GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg • 664,891 subscribers
I drop startup ideas daily. Host @startupideaspod. CEO: @latecheckoutplz we build companies like @ideabrowser, @meetLCA, @boringmarketer etc
Shorts
Videos
I sat down with Howie Liu, the CEO of Airtable ($500M+ revenue, 1 billion in the bank) and asked him: is there really 1 trillion up for grabs in AI agents? His answer: it's way more than that. It's the entire GDP of white collar labor. Tens of trillions. Here's what stood out: 1. Howie runs 30 Claude Code instances in parallel on HyperAgent. Each one is coupled to a browser, fully autonomous. They review each other's PRs. That's how the CEO of a $10 billion company develops software right now. 2. He wrote his most recent board memo with AI agents. His best investors told him it was the best memo he'd ever written. It cost him $150 in tokens and 10x less time. 3. His take on why people aren't building: they're still using agents like chatbots. They ask "who's going to win the next election" instead of giving it a real multi-hour task. Using is believing. You have to spend a full weekend going deep. 4. AI agents are at less than 10% penetration in most industries. Software engineering is at 50% but even that's an overestimate because most devs are still in "tab autocomplete" mode. The frontier has moved way past that. 5. He revealed HyperAgent. Think of it as the visual agent builder that gives you a low floor and a high ceiling. You can prototype fast and also scale to running serious operations with a fleet of agents. 6. Howie's philosophy/POV: HyperAgent is to agents what the iPhone was to computing. The power was already there. The accessibility is what changes everything. Good news Howie is giving $1,000 in free HyperAgent credits to the first 1,000 people who sign up. $1 million committed to listeners The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃. You get Opus, frontier models, real agent workflows. You just gotta click the link in the description of the YT vid (share this with a friend to give them the $1000 too before it runs out!) episode is live on The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 and thanks to Howie for supporting the community/channel. Howie Liu is rooting for you to build a $100 million company with less than 5 employees. So am I. watch
GREG ISENBERG39,207,022 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
There's probably $100+ billion up for grabs for people who build startup for AI agents Over the next 10 years you're going to have a market of billions of customers (agents) with millions of wallets that want to use your services. TLDR; The internet was built for people: 1. Search google 2. Read landing page 3. Book demo 4. Talk to sales 5. Buy Agents don’t do that. Agents will: 1. Ask which product to use 2. Read your docs/pricing/security pages 3. Compare you to competitors 4. Check if you have an MCP/API/tool layer 5. Buy or recommend you without ever “visiting” your site like a person Everyone is going to have personal agents and business agents. This feels inevitable at this point. OpenClaw, Hermes, Claude Code, Codex, Google Spark. The tools are here. Which means there will be more agents on the internet than humans. So, where's the opportunity?? Go look at every SaaS tool you use. Notion. Slack. Jira. Google Analytics. Now ask: what is the version of this built purely for agents? Agent-native payments. Agent-native communication. Agent-native memory. Every category gets rebuilt. I clearly break down this shift and explain you everything on today's ep of The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃. Over the next 10 years you're going to have a market of billions of customers (agents) with millions of wallets that want to use your services. The founders who build for them now are going to look like the people who built websites in 1995. Might feel janky at the moment, but also obvious in hindsight. This is the next shift. Link over here: Watch
GREG ISENBERG40,709 Aufrufe • vor 1 Tag
how to use Google's NEW open source Design.md + AI Skills to make your startup look like a $100 million company in 1 hour: 1. Design.md is an open source file from Google that captures the soul of a design. Typography, colors, spacing, all in one markdown file. You attach it to your prompt and your agent builds beautiful things every time. 2. Think of it this way. The HTML is the finished dish. The design.md is the recipe. The skills are the ingredients. Put them together and everything you build looks consistent and professional. 3. Don't create a design system from scratch. Find a brand you love. Linear, Stripe, Vercel, whatever resonates. Study it. Use ChatGPT or Claude to help you extract the design language into your own design.md file. 4. Build skills on top of your design.md. A landing page skill. A mobile app skill. A motion design skill. A slide deck skill. Each one references the same design.md so everything looks like it came from the same designer. 5. The biggest mistake people make: they nail one screen and then everything else looks generic. Design.md solves this. One file keeps every page, every format, every medium consistent. 6. Use it across everything. Your landing page. Your app. Your pitch deck. Your promo videos. Same DNA. Same taste. Same system. That's what separates a startup that looks real from one that looks vibe-coded. 7. Build a second brain for design inspiration. When you see something beautiful in the real world or online, capture it. Save it. When you're building something new, reference it. Taste is developed, not downloaded. 8. It's obvious but the difference between a product people trust and a product people bounce from is how it looks and feels. Design.md gives you that edge. you can watch below shoutout to Meng To for coming on The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 and walking through his full workflow. if you want to use AI to actually build gorgeous designs, you'll want to use see this. watch
GREG ISENBERG490,744 Aufrufe • vor 28 Tagen
This is one of the best videos to ever exist for entrepreneurs, creators... I think about it often. In 2016, Pharrell Williams visited a NYU music production class to critique student songs. At the beginning you could see student "Maggie Rogers" drenched with the absolute terror of sharing this with him. Pharrell is there just trying to keep his excitement in. The guy couldn’t wait to tell her this song is the bee’s knees. After he listened to a song called “Alaska”, he explained why “I have zero, zero, zero notes for that:” 24 hours later, someone posted the clip to Reddit. It blew up and the rest is history. Grammy nominated, millions of followers etc. And Maggie responded to the Reddit thread (i'll share screenshot in the next tweet). This story I find so cool because it inspires other artists to share what they got. We all can all connect with the fear of showing our work. It ain't easy. And to have a unique POV like Maggie. Easy to copy, harder to have something unique. I’ve got a bunch of designs, creations that have never seen the light of day. This video inspires me to publish more. My point of sharing this video: Publish your art anonymously. Or publish your art proudly as yourself. Bonus points if it's one of a kind work. But publish your darn art. This is your new week's energy. This is your 2024 energy. Go get 'em. -- If you enjoyed this, go listen to some Maggie Rogers. And thank you to Pharrell for being so supportive to an up and comer. And go follow me for more stories like this GREG ISENBERG, so you get more of it in your feed I share stories about internet communities, free startup ideas and more. (link in bio for more info about me)
GREG ISENBERG20,153,435 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren
i heard about a guy in a small town in england who turned his openclaw into a short form video marketing machine millions of views, steady app downloads, and revenue coming in every day i needed to find out how he was doing it 1. spin up an ai “employee” using openclaw 2. give it one job like grow your app with tiktokk 3. give it access to tiktokk analytics, a browser to research and image/video tools to create content 4. the openclaw studies your niche and starts generating slideshows and videos 5. every post feeds performance data back into the system views → hook quality downloads → CTA quality revenue → funnel quality the openclaw then iterates on - new hooks - new formats - new CTAs until it finds winners one of his posts hit 170k+ views and the system keeps improving because the analytics loop feeds back into the content generation so the agent slowly learns what works what i like about this is the framing most people think about ai tools this is different you spin up an ai employee you give it a job and let it run the loop thanks to Oliver Henry for coming on the The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 today more like this soon, i will share the most interesting stories and gatekeep nothing this episode was dripping in sauce i gotta try this and see if it works kinda wild if it does watch
GREG ISENBERG1,324,725 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
how to set up hermes agent step by step. built-in memory, 40+ tools, works on your phone, and what to think of hermes vs openclaw: 1. hermes is a personal AI agent that runs in your terminal. think of it like open claw but with built-in memory, 40+ tools out of the box, and 90% cheaper token costs. you install it with one command. 2. the 3 problems with open claw that hermes solves: no memory (you keep repeating yourself), constant gateway restarts, and zero visibility into what you're spending on tokens. 3. hermes remembers everything. every completed task gets saved to memory. it searches through past logs to find solutions. over time it literally gets smarter at your specific workflows. 4. connect it to open router. you see exact costs per model per task. free models rotate weekly. one founder went from $130 every five days on open claw to $10 on hermes. same output. 5. it comes preloaded with skills. apple notes, imessage, find my, browser, web search, image generation, cron jobs. no hunting for plugins. 6. connect it to obsidian so it reads your entire vault. connect it to gstack for your dev environment. create custom skills for your specific workflows. 7. the biggest money saver: have it write code once for recurring tasks. then it runs without burning tokens every time. stop paying an LLM to do the same scrape or report daily. 8. run it on android via telegram. name your agents. talk to them like coworkers. in this episode imran shows you how to set this up. 9. you can run it bare metal, in docker, or serverless on modal. pick your risk level. i begged imran to come on The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 and walk through the full installation live. he made it impossibly clear. if you've heard of Hermes Agent and want the clearest explanation of how to get set up like a pro let me know what you want me to cover on the next ep this is the best personal agent setup video on the internet right now. watch
GREG ISENBERG609,197 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
how to use obsidian + claude code to build a 24/7 personal operating system and build your startup: 1. write everything in markdown (daily notes, projects, beliefs, people, meetings) 2. link your notes together so they mirror how your brain actually thinks. 3. install obsidian cli so claude code can read your entire vault + the relationships. 4. stop reexplaining projects every session. use reference files instead. 5. build custom slash commands: /context → load your full life + work state /trace → see how an idea evolved over months /connect → bridge two domains you’ve been circling /ideas → generate startup ideas from your vault /graduate → promote daily thoughts into real assets 6. keep a strict rule: human writes the vault. agents read it, suggest, execute. 7. let claude aka clode surface patterns you’ve been unconsciously circling for years. 8. delegate from inside your notes. one sentence in obsidian → agent handles the rest. 9. treat writing as leverage.the more you write, the more context your agents have. 10. understand this:markdown files are the oxygen of llms. i really enjoyed seeing how to use obsidian thanks to internetVin vin uses ai like a thinking partner wired into his life’s work. 99.99% of people won’t do this because it requires reflection + setup. but once the vault exists, the agent stops being generic. it starts thinking in your voice. episode is live on The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 (more there) this one is different. send this tweet to a friend. im still processing how game changer obsidian + claude code is, maybe you too watch
GREG ISENBERG1,122,402 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
So, Mark Zuckerberg finally tried the Apple Vision Pro and compared it to the Meta Quest 3 He says: - Quest is 7x less expensive yet way more comfortable - Quest is better for gaming, Xbox, YouTube - "I'm surprised how much better Quest is better for majority of things" My biggest takeaway: The future of ads feels like his IG post. This is real. No marketing talk, just saying it as it is. Zuck's Apple Vision Pro feels like I'm listening to a tech reviewer not a guy worth $165B. I feel like I'm having a convo in a living room with my friend Mark. You feel his enthusiasm. Reminds me of the Kayne Superbowl ad. The guy spent $7M and took a 30s selfie video. Highly effective. He sold $19M of product within 24h of that video. So my point is, if you're creating an "ad" More living room, less high budget. Be real.
GREG ISENBERG11,018,011 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren
I met the guy behind Paperclip. he won't show his face, but he just built one of the FASTEST growing open-source projects in AI. how to use Paperclip to hire AI agents to ACTUALLY run a startup with 0 employees: 1. with paperclip, you hire a team of AI agents like CEO, engineer, QA, video editor, content strategist and manage them from one dashboard. it works with Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, or any model on OpenRouter. you're not locked into one provider. 2. your AI agents wake up capable but with zero memory. they don't know who they are, where they are, or what they're supposed to be doing. kinda like that movie memento from back in the day you need to leave them Polaroids like heartbeat checklists, persona prompts, written context. that's how you keep them on track. 3. when an agent makes a mistake, you don't rewrite everything. you add one rule to their persona prompt. "always define a success condition for every task." "always pass work to QA before closing." you're training them like you'd train a junior hire. one correction at a time. 4. skills extend what your agents can do. want a video editor who can produce animated content? install the Remotion skill. want security reviews? there's a skill for that. 5. the biggest lever for quality is encoding your own taste. AI can do everything except know your values. design sensibility, brand voice, success criteria but you have to write it down. 6. don't one-shot your startup. agentic design patterns matter. the simplest one: after the engineer builds something, QA reviews it. structure prevents compounding errors. one-shotting an entire app is fun for 30 minutes, then it falls apart. 7. Paperclip tracks every token spent and every task completed. you can use your existing subscriptions (Claude, Codex) so spend shows as $0, or hook into API credits for real dollar tracking. 8. importable companies are coming. Gary Tan's G-Stack, a full game studio, 300+ agent repos... you can "acqui-hire" a proven agent team into your Paperclip instance instead of building from scratch. the future is downloading a tested org that actually works. 9. routines let you automate recurring work. "every day at 10am, read what was merged into the main branch and write a Discord update celebrating community contributors." it runs, you review, you improve. every task is traceable. 10. maximizer mode is next. you tell the CEO "build this game" and it does whatever it takes and hires who it needs, keeps pressing until it's done. no token anxiety. just outcomes. use Idea Browser for startup ideas/trends to get started thank you for dotta 📎 for doing this podcast and breaking down exactly how people can hire ai agent teams with paperclip you won't find an episode like this anywhere else episode is live on The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 on your fav platforms (follow for more) is this not the greatest time in history to be building? im rooting for you now go watch my frien
GREG ISENBERG456,482 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
THE 64 MINUTE OPENAI CODEX MASTERCLASS IS HERE if you've been meaning to learn Codex, this is the episode for you, we cover: 1/ Claude vs Codex (what's better?) 2/How to run Claude Code inside Codex (really cool) 3/Why GPT 5.5 changed everything for browser agents 4/How to create skills (reusable agents you build once and call by name forever) 5/How to connect Notion with surgical permissions (one database, not the whole workspace) 6/How to use Remotion inside Codex to create videos 7/ How to one-shot full mobile apps in Swift 8/The 4 projects to run on day one to get up to speed fast shoutout to Riley Brown for coming onto The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 for the 5th time. every episode he delivers. this one is the Codex masterclass. if you've been meaning to learn Codex, this is the episode. 100% free i just want to see you build your ideas. watch
GREG ISENBERG194,795 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
karpathy just broke the internet with something called auto research it’s basically an ai research agent that runs experiments for you 24/7 you give it a goal like “make this model better” “find a higher converting landing page” “lower customer acquisition cost” then it runs a loop: 1) plan an experiment 2) edit the code or config 3) run a short test on a gpu 4) read the metrics 5) keep the winner 6) try again over and over while you sleep by the morning you wake up to the best version actual tested improvements think of it like a robot research intern that runs hundreds of experiments and only keeps the winners this is link to his repo for your to mess around with it in the latest episode of The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 i break down: • what auto research actually is • how it works step by step • 10 business ideas you can build with it • how to install it and start using it this one is saucy because tools like this change how startups get built watch
GREG ISENBERG434,173 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
AI AGENTS 101 (58 minute free masterclass) send this to anyone who wants to understand ai agents, claude skills, md files, how to get the most out of AI etc in plain english: 1. chat vs agents - chat models answer questions in a back and forth while agents take a goal, figure out the steps, and deliver a result 2. agents don’t stop after one response. they keep running until the task is actually finishedno babysitting required 3. everything runs on a loop. they gather context, decide what to do, take an action, then repeat until done 4. the loop is the system. they look at files, tools, and the internet. decide the next step. execute and then feed that back into the next step. over and over until completion 5. the model is just one piece. gpt, claude, gemini are the reasoning layer. the key is model + loop + tools + context 6. mcp is how agents use tools. it connects things like browser, code, apis, and your internal software. once connected, the agent decides when to use them to get the job done 7. context beats prompt all day. you don't need to write perfect prompts. load your agent with context about your business, style, and goals and then simple instructions work 8. claude.md or agents.md is the onboarding doc it tells the agent who it is, how to behave, what it knows, and what tools it can use. this gets loaded every time before it starts 9. memory.md is how it improves. agents don’t remember by default. this file stores preferences, corrections, and patterns you tell the agent to update it, and it gets better over time 10. skills + harnesses make it usable. skills are reusable tasks like writing, research, analysis the harness is the environment like claude code or openclaw that runs everything. basiclaly, different interfaces, same system underneath this episode with remy on The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 was one of the clearest ways of understanding a lot of the core concepts of ai agents could be the best beginners course for ai agents 58 mins. all free. no advertisers. i just want to see you build cool stuff. im rooting for you. send to a friend watch
GREG ISENBERG374,437 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Andrew Wilkinson owns 40+ businesses. He just showed me how he's using OpenClaw, Claude Code and AI agents to run latest business, start new ones, and automate everything. Here's what I learned: 1. In December 2025, something clicked. He started waking up at 3AM with a smile, sitting in terminal with 10 Claude Code tabs open. He hasn't stopped since. He calls it chasing the dragon. 2.He built a full SaaS product called Deep Personality. A 40-minute personality test that generates a 100-page report written like Robert Greene. $20 000 in revenue. Zero employees. The entire business runs on AI agents. 3. He has agents for support, marketing, and dev. When a support ticket comes in, the agent either handles it or sends it to the dev agent. If it's critical, the agent fixes the bug and merges the PR before he wakes up. Then it emails the customer back. 4. His marketing agent is connected to PostHog, manages Meta and Reddit ads, creates ad creative, runs multivariate tests, and sets budgets. He's about to give it a $100 k/month ad budget and see what happens. 5. He forgot his laptop on a trip to Arizona. He ran his entire business from the back of Ubers using OpenClaw. Nobody picked up that every single email was written by AI. 6. His take on vibe coding: the worst part about business is people. Between your vision and execution are 100 people you have to convince. Vibe coding removes all of them. For the first time he can do every part of building a product himself. 7. He was trying to build OpenClaw before OpenClaw existed. Now he uses a tool called Harbor, which is basically a GUI for managing multiple agents. You can see all your agents, their status, knowledge bases, and databases in one place. 8. He built a custom AI for his relationship. He and his girlfriend took 15 psychological tests, put the results into ChatGPT, and asked it to analyze their relationship. It nailed every fight they've ever had. That became the product idea for Deep Personality. 9. His honest take: he spends 50% of his time debugging, 30% improving the setup, and 20% being productive. It's a treadmill. But the 20% that works is so powerful he can't stop. 10. His prediction: we're 3-6 months from being able to hand basic businesses off to AI to run entirely. And pretty soon Anthropic and OpenAI are going to launch AI CEOs. This is an inside look at how a serious operator Andrew Wilkinson is using AI agents in the real world. The good, the bad, the debugging, all of it. Most people don't show you this. Episode is live on The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 watch
GREG ISENBERG144,005 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
how to turn iMessage into an AI executive assistant 1. give lindy your phone number and google account. two steps. that's the entire setup. 2. wake up to a daily brief. your meetings, the weather, 63 emails triaged overnight, replies already drafted. you barely open gmail anymore. 3. get meeting prep 15 minutes before every call. who you're meeting, what you talked about last time, what they need from you. 4. message teammates mid-meeting without leaving the call. you say it out loud. lindy sends the slack, creates the google doc, notifies the team. 5. send a screenshot of anything and it acts on it. party invite. invoice. voice note. one message and it handles it. 6. update your CRM after every call automatically. tell it once. done forever. 7. ask it anything about your past meetings and emails. "what did that company say they needed?" it knows. your inbox is its memory. 8. let it catch the stuff you'd miss. "your dinner reservation is at a restaurant closed on tuesdays. want me to move it?" the best executive assistants don't wait to be asked because they just handle it. that's what kinda Lindy feels like. not sure why more people aren't talking about products like these i liked it so much i invested in the biz. this is for people who find openclaw daunting and dont want to deal with the security issues episode is live on The Startup Ideas Podcast (SIP) 🧃 (full breakdown there) watch
GREG ISENBERG247,946 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
