this is exactly how iād build wealth with a vertical ai agent startup (without raising VC $$)
step 1: find a boring pain point. something universal, hated, and expensive. think customs paperwork, insurance audits, compliance checklists. the less glamorous, the better.
step 2: map the workflow. donāt brainstorm in a figma file, sit next to the person doing the work. write down every click, every exception, every āthis is where it breaks.ā the edge cases are the product. gotta be meticulous here.
step 3: do the job as a service. literally run it yourself with a small team. invoice your first customers. this is where youāll discover what really matters versus what the powerpoint version of the workflow looks like.
step 4: start adding agents to replace the human steps. not all at once obviously, pick one slice of the workflow and automate it. free up hours, prove value, charge more. rinse and repeat until the workflow is mostly agent-driven.
step 5: use the data you collect as the moat. every invoice, form, log, and exception makes your agent sharper. data ā better models ā stickier product.
and step 0 to be honest, is i'm building an audience along the way. showing my work, sharing the playbook, pulling future customers and talent into my orbit before the product even exists. iterating on 50+ formats and probably doing short-form to start.
the pattern looks the same every time for these types of vertical ai agent startups:
human service ā semi-automated service ā vertical agent product.
the goal of the agent goes from assisting in the workflow, to owning it.
thatās when you stop being a tool and start being the infrastructure for that industry.
once you own it, you're likely in vc competition territory. but you can compete if your unit economics are solid, audience is cranking and the product is loved.
why build a vertical ai startup now? because the foundation models are good enough (and getting better), the costs are low enough, and the demand for efficiency is high enough.
five years ago the tech wasnāt ready.
five years from now the incumbents will be.
the window is open right now.
it's building season.
(note: find startup ideas on ideabrowser.com/)
1.1K - 33
keep it simple
1. find a boring niche painpoint
2. vibe code mvp
3. use ai as your wedge in
4. build an audience for an unfair advantage
5. organic posts that that get likes, put paid behind it
6. turn mvp into a full product that is a full workflow so you have a moat
7. create 1-2 lead magnets/month that drive a ton of value for people
8. put people from lead magnets into funnel
9. use webinars or time-based offers to sell your software
10. use ai agents to create 2-3 systems that automate 90% of content creation/cold campaigns
11. reinvest profits into ads, content, community and product
12. do not spend more than you make
13. raise venture if that excites you
14. dont raise venture if dividends excite you
15. keep team small regardless
16.have fun because this is the greatest time in history to be starting a company
keep it simple
this is your time to shine.
(for ideas, you can go to ideabrowser.com/)
752 - 44
you donāt need to overthink it.
AI allows you to take a boring product and make it magical again and BILLIONS of dollars are up for grabs
think about it: every category people wrote off as ādoneā is wide open. notes, calendars, email, fitness, budgeting, shopping lists. the apps that feel like dusty furniture in your phone.
with AI, a notes app doesnāt just store thoughts, it organizes, summarizes, and drafts your blog posts for you.
a budgeting app doesnāt just track expenses, nah that'd be boring, it hunts down hidden fees, negotiates bills, and acts like a cfo in your pocket.
a fitness app doesnāt just log your workouts, it coaches you in real-time, adapts to your body, and keeps you accountable.
and now with AI, you can go even more niche because the cost to build just turned 1/20th.
AI is a defibrillator for boring products. it shocks them back to life.
i think it's cool when people build new categories but that 100x harder.
dont overthink it
you know deep down that AI makes software smarter. so that means that it could do more. which means people will be interested in trying/you can charge for that/the economics changed because its cheaper to build and there are creators now you can work with.
tldr;
revisit the stuff people already use every single day, and make it 10x better and 10x more focused on a niche.
thatās where the billion-dollar companies of this decade will come from. and a ton of bootstapped millionaires.
breathing new life into the obvious is the play right now.
don't overthink it
(note: find startup ideas at www.ideabrowser.com/ )
288 - 11
new week
you never know what piece of content will hit
you never know what startup idea will hit
you never know what tiny bet will hit
you never know what DM will hit
you never know what ājust for funā project will hit
shoot your shot
514 - 20
The more wealth I see created, the more I notice it happens when people can't STAND their reality anymore.
Sometimes it's crisis like getting fired, divorced, diagnosed. But just as often it's that suffocating feeling of watching your potential die in meetings
Making $300,000 at Google but knowing you're capable of building something that matters. Your life looks perfect on LinkedIn but you're screaming inside.
Satisfied people don't usually start companies. They start companies when satisfaction becomes somehow unbearable.
When you realize you're going to be 40, then 50, then dead, and all you did was optimize someone else's conversion rates and most of the stuff you worked on never got shipped anyways.
That's when you quit the job and build the thing you've been sketching in notebooks during meetings. Not because something bad happened, but because "pretty good" is killing you slowly.
Sometimes rock bottom pushes you. Sometimes the ceiling pulls you. Either way, the discomfort with where you are becomes stronger than the fear of where you're going.
I remember the restfulness I felt when I worked as a PM at a big tech company. Life was great. Felt important because I was doing things "at scale". Pay was insane. People I'd meet at parties thought my job was cool.
But deep down had restfulness. Whenever that happens, gotta tap into it.
It's your intuition saying there's something more there.
its your intuition saying "now's the time"
This AI gold rush won't last forever.
Happy building, my friend.
note: find startup ideas at ideabrowser.com/
550 - 43
Once you ship your first idea on the internet, it rewires your brain. You go from consumer to creator. You see the matrix now.
The first time you wake up to Stripe notifications from strangers buying something you built on a weekend, you're done. You'll be sitting in quarterly planning meetings, but all you can think about is the $29 that just hit your account during slide 14.
That's when you know you're cookeddd.
Customer DMs hit different than performance reviews. Some kid in Poland says you saved him 10 hours a week. Someone in Texas shows you how your thing doubled their revenue. Meanwhile, your manager wants to discuss your professional development plan.
You start seeing how broken everything is. Your company spends $50k on consultants to solve what you fixed with a spreadsheet. Fifteen people in meetings about problems you solved on Saturday night.
Every product you ship teaches you something. First ten products: mostly garbage, but you're learning. By product twenty, you finally crack distribution. By product thirty, you're dangerous. You build in hours what companies discuss for months.
The compound effect is real but slow. You might ship 19 things that nobody sees. Number 20 randomly hits. Then you reverse engineer why and repeat it. Most people quit at product 3. The unemployable ones can't stop at 30.
Once you've tasted building for your own audience, employment feels like a costume you wear. You can't unknow what you know. Can't unsee the opportunity. Can't go back to asking permission.
Pick the smallest problem in your life this weekend. Build the dumbest solution. Charge money for it.
Most people die with ideas inside them. You're going to die with shipped products and an audience that remembers you.
AI makes it so anyone is a founder if you want it.
If you made it this far, I'm rooting for you.
You're an unemployable founder.
(note: find startup ideas, trends and more at ideabrowser.com/)
1.2K - 69
How I'd build a $100K MRR AI startup in one image
(find startup ideas/trends at www.ideabrowser.com/)
724 - 26
My career advice in one image
1.1K - 39
A mini-essay on this moment in history:
We're living through something our grandkids will study in history class, and we're experiencing it as just ANOTHER Thursday.
You don't really feel paradigm shifts while you're in them. They feel like normal life with slightly better tools.
The printing press was just a faster way to copy books. The internet was just a better library. AI is just a smarter autocomplete.
You get numb to launch after launch and it all sorta blends into the new normal. Claude writes entire codebases and you're frustrated it missed a semicolon.
The audacity.....
Then ONE DAY you wake up and everything changed while you were sitting in a pointless meeting. That little startup that went viral on X is suddenly the incumbent. That 18 year old kid with a GPT wrapper with no moat is now suddenly the most interesting man in Silicon Valley.
The history books won't capture how mundane it felt. How we spent the revolution arguing about return-to-office policies. How we witnessed the death of gatekeepers while refreshing our email. How the greatest democratization of capability in human history happened mostly on Tuesday afternoons between Zoom calls.
You exist in the 20-year window where individuals can compete with institutions. Where a laptop equals a team. Where David doesn't need a slingshot because Goliath's advantages are somehow available for $20/month.
Soon, the window closes. The regulations arrive. The moats get built. The incumbents adapt. The wild west becomes the suburbs.
But today... on this Thursday... today you can still build something in a weekend that changes everything. Today it's tilted in favor of the individual for the first time in history.
Enjoy this moment while it lasts.
Note: find your startup idea at ideabrowser.com (free startup idea of the day)
520 - 53
i paid my mortgage off today. in one shot. thank you internet.
people think you need one massive win. one unicorn exit. one viral moment. but the internet doesn't work like that. the internet rewards consistency.
$500 here. $3,000 there. $10,000 from that random project. keep going. you're founder intuition is growing. compound that over 10 years.
suddenly you're staring at your mortgage balance thinking "i could just... end this right now."
so i did. now, im sitting in this house i actually fully own and i hope it inspires someone to ship something. you could be at your full-time job and launch something this weekend. you could be a student and build between classes. you could be retired and start your first internet business at 65. the internet doesn't check your resume. it just waits for you to show up. and rewards the heck out of you when you do.
"BuT iT mAkEs MoRe SeNsE tO kEeP tHe MoRtGaGe AnD iNvEsT"
yeah i know. 5% mortgage, 9% s&p returns, compound interest, blah blah blah.
the spreadsheet guys will tell you i'm an idiot. that i just threw away 4% annually. that compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.
it's not rational. i just hate owing money.
i've always been this way. debt feels like a weight on my chest. doesn't matter if it's "good debt" or tax-advantaged or whatever. it's still debt.
my bank account is smaller now. my runway is shorter. by every financial metric, i made the wrong choice.
but i own my house. like, actually own it. no bank has a claim. no payment due on the 1st. if everything crashes tomorrow, i still have somewhere to live.
is that worth the thousands in lost returns? financially, no. psychologically, absolutely.
sometimes the best financial decision isn't financial at all. it's buying peace of mind. it's removing that tiny voice that whispers "you don't really own this" every time you walk through your front door.
and to someone like me that means i feel better about taking bigger bets and helps living a happier life.
and isn't that what a big part of financial freedom is about? a happier life??
the math says i'm wrong. the feeling says i'm right.
and i've learned to trust the feeling.
the internet is undefeated.
note: find your startup ideas at ideabrowser.com
2K - 193
Subscribe for startup ideas & tutorials on on how to use AI to build & grow your startup.
Hey, Iām Greg - CEO of Late Checkout and ex-advisor to Reddit, TikTok, and more.
I post videos here from my podcast top 0.1% tech podcast called The Startup Ideas Podcast.
You can also listen to The Startup Ideas Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
I keep it practical and never gatekeep the sauce. I share what I'm learning in real-time.
Happy building