The Startup Ideas Podcast

Greg Isenberg
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  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated weekly

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

    Grok Bot: make a 1 person company with agents

    I sit down with Billy Howell for an inside look at a real business that runs on Grok Bot agent teams. Billy tests hundreds of tools for The Rundown, and he uses Grok Bot to run his local newsletter, The Arlington Bagel, which goes to 6,000 readers every Thursday. He walks me through his chief of staff bot, his research and sales agents, and the routines that move work forward while he sleeps. We cover the token math, the four-week plan he follows, and the business models that fit this tool best: newsletters, directories, and Shopify stores. You leave with a setup you can copy for one project this month. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 02:22 – Grok Bot Overview 03:12 – What makes GrokBot special 06:09 – Pick one project 08:09 – Creating your initial agent team 11:19 – First week sprint with Grok Bot 13:06 – Automated Routines within Grok Bot 15:51 – Agent Org Structure 17:35 – Best Practices for building Agents 19:45 – Newsletter playbook 21:12 – Plugins 22:24 – Newsletter playbook pt 2 25:43 – Sales agent 29:06 – Iterating and Improving Agents 33:34 – Grok Bot business ideas 36:45 – Site stack builder 38:36 – Directories and landing pages 41:42 – One project for a month 42:50 – Closing Thoughts Key Points Keep one project per Grok Bot account, so context stays clean and tokens stay available. Start with a chief of staff bot, and let it audit your business and name the first three agents. Follow the four weeks: build the team, execute, hire and fire, then automate. Ask each agent for a five-line brief: what shipped, what is stuck, what needs you. Move repeatable steps into scripts or make com, and keep agent tokens for high value work. Newsletters and directories give the easiest entry, and the two models feed each other. 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 BILLY ON SOCIAL: X/Twitter: https://x.com/billyjhowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/billyjhowell Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@saasfatigue Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@billyjhowell

  2. 4 days ago ·  Video

    You need to be skillsmaxxing (10x your Claude/Codex)

    Get Your Complete Financial OS at https://startup-ideas-pod.link/brex_SIP I talk with Remy, known online as AI with Remy, about agent skills and how to share them across a whole team. Remy explains that a skill is an SOP for AI: a markdown file that teaches Claude your exact way to do a task. He then shows his system. He keeps his team skills in one GitHub repository, and he installs that repository as a plugin in Claude Code and Codex. The result is one source of truth, automatic updates for everyone, version control, and company ownership of the work. Listen to this episode if you run daily tasks with agents and you want your whole team to get the same quality of output. Remy’s prompt + skill setup: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/Remy-skills Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 02:33 – Skills as SOPs for AI 04:27 – How the agent uses skills 05:13 – AI is single player 06:21 – Example Skills: Notion, Brand Voice, Email 08:07 – How to share skills 11:40 – What is a Plugin? 14:58 – Anatomy of a Plugin 15:30 – Version Control and Rollback 16:58 – A Second Repo for Personal Skills 18:29 – The Day Claude Deleted 150 Skills 20:02 – Skills as Company Assets 21:00 – A Web App on Top of the Repo 24:46 – How Many Skills to Build 27:00 – The Self-Improvement Loop 28:15 – Skill Maxxing 30:40 – Closing Thoughts Key Points A skill is a markdown SOP that teaches an agent your exact way to do a task. Most skills sit on one laptop, so a great process stays with one person. A GitHub repo plus a plugin gives the team one source of truth for every skill. Auto-update sends each skill edit to every teammate in Claude Code and Codex. A company-owned repo keeps the skills when a teammate moves on. Remy builds thin agents and thick skills, so any harness can run the same process. 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 REMY ON SOCIAL X: https://x.com/remy_gaskell Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aiwithremy AI with Remy: https://www.aiwithremy.com/

  3. 6 days ago

    How to use Claude Code better than 99% of People

    Get Claude Code: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/claude-greg In this solo episode I lay out the exact system I use to turn Claude Code into what I call an AI employee. My premise is simple: give Claude the same things you would give a person joining your company (a workspace, memory, a brief, a clear ticket, eyes, review, a schedule, and permissions). I build the whole setup live around a real idea I found on ideabrowser.com , a missed-lead responder for med spas, and I share the specific prompts I use at each step. By the end, the product, the customer feedback, the docs, the demos, the reviews, and the recurring work all live inside one operating loop. I close with a seven-day plan you can run at your own pace. And thank you to Claude and Anthropic for supporting the podcast. Setup Claude Code to be your 24/7 employee: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/Claude-code Timestamps 00:00 – Intro: The AI Employee Map 05:47 – Step 1: Creating The Workspace In Claude Desktop 14:53 – Step 2: The Brief And Plan Mode 18:08 – Step 3: The Ticket And Defining Done 22:15 – Step 4: The Eyes And Desktop Preview 26:13 – Step 5: Review In Layers And The Diff View 29:34 – Step 6: The Schedule And Routines 34:32 – Step 7: Parallel Agents And Worktree Isolation 39:14 – Step 8: Permissions: Safe, Ask First, Human-Owned 41:15 – Step 9: Skills, Connectors, And Hooks 44:28 – The Seven-Day Plan 47:42 – Closing Thoughts Key Points I treat Claude Code like a new hire: workspace, memory, brief, ticket, eyes, review, schedule, permissions. The repo brain teaches Claude how I work and what good looks like. Plan mode comes first: Claude reads the context, proposes an approach, and waits for my approval. One ticket at a time means one task, one finish line, and one reviewable change. The eyes matter: Claude opens the app in desktop preview, clicks the flow, checks the console, and reports what a buyer experiences. Routines and permissions turn a chat tool into a 24/7 operator with clear boundaries. 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/

  4. 12 Aug ·  Video

    How to Build an AI-Native Company in 2026

    I sit down with Allie K. Miller to talk about the shift from managing AI agents to enabling them. Allie runs a workforce of 34 AI agents led by an AI chief of staff named Simon, plus six directors named after Friends characters. She shares her three-word prompt, her daily AI diary, her AI watchdogs, and her rule to build the factory before the product. We then debate the future of software: why enterprises still want a vendor to call, and why consumer software now rewards taste and distribution. Listeners leave with one mindset shift and a first step they can finish in under three hours. Get Your Complete Financial OS at https://startup-ideas-pod.link/brex_SIP Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 02:29 – Become a Great Agent Manager 04:49 – The Three-Word Prompt 08:12 – The Pyramid of Proactivity 12:23 – Making the Company Queryable 19:14 – How to Design an AI Workforce 22:25 – AI as a Watchdog 24:56 – Startup Opportunities 26:29 – Build the Factory, Then the Product 30:09 – The SaaS Question 34:53 – Consumer Software as Art 37:12 – High-Value Bottlenecks 44:56 – Closing Thoughts Key Points Allie sits three rungs above her 34 agents. She sets the infrastructure and waits for escalations. Her strongest prompt runs three words on top of full business context: do smart things. She holds the risk tier steady and expands only the breadth and scope of agent work. A dictated daily diary captures the context that lives outside meetings, email, and Slack. AI watchdogs remain wide open: duplicate work, calendar conflicts, and meeting disagreements. The bigger play is a software factory. Build the primitives once, then ship each product faster. I see opportunity on both sides of software: enterprises want a vendor to call, and consumers reward taste. 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 ALLIE ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://x.com/alliekmiller Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alliekmiller/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alliekmiller/

  5. 10 Aug

    Making $$$ selling to AI Agents

    In this solo episode I break down Cloudflare's AI agent announcement in plain English and explain why I see it as the new business model for the internet. I walk through AI crawl control, pay per crawl, the monetization gateway, and the x402 payment rail, and I show how a single request turns into a transaction. From there I give three startup ideas built directly on top of this shift: a niche data refinery, agent readiness for businesses, and expert archives turned into agent tools. For each idea I lay out the wedge, the first customer, the first version, and how I would sell it. My core claim: the internet is moving from pages humans visit to resources agents use, and the builders who move now own the doors. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:01 – The Old Paradigm of the Internet 02:57 – The New Paradigm of the Internet 03:41 – What Cloudflare is actually doing 06:33 – An AI Index for all our customers 07:34 – The Agent Internet Stack 09:09 – Why Now Is the Best Time to Build 10:29 – Startup Idea 1: The Niche Data Refinery 17:10 – Startup Idea 2: Agent Readiness for Businesses 23:43 – Startup Idea 3: Expert Archives as Agent Tools 30:36 – The Filter for Finding Ideas 32:33 – Closing Thoughts Key Points The human web monetized attention; the agent web monetizes useful resources, priced per request. Cloudflare's pay per crawl, monetization gateway, and x402 turn the HTTP 402 status code into a live checkout at the edge. Idea 1: refine one niche's messy data into clean fuel for agents, starting with 100 businesses in one city. Idea 2: sell agent readiness by showing a founder exactly what AI says about their company today. Idea 3: package an expert's archive into one job-specific agent tool the audience already wants. Every one of these works as a manual services business today and productizes as agent payments mature. 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/

  6. 5 Aug ·  Video

    These AI Marketing Agents Get You Customers

    I bring Cody Schneider back on the show to build two marketing agents end to end, live. The first one monitors LinkedIn posts from creators in your category, scrapes everyone who engages, waterfalls those profiles into emails and phone numbers, and then runs cold email and LinkedIn DMs with an agent managing the replies. The second one turns internal conversations, sales calls, and podcast transcripts into a daily organic LinkedIn content engine across an entire team. Cody names every tool in the stack, shares the real infrastructure costs, and shows the actual terminal commands he runs in Claude Code. By the end you have two systems you can go set up today for your startup. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 02:27 – Agent Number One: Cold Outbound Agent 04:26 – Finding Creators in Your Category on LinkedIn 09:09 – Apify Explained and the API Maestro Actors 10:59 – Extracting Engagers Live in Claude Code 12:59 – Agent Versus Automation 15:45 – Waterfall Enrichment: GitLeads, Apollo, Origami 17:13 – Compliance, Data Brokers, and What Stays Legal 21:40 – Waterfall Enrichment: Million Verifier and LeadMagic 25:38 – The Cold Outbound Infrastructure 28:33 – Software Factories and Marketing as Code 31:41 – Agent Number Two: The Organic LinkedIn Engine 39:34 – Earned Media Math at $22 CPM 42:31 – Closing Thoughts Key Points LinkedIn engagement is a hand raise, so it beats firmographics as a targeting signal. Ten to twenty source accounts give you roughly 80% surface area coverage of an industry. Waterfall enrichment moves cheapest to most expensive: GitLeads, then Apollo, then Origami or Prospeo. Roughly $200 a month covers sending software plus inboxes for about 10,000 cold emails. An agent here is plain code on a cron job with an LLM attached where judgment is needed. Organic content works best when it starts from real human source material like calls, Slack, and transcripts. 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 CODY ON SOCIAL: Cody’s startup: https://www.graphed.com/ X/Twitter: https://x.com/codyschneiderxx Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@codyschneiderx

  7. 3 Aug ·  Video

    Graph Engineering Clearly Explained

    I go solo on this one to break down graph engineering, the term I keep seeing go viral on X. I define it in plain English: prompt engineering is how you ask AI a better question, context engineering is how you give AI better information, and graph engineering is how you design the work around the AI so it lives as a managed workflow instead of one giant chat. I walk through the vocabulary (jobs, arrows, state), separate knowledge graphs from agent graphs, and run a full worked example on whether to launch an AI bookkeeping product for Shopify merchants. Then I show three levels of implementation, from manual lanes on a whiteboard up to LangGraph and n8n, plus ready-made graphs for support, content, and code. You leave with a repeatable way to turn one AI workflow you already run into a map of steps, checks, handoffs, loops, and human approvals. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:24 – Prompt Engineering, Context Engineering, Graph Engineering 02:50 – Chat vs Graph 03:35 – Defining Terms and Workflows 06:44 – Knowledge Graphs vs Agent Graphs 08:47 – When to use Graph Engineering 10:01 – Example: AI Bookkeeping For Shopify Merchants 13:22 – The Diamond Pattern Graph Visualized 15:10 – Three Levels of Implementation 17:14 – Customer Support Graph 18:45 – Content Creation Graph 19:30 – Coding Graph 20:42 – The Trap Of Oversized Graphs 22:22 – Building Your First Graph 24:53 – Closing Thoughts Key Points Graph engineering means designing the work around the AI: jobs connected by arrows, with shared state moving between them. Knowledge graphs help AI understand how information connects; agent graphs help AI understand how work should move. Reserve a graph for work with multiple steps, multiple sources, parallel paths, checks, risks, or approvals. Separate the writer from the checker, since a single model grading its own answer inflates confidence. Draw and run the graph manually first; add LangGraph, n8n, or Make com once the structure proves itself. Aim for the smallest graph that raises quality, and place the human gate where mistakes get expensive. 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/

  8. 28 Jul ·  Video

    Jack Dorsey's Buzz: The New Hermes Agent?

    I sit down with Vinny for a live tour of Buzz, an open source, agent-native chat app from Block built on an open protocol. Vinny makes the case that openness is the real story here: agents arrive as first-class teammates, the harness underneath each agent swaps freely between Claude Code, Codex, Goose, and open code, and your entire chat context travels with you through every swap. He demos real output, including a CRM app built with the Wasp full stack framework and deployed to Railway, plus a tweet leaderboard that pipes daily stats back into a channel through a public API. I press him for the honest state of the software and for the setup advice he actually uses day to day. By the end I share where I land on Buzz versus Slack, and why I think anyone building right now gains from putting their hands on tools like this. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 02:57 – Agents as First-Class Team Members 03:49 – Swappable Harnesses Under Any Agent 06:55 – Audio Huddles With Agents 08:34 – Git, Feature Branches, and Parallel Worktrees 11:20 – Building a CRM App with Buzz and Agents 13:43 – Why This Matters 18:13 – Best way to engage with your Agents 23:53 – Shared Compute and Local Models 25:42 – Model Choice, Data Ownership, and Lock-In 27:36 – Context as the Foundation 29:39 – Setting Up Agents 31:21 – Skills and Speed 33:03 – Who Should Try Buzz Today 34:36 – My Take: Live in the Future 38:10– Closing Thoughts Key Points Buzz treats agents as members of your team, so one shared chat becomes the context layer for humans and agents together. The harness under any agent swaps freely, and every chat, project, and decision comes along for the ride. Globally installed agent skills stay available inside Buzz, so an existing Claude Code setup carries straight over. Agents branch, work in parallel worktrees, push to Git hosting on your own relay, and ship live apps end to end. Shared compute lets a small team run one local model on one machine and use it from many computers. Buzz sits in early preview today, which makes it a strong fit for solopreneurs and small teams iterating fast. 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 VINNY ON SOCIAL: X/Twitter: https://x.com/hot_town Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHP5Hdx0X-sM0uv2bl_OOqg

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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
    369
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © The Startup Ideas Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Startup Ideas Podcast

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