outcome-based pricing.

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    #Genspark and #WorkWithGenspark

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    30 min
  • My AI Design Workflow That Doesn't Ship Slop

    I sit down with Meng To for his second appearance on the pod to dig into design md, Google's newly open-sourced format for capturing the soul of a design and porting it across every medium and tool. Meng walks me through a live demo of how he uses design md alongside skills, HTML references, and tools like Aura, New Form, Codex, and OpenClaw to ship landing pages, motion design, slides, and mobile mocks that actually feel custom. We get into the design drift problem with one-shot prompts, why taste is the real moat for builders right now, and how he runs four products as effectively a team of one while iterating a thousand-plus prompts deep. If you build with agents and you want your work to stand out from the sea of purple-gradient lookalikes, this one is for you.

    Timestamps

    00:00 – Intro

    04:00 – What design md actually is

    07:17 – Examples: one design DNA across slides, promo videos, motion

    09:31 – How to create design system

    14:05 – The importance of taste and design

    18:28 – Variant, remixing, and skills as ingredients

    21:36 – Live demo: creating a landing page with design md and HTML

    24:36 – Thoughts on Google Stitch

    25:41 – Being fast and at edges is an unfair advantage

    29:29 – Midjourney parallels and the queuing flow state

    31:44 – Walking through skills (skeuomorphic, 3D, lasers)

    34:07 – Now everyone is a designer

    36:47 – The full design workflow

    38:50 – Iteration versus remix

    39:24 – Judgment per minute as the new craft

    41:06 – Solo building vs building a team

    44:34 – Taste is the moat

    48:25 – Building a second brain for design inspiration

    50:41 – Closing thoughts

    Key Points

    • Design md is a portable blueprint for typography, color, spacing, and effects that you attach to any prompt to keep design consistent across web, mobile, slides, and motion.
    • One-shot prompts collapse on page two; a design system carries the soul across every medium and tool you switch into.
    • Skills work like ingredients (lasers, skeuomorphic, 3D, copywriting), and stacking them on top of design md  is what separates custom work from generic vibe-coded output.
    • Taste is the real moat right now, and you build it by surrounding yourself with great design and using every product in your niche.
    • Iteration (90% of the time) keeps a product evolving; remix (10%) takes the same DNA into a new medium or category.
    • The shift in craft is from moving pixels to making judgment calls per minute, with agents handling the mechanical work.

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    FIND MENG ON SOCIAL

    Aura: https://aura.build

    X/Twitter: https://x.com/MengTo

    52 min
  • Screensharing How to Start an AI Agent Business Today With Genspark Claw

    Get started building your tiny AI Agent business with Genspark Claw: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/genspark_

    In this solo episode, I share seven tiny, cash-flowing startup ideas you can build with AI in just a few prompts. I walk through how to use Genspark Claw, Genspark's new in-the-cloud agent product running Sonnet 4.6, and demonstrate two ideas I have already built (a dead domain flipper and a local restaurant liquidation broker), build a third idea live on camera (a hiring-signal cold outreach machine), and hand you a five-step framework for generating your own ideas. The goal is simple: give you the creative juices, the framework, and the practical know-how to ship a $200-$1,500/day business with AI as your employee.

    Timestamps

    00:00 – Intro

    01:28 – Idea 1: The Dead Domain Flipper

    06:19 – Idea 2: Local Restaurant Liquidation Broker

    11:03 – Idea 3: Hiring-Signal Cold Outreach Machine (building live)

    14:30 – Prevent Sleep, Heartbeat, and Treating Genspark Claw Like an Employee

    15:52 – Skills, Local File Access, and What Else Genspark Claw Can Do

    17:24 – Reviewing the 14 Personalized Cold Emails It Wrote

    20:35 – More Ideas: Buy-or-Build Memos, Dead Product Hunt SEO, Forgotten Apps

    24:18 – Framework for finding ideas: Public Data, Neglected Assets, Clear Buyer

    26:33 – What Else Comes With Genspark AI Works Base 4.0

    Key Points

    • Tiny, boring, cash-flowing ideas beat billion-dollar ideas when you want to ship this month.

    • GenClaw plus Slack turns Claude Sonnet 4.6 into an always-on AI employee for around $25/month.

    • The repeatable pattern is: messy feed → mispriced asset → trigger event → obvious buyer → liquidity point.

    • Three hunting lenses: places of constant change, things people ignore, and assets with clear urgency and spread.

    • Talking to your agent in plain English ("strip the HTML entities, make the budget $2,500") replaces most engineering work.

    • Selling agents with outcomes is the new SaaS, and shifts the model from per-seat pricing to outcome-based pricing.

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    #Genspark and #WorkWithGenspark

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    31 min
  • Hire a team of AI Agents

    I'm joined again by Imran Muthuvappa to walk through how to build your own AI Chief of Staff using a tool called Nebula. Imran shows me how to spin up specialized agents that handle the work a real chief of staff would do — surfacing team blockers, tracking project status, holding people accountable to offsite vision goals, running daily agenda briefings, and prospecting ICP leads. We also get into mini apps, model selection for cost efficiency, and why personal software is becoming a real category. By the end, the takeaway is clear: every role now has a "work on the job" component where you supervise yourself and offload tasks to agents.

    Links Mentioned:

    Try Nebula: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/nebula

    Precall Agent: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/precall-agent

    Project Status Agent: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/project-status-agent

    Lead Gen Agent: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/lead-gen-agent

    Timestamps:

    00:00 – Intro

    02:13 – What is Nebula

    02:54 – What an AI Chief of Staff Actually Does

    4:26 – Nebula vs OpenClaw vs Hermes

    06:09 – Building the Blockage Radar Agent

    09:47 – Agent Features

    12:04 – Choosing Cheaper Models for Simple Tasks

    13:15 – Building Project Status Agent

    13:53 – Connecting Tools to Agents

    17:38 – Building Vision Tracker Agent

    22:07 – Mini Apps and Personal Software as a New Paradigm

    25:13 – Building a Daily Agenda Agent and Second Brain Integration

    30:25 – Hours Saved vs. Anxiety Reduced for Founders

    33:02 – Building the Lead Gen Prospector Agent

    39:19 – Final Thoughts: Automate Three to Five Things

    Key Points

    • An AI Chief of Staff handles the boring executive support work — calendar, email, LinkedIn, project status — so a human can focus on decisions.
    • Nebula lets you build, deploy, and share custom agents through a Slack-like interface, where each agent has its own goals, tools, and system prompt.
    • Voice input via SuperWhisper or WhisperFlow gets you to roughly 150 words per minute, which Imran calls the biggest productivity lift available right now.
    • Cheaper models like the Nebula model handle most chief-of-staff tasks well — reserve frontier models like Opus or Sonnet for deep coding or reasoning work.
    • Mini apps inside Nebula are spinnable web dashboards that connect back to your agents — a glimpse of personal software replacing off-the-shelf tools.
    • The new skill is judgment: picking which three to five things to automate out of your week.

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    FIND IMRAN ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://x.com/imranye

    Alif: https://alif.build/

    42 min
  • How to win with AI Agents in 2026

    Limited BONUS: First 1,000 builders get $1,000. Claim yours while supplies lasts.: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/hyperagent

    I sit down with Howie Liu, co-founder and CEO of Airtable, to talk about the agent economy and the launch of HyperAgent. We walk through Sequoia's charts on AI agent deployment, the economics of token-based work versus human labor, and why frontier agents have crossed a threshold that changes how companies get built. Howie then does a live show-and-tell of HyperAgent, including a custom "Greg Isenberg contrarian AI" skill he spins up in real time. This one is for anyone building a solopreneur business, operating a fleet of agents, or trying to figure out where to place their bet in the agent ecosystem

    Timestamps

    00:00 – Intro

    02:22 – Sequoia's AI agent deployment chart reaction

    04:41 – Copilot vs Autopilot territory and the $1T+ opportunity

    08:13 – Agent economics vs human labor costs

    11:12 – Fastest enterprise adoption curve in history

    14:48 – The agent command center and fleet of 20 agents

    18:03 – What is HyperAgent?

    19:43 – Live demo: hyperlocal real estate market reports

    22:38 – HyperAgent as the founder, not just the developer

    23:21 – Street View, Zillow redesigns, and visual tool power

    24:15 – Command center view across a fleet of agents

    25:48 – Skills as the key primitive for frontier agents

    26:30 – Building the Greg Isenberg contrarian AI skill live

    32:31 – HyperAgent vs Perplexity Computer, Manus, OpenClaw, Codex

    34:52 – Reviewing writing skill

    36:55 – The arbitrage of persistence

    41:31 – Confidence milestones: first dollar, $10K/month

    35:27 – Reviewing contrarian tweet drafts live

    45:05 – Giving the agent feedback and building rubrics

    50:15 – Connectors, OAuth, and building custom API skills

    53:03 – How to get started with HyperAgent

    01:01:54 – Credit giveaway for listeners

    01:03:31 – Closing Thoughts

    Key Points

    • Frontier agents have crossed a threshold in the last 4–5 months where they function as true autonomous coworkers, not just chat assistants.
    • Reframe agent cost by value delivered: a $150 token spend for a board memo beats hours of human time, so anchor on opportunity cost.
    • The real arbitrage is persistence: 99% of people quit after one shot, while daily practice for 30/60/90 days produces top 1% operators.
    • Skills are the most important primitive in frontier agents, turning generally intelligent models into domain experts through playbooks.
    • HyperAgent's differentiation is a low floor plus a high ceiling, with rubrics, LLM-as-judge evals, and fleet-wide observability for scaling.
    • Aim for $100B companies with under 5 employees, built on fleets of always-on agents mapped to human job roles.

    The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

    LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

    The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

    FIND ME ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

    FIND HOWIE ON SOCIAL

    X/Twitter: https://x.com/howietl

    Hyperagent: https://www.hyperagent.com

    Airtable: https://www.airtable.com-

    1 hr 6 min

About The Startup Ideas Podcast

From the publisher's feed

Get your creative juices flowing with The Startup Ideas Podcast. Published twice a week, we bring you free startup ideas to inspire your next venture. Hosted by Greg Isenberg, CEO of Late Checkout and former advisor to Reddit and TikTok. Subscribe so you don't miss out.

Best of The Startup Ideas Podcast

Ranked by our users in the last 21 days

More shows like The Startup Ideas Podcast

The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast by Liz Wilcox

The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast

3,443 Listeners

This Week in Startups by Jason Calacanis

This Week in Startups

1,290 Listeners

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch by Harry Stebbings

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

541 Listeners

The Side Hustle Show by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation | YAP Media

The Side Hustle Show

1,580 Listeners

The a16z Show by Andreessen Horowitz

The a16z Show

1,087 Listeners

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips by Eric Siu and Neil Patel

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

1,256 Listeners

Founders by David Senra

Founders

2,208 Listeners

Y Combinator Startup Podcast by Y Combinator

Y Combinator Startup Podcast

225 Listeners

The Game with Alex Hormozi by Alex Hormozi

The Game with Alex Hormozi

4,458 Listeners

My First Million by Hubspot Media

My First Million

2,647 Listeners

Marketing Against The Grain by Hubspot Media

Marketing Against The Grain

358 Listeners

Moneywise by Hampton

Moneywise

658 Listeners

The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner by Chris Koerner

The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner

262 Listeners

The Next Wave - AI and The Future of Technology by Mindstream (Hubspot Media)

The Next Wave - AI and The Future of Technology

54 Listeners

AI + a16z by a16z

AI + a16z

30 Listeners