GREG ISENBERG

my entire content strategy is this give you free startup ideas + growth playbooks that work i won't hold back and every time you build something from my tweets/pod I'm sippin' a martini & cheering you on your success is my ultimate flex now go ship something & make me proud

The FAA nationwide ground stop reminds me that the best business to be in right now is cybersecurity

Making the most AI pilled company is the whole game: 1. make a second brain. one folder of markdown files on how you think, write and decide (obsidian) 2. talk to it. voice notes all day (wispr), and an agent files every fact, story and decision 3. make a company brain. customers, calls, numbers, pricing, playbooks, past decisions and why you made them 4. record every call and meeting (granola). the transcripts go straight into the brain 5. keep a facts file. true things about you and the company that agents are allowed to say. this kills made-up claims 6. keep a voice file. your 50 best posts, 20 you hate, and the words you never use 7. put all of it in git (github) so every change has a history 8. write one instruction file at the top (CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md). read these files before any task, never overwrite, always date 9. give agents memory across sessions so they stop starting from zero (claude-mem, mem0) 10. pipe every data source into one warehouse your agents can query (airbyte → clickhouse). ads, analytics, CRM, payments 11. feed it data nobody else has. it's the only part a competitor can't download the skills 12. don't start from zero. install the good ones first (anthropics/skills, obra/superpowers, mattpocock/skills, addyosmani/agent-skills) 13. grab the marketing ones too (coreyhaines31/marketingskills, cody schneider's graphed skills for static ads and UGC, boringmarketing dot com skills) 14. map every workflow in the company and rank them by money made or saved 15. do each one once while talking out loud, and record it 16. have an agent turn the recording into a skill. when to use it, the steps, the checks, the mistakes to avoid 17. one skill per job. small and boring beats one giant prompt 18. connect your tools with MCPs so agents can act and not only advise (gmail, slack, stripe, linear, notion, posthog, supabase) 19. give agents a browser (browser-use, vercel agent-browser, claude in chrome) 20. give agents a computer of their own for the tools with no API (vercel agent-desktop, orgo) 21. give your best skills away in public. it's the new lead magnet the agents 22. run an orchestrator that never turns off (grok bot, openclaw, hermes). it manages one agent per project, and each of those runs its own sub-agents 23. use coding agents for the building (claude code, codex, cursor, t3, antigravity) 24. wrap them in a harness so they plan, test and remember (ECC, superpowers) 25. manage the whole fleet in one place (paperclip). every agent gets a job, a budget and a log 26. put the skills on triggers (n8n, scheduled tasks). daily, weekly, on every new lead, on every cancellation 27. route your models (openrouter). the expensive one plans and checks (fable 5.2, gemini 4 carbon), the cheap ones do the volume 28. cut the token bill. shorter outputs, smaller tool results (caveman) 29. run a local model for the data that can't leave your machine (gemma 4) 30. track cost per job. if a job costs more than it earns, fix it or kill it the factory 31. build the line. spec agent → builder agents in parallel (git worktrees) → test agent → reviewer agent → deploy (vercel, railway) 32. design goes through the same line (paper MCP), and a skill strips out anything that looks AI made (unslop) 33. every annoying task in the company becomes an internal tool by the end of the day 34. every customer request becomes a pull request before a human reads it (tstack for the PR workflow) 35. reviewer agents with a named bar. "would the best team in the world ship this?" reject until the answer is yes 36. keep 50 real cases with the right answer. rerun them every time a new model drops and switch to the winner 37. humans approve, own the outcome and talk to customers. that's the 10% you keep the loop 38. every finished job writes back to the brain. what worked, what failed, what to stop doing 39. support tickets, analytics and social comments flow in every night 40. every friday an agent rewrites the playbooks from the week's results, and you approve the diff 41. every month, rank everything by profit per human hour. kill one thing and double one thing the growth 42. research with agents before you spend a dollar (perplexity API, last30days skill) 43. outbound runs itself. find the leads, enrich, verify, send (apollo, million verifier, instantly, phantombuster) 44. send prospects finished work in place of a pitch 45. ads run on a loop. an agent writes the creative, publishes through the facebook ads API, kills the losers and scales the winners 46. agents make the creative too. images (nano banana), video (heygen, fal), voice (elevenlabs), music (lyria 3.5, suno) 47. turn every finished job into content. the story, the number, the prompt 48. every customer makes the brain smarter for the next one. that's your network effect 49. once it works, point it at a new niche. same agents, new context The models are the same for everyone but your context is the only part that's yours. Acquire as much of it as you can, as fast as you can. Build loops like this. This is the whole game, happy playing.

This clip got a lot of people asking how they would build this in practice. So here is the full 49 minutes, where we walk through every tool, every prompt, the pricing, and the exact pitch to close a $25K deal. It’s free, so go build one this weekend: youtu.be/67BmkptgTms?si=_lPl…

One of the best businesses to build right now: a Grok Bot for one industry. Pick a niche like dentists and build the AI agents for them so they don’t have to figure any of it out. The stack: - T3 Code + Opus 5.5/Fable 5.2 to build it - Paper to design every screen first - Orgo to give each agent its own computer - AgentMail for an inbox - AgentPhone for a phone number - Composio for every connector - CleanShot to screenshot bugs and say “fix this” Dentists fix teeth and you set up the agents. Really good way to learn how to become AI native while getting paid for it too.

Status symbols today: - Taking private lessons in chess, jazz piano, or French in your late 30s - Knowing your VO2 max, DEXA stats, and ApoB - Having zero clue what the internet is mad about today - Wired Apple earbuds on video calls - More than 2 kids - 100% natural fiber clothing (linen, merino, cashmere, zero polyester) - Empty calendars - Caring about microplastics - No TV in the main living room - Having lots of followers or being off social completely - Being sober - Eating "clean" - Type of water you drink - Private school for kids - Traveling to Japan - Premium skincare - 2nd house - Backyard pizza oven - 2+ fridges - Ordering off menu because you've gone to the same spot since 2014 - Charcuterie boards - Single estate olive oil and tinned fish - Hosting Sunday dinners where phones go in a wooden bowl by the front door - Private chef - 2000s manual Porsche 911 over any brand new supercar - 90s Toyota Land Cruiser or old Volvo wagon as the daily driver - Talking about seed oils a lot - Dyson vacuums - Limewash walls and unlacquered brass hardware that patinas over time - $95 heavyweight blank white tees (Lady White Co., Merz b. Schwanen, Buck Mason etc) - Beautiful workstation - Raw A2 milk from a local farm drop - Le Labo products - Talking about cold plunges - Custom cedar sauna + outdoor shower in the backyard - Secondhand goods with stories - Cast iron and stainless steel pans only - Eating organic - Buying half a cow from a regenerative ranch (and owning a garage chest freezer just for it) - Japanese selvedge denim and unbranded cashmere - Taking afternoon calls on a walk (refusing to turn on Zoom camera) - Hi-Fi audio - Framed art from artists you met in person - Mortgage rate below 3% - La Marzocco coffee maker - Owning your last name .com (and it's your email too) - Charizards - Wearing a faded crewneck from a tiny bakery in Copenhagen or Kyoto - Reading books - Phone permanently on Do Not Disturb - Work/life balance - Analog hobbies (Leica film cameras, fountain pens, woodworking) - Kids with zero iPad time (wooden toys + outdoor school) - Bone broth - Digital detoxing - Taking the entire month of August off like an old-world European - iPhone Air or iPhone Duo Okay, I'll stop. So, what did I miss?

"My Grok Bot advisor talked me out of a $1.35M mistake" - @Rasmic Here’s how to set up your own advisor Grok Bot: 1. Create a new bot in Grok Bot and name it Advisor 2. Search “finance” in plugins and connect your accounts through Plaid 3. Tell it your goals for the year: what you’re saving for and what you’re building 4. Give it one job: “Stop me from making bad decisions. Be blunt.” 5. Before any big move, send it the details and ask “wdyt of this.” A purchase, an investment, an acquisition, a new business idea.

Some quick observations on Anthropic's IPO: 1/ The number of customers paying $100K or more grew 12x in a year, to over 11,900. And the existing ones are spending about 9x what they did 1 year ago (wild). 2/ The net loss is $23.3B, but $21.9B of that is a paper loss. They owe early investors shares, and those shares got more valuable, so accounting rules count it as a loss (has to do with convertible notes etc being exchanged) 3/ Revenue per employee is over $6.6M! 4/ They did $17B in revenue last quarter, and that's up more than 12x from a year ago. 5/ The stat they feature most is compute efficiency, where they say they get 4x more revenue per dollar of compute than in early 2025. ( I think this is a metric they defined themselves but not 100% sure) 6/ It's a public benefit corporation, so shareholders are buying into a company that's legally allowed to weigh other goals alongside their returns. 7/ You can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, SoFi, Schwab, Fidelity and E*TRADE, which I think is somewhat unusual for an IPO this size, but maybe it's a sign of the times? 8/ The whole roadshow is an 11 chapter video that anyone can watch, and it's cool that they shared it. 9/ The ticker is $ANT. It's expected to price on November 18 and start trading the next day. 10/ One of the case studies is about Sparky, Walmart’s shopping assistant, and they say orders through it are about 35% bigger. What’s interesting to me is that shoppers only ever see Walmart, and Anthropic is the plumbing underneath. Sidenote: I co-founded @MeetLCA an agency that builds experiences like this big companies/big startups so this trend is what I'm seeing too (demand for agent experience products) 11/ The founders' letter tells investors to "never let your company be worth a dollar more than it is actually worth." I haven't seen that in an IPO pitch before. 12/ About 250 customers pay them $10M or more a year, and over 1,900 pay $1M or more. 13/ They spent $9.9B on compute last quarter, which is more than half of revenue. $5B of that was bought on short-term deals that cost a lot more, which tells me demand is running ahead of what they planned for. 14/ All 7 co-founders are still at the company, and they lose about 1% of the people they want to keep each year. 15/ They recorded $1.1B in stock based compensation last quarter. 16/ They have about $96B in cash and have raised about $141B in total. Note: this is not financial advice. Do your own research. I share things I find interesting about startups and building businesses in real-time. Whether you're into AI or not, this is a historic moment for tech, AI and the USA.

The IKEA effect is one of the more useful ideas in startups. People value things up to 63% more when they helped build them (think Spotify playlists, Notion workspaces, Obsidian vaults).

Talking about one of the craziest weeks in AI in a LONG time Presenting sponsor of this livestream: @BrexHQ DM me if you want to sponsor future ones nitter.gq/i/broadcasts/2JQPelLNb…

The problem with social media right now, summarized: 1) Rage bait works 2) Bots are kinda everywhere 3) AI slop is everywhere 4) It doesn't feel super social anymore 5) Extremely addictive 6) Pressure to go viral 7) You compare yourself without noticing 8) Hard to tell what’s real 9) You forget why you opened the app 10) Everything is filtered Yet, it’s still one of the greatest tools humanity has for building, connecting, and finding your people! It's just far from perfect.

openai just let every business claim a profile inside chatgpt. my honest reactions: 1/ this could be the google my business moment for ai, and a lot of agencies made a great living (millions!) in the 2010s just claiming and fixing listings for local businesses 2/ ads can now click through to a conversation with your agent instead of your website (interesting) 3/ every business agent runs on context the company writes, and most brands are going to be bad at it 4/ your product feed is your new seo. boring, and it matters more than your blog now in some ways if you think about it 5/ the dashboard tells you how often chatgpt mentions you but HIDES the prompts and your competitors, so you still can’t see why you’re winning or losing 6/ discovery topics shows what chatgpt already cites you for, which is basically a free content calendar 7/ agents are only open to us ecommerce and online services right now. plumbers, dentists etc are next, and so lots of opportunity to help main street here 8/ businesses can’t see the conversations, so nobody knows which chats turn into sales yet 9/ i’m not sure people want to talk to a brand’s agent. i think they’ll want their own agent to talk to it for them 10/ 1.2 billion people use chatgpt every week. i’d go claim my profile before finishing this post if you can

my raw thoughts on fable 5.2 after testing it (vibe manufacturing, marketing engineering, AI native services) it might be the most thoughtful model i've ever used here are the 12 prompts i'd use to make money and become more productive with claude fable 5.2

i've been testing gemini 4 carbon for 7 days. some early observations: 1/ it stopped cheating mostly. successful shortcuts on terminal-bench went to 0.0% (you can finally leave an agent alone mostly) 2/ prompt injection attack success rate was 0.0% on gray swan's benchmark. that's the number that lets you hand an agent your inbox 3/ it doesn't quit. google's own teams have watched it work on one problem for days and push through dead ends (love to see it) 4/ when it's stuck, it tells you what it still needs instead of making something up. unsupported claims got cut in half vs argon 5/ it does what you asked. not more, not less (overreach down 26%, under-delivering down 29%) 6/ it writes secure code at 2x the rate of argon. vibe coded apps keep getting hacked, so this one matters 7/ it found 88% of the vulnerabilities on sec-bench pro. every small company is about to have a security team it never hired 8/ $2 in and $10 out per million tokens to start, with cached input 95% off. agents that run for days just got cheap enough to actually run for days 9/ google shipped this two weeks after argon. pretty amazing pace 10/ cyber defenders got it first. very interesting maybe i should do a full carbon vs fable 5.2 comparison on @startupideaspod. crazy ai launch week and it's only tuesday. i wonder what openai has in store. Also the week with the whole Jensen affair. what a week in ai land

Scientists copied a fruit fly’s entire brain into a computer and connected it to a virtual body Nobody programmed it to do anything, but it started tasting sugar and cleaning itself anyway It’s a long way from a human brain, but it’s hard not to think about where this goes!

quick observations from the claude fable and mythos 5.2 launch: 1/ it went from doing 21% of real freelance work to 41% in one release, so agencies are about to start charging per deliverable instead of per hour! 2/ it can work 10-12 hours on its own, which basically gives every small business a night shift (might as well use it if you know what you want to build) 3/ over 90% of anthropic's own code is now written by claude, and so i think the solo $1b founder is coming soon 4/ one engineer ran 1000+ subagents for 8 days and got an operating system that boots, so the ancient software running hospitals and airlines is finally rebuildable (lots of opportunity here on rebuilding) 5/ it designed 3 working electronic devices from a single prompt, which makes 1 person hardware companies a real thing 6/ it now says "i don't know" instead of guessing, and that's what law, medicine and finance have been waiting for (this has been the biggest thorn for these industries, hard to trust guessing) 7/ 1000 agents formalized fermat's last theorem in 30 hours, so software that's mathematically proven not to break is coming for payments and medical devices 8/ mythos is only for verified orgs, which means someone is going to build a business selling what only they have access to 9/ the models are getting better at noticing when they're being tested, so testing ai out in the real world is about to become its own industry i love new model day