The Startup Ideas Podcast

Greg Isenberg
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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. For more startup ideas, we created a database of 30+ startup ideas you can take at https://gregisenberg.com/30startupideas

  1. 2 DAYS AGO ·  VIDEO

    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/

    1hr 8min

  2. 6 DAYS AGO ·  VIDEO

    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

    47 min

  3. 12 MAY ·  VIDEO

    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

  4. 12 MAY ·  VIDEO

    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

  5. 12 MAY ·  VIDEO

    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

    51 min

  6. 8 MAY ·  VIDEO

    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/

    41 min

  7. 29 APR ·  VIDEO

    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-

    1hr 27min

  8. 27 APR ·  VIDEO

    Codex clearly explained (and how to use it)

    I sit down with Riley Brown to get a hands-on tour of OpenAI's Codex, which he argues is the most powerful single interface for using AI agents today. Riley walks me through how Codex unifies vibe coding, knowledge work, browser use, computer use, and automations into one app, all running on GPT 5.5. I come in as a complete Codex skeptic who has spent most of my time in Claude Code, and Riley shows me skills, plugins, projects, Remotion, Chronicle, and the in-app browser to make his case. By the end, the question becomes whether the era of separate tools for documents, decks, code, and research is collapsing into a single super app. 00:00 – Intro 03:23 – What is Codex 06:46 – Why a GUI beats the terminal for most users 10:13 – Codex: the all in one platform 12:48 – Atlas browser inside Codex 14:21 – Remotion explained and motion graphics workflows 19:28 – Computer use and Chronicle 22:26 – Plugins, skills, MCPs, and integrations 31:57 – Evals, examples, and good outpu 38:43 – Hard questions: who Codex is built for 40:44 – Browser use plays itself in chess 43:20 – Running Claude Code inside Codex 45:58 – GPT 5.5 cost and effort settings 48:50 – GPT Images 2.0 54:09 – Why most people feel overwhelmed by AI tools 57:09 – Three projects to start with on day one and Closing thoughts Key Points Codex is positioned as a super app where coding, documents, decks, research, and automations live in one interface, with GPT 5.5 as the underlying model. The trend across Codex, Cursor, and the Claude Code desktop app is the same GUI pattern: chats on the left, agent in the middle, output on the right. Plugins offer official integrations like Slack, Notion, Sheets, Remotion, and Canva, while skills are user-created instructions stored as a SKILL.md file. Computer use and browser use have crossed a speed threshold; the chess demo runs at near-human pace, a leap from earlier "dial-up" feeling agents. Running Claude Code inside the Codex terminal lets you stack both subscriptions and use each model where it shines. The biggest unlock for companies is collecting good examples of finished work so agents can match the bar. 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 RILEY ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://x.com/rileybrown Vibe Code App: https://www.vibecodeapp.com Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rileybrownai/videos

    1hr 26min
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Hosts & Guests

About

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. For more startup ideas, we created a database of 30+ startup ideas you can take at https://gregisenberg.com/30startupideas

Information

  • Creator
    Greg Isenberg
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    342
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © The Startup Ideas Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Startup Ideas Podcast

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