AI transcript
0:00:05 Ever wished you could clone yourself to run a company?
0:00:07 John Rush pretty much did.
0:00:12 In this episode, we talk with the founder behind what might be the most automated organization on earth.
0:00:18 80% of his business is run by AI agents he built himself.
0:00:21 And he plans to eventually automate the entire thing.
0:00:27 From prototyping with Lovable to launching SEO agents that work while he sleeps and actually create content that ranks,
0:00:30 John walks us through his entire process.
0:00:34 So if you’re a builder, founder, or just curious about the future of solo entrepreneurship,
0:00:38 this is a mind-blowing look into what’s next.
0:00:43 This episode is brought to you by HubSpot Inbound 2025,
0:00:48 a three-day experience at the heart of San Francisco’s AI and startup scene,
0:00:50 happening September 3rd through the 5th.
0:00:55 With speakers like Amy Poehler, Marquise Brownlee, and Dario Amadei,
0:00:58 you’ll get tactical breakout sessions, product reveals,
0:01:01 and networking with the people shaping the future of business.
0:01:02 Don’t miss out.
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0:01:11 Hey, John, thanks for coming on.
0:01:13 Thanks for having me.
0:01:15 Yeah, so I saw your Twitter profile.
0:01:16 It really caught my attention.
0:01:16 Your profile says,
0:01:21 I run the most automated work on earth using the AI agents I built,
0:01:22 which is a huge claim.
0:01:25 But I checked out your website and some of the projects,
0:01:26 and it looks like you’re legit.
0:01:29 So I’d love to learn more about how you’re doing that.
0:01:30 Yeah, thanks.
0:01:35 So I’ve been running VC-backed startups with a lot of people,
0:01:39 like big teams, and a lot of overhead for like 10 years.
0:01:44 And eventually, I was actually tired of working with people.
0:01:46 And then the AI happened.
0:01:53 And then I saw this whole opportunity for me to actually start working solo.
0:01:54 So I went solo.
0:01:57 I delegated my startup that was VC-backed.
0:01:58 I hired CTO.
0:01:59 I hired CEO.
0:02:00 So I left the startup.
0:02:02 And then I started learning AI.
0:02:07 And I started building these little workflows, tools,
0:02:13 and then later little agents that would just do the most repetitive work that I do myself.
0:02:16 So first, I had to do everything myself,
0:02:22 like accounting, paperwork, design, coding, marketing, sales, everything.
0:02:26 So I had a lot of pain that I wanted to solve.
0:02:29 Then I started using AI to solve everything one by one.
0:02:34 And my goal is to basically be the first who solves the whole thing.
0:02:38 And basically, my whole organization will run just me and AI.
0:02:41 So I’m about 80% on the way.
0:02:42 So it’s 20% left now.
0:02:44 Do you have some people helping you right now?
0:02:45 Or is it just you?
0:02:46 I have people helping me with coding.
0:02:49 So everything else is just me.
0:02:54 And this year, I haven’t done the whole text papers and accounting.
0:02:55 Everything was done by me and AI.
0:02:57 So I’m proud.
0:02:58 I hope it will work.
0:03:02 But then for coding, I use co-makers.
0:03:04 So I find people who are really good with AI.
0:03:07 And then it’s just me and one person.
0:03:08 And we build a project together.
0:03:09 So no more people.
0:03:12 Just I do everything that’s on coding.
0:03:19 And the co-maker does the coding by using the AI coding tool and the real coding as well.
0:03:20 So basically, you still need the real coding.
0:03:21 I see.
0:03:27 So for most of these 20 projects, you have kind of like a co-founder who does all the coding and all that, takes care of all that side.
0:03:28 Yeah, exactly.
0:03:32 I usually start all by myself while I validate the idea.
0:03:33 And I build the MVP.
0:03:37 And often it just dies out because nobody actually wants that.
0:03:44 But then when I manage to actually get attention and I sell at least 10 licenses for that, then it’s a sign that it works.
0:03:47 Then I go and find somebody who will build with me further.
0:03:47 Cool.
0:03:50 People are listening to this a little bit like, oh, that sounds great.
0:03:52 How do I actually do any of this?
0:03:56 I mean, maybe we could just like show people like how they can actually use AI agents to grow a business.
0:03:57 Yeah, sure.
0:04:01 So one of my favorite AI agent is called Lovable.
0:04:02 So everybody knows it.
0:04:02 Yeah.
0:04:06 And the way I use it is that I use it for prototyping.
0:04:11 So I pitch my idea to Lovable and then I spend the whole day talking to Lovable.
0:04:17 So I use it as a prototyping tool, but also it’s an AI that’s smart, right?
0:04:23 So you can also talk to it and you can ask questions and then you can ask it to come up with ideas, which works really, really well.
0:04:25 And then I bring that to my friends.
0:04:32 So I find people who are willing to spend an hour with me just testing that out.
0:04:34 So then I send them 10 links.
0:04:37 We jump on a call and then they share their screen.
0:04:41 And then I watch them use all 10 prototypes.
0:04:42 I don’t ask any questions.
0:04:44 I just tell them, try that.
0:04:45 Don’t talk to me.
0:04:47 Just try them all.
0:04:49 And it works so well.
0:04:57 So in one hour, I see which prototype works best, where they can actually understand what’s happening.
0:05:00 And then after that, I have one winner.
0:05:06 So then I take that winner and then I continue into building that into a real product.
0:05:13 So that’s probably my favorite use of AI because, you know, as an idea guy, as a founder, I have so many ideas.
0:05:16 And then I can test them so quickly.
0:05:18 Like literally in hours, I can test them.
0:05:21 And in the past, I would have to hire a designer.
0:05:24 And then I would have to hire a developer who would code that.
0:05:24 Yeah.
0:05:28 Hire a designer and then you work with them in Figma and you pay them a lot and you might get a design.
0:05:29 It’s totally not what you want.
0:05:31 You got to go back and forth.
0:05:31 Exactly.
0:05:32 And then hire an engineer.
0:05:34 And then maybe nobody wants it.
0:05:34 Yeah.
0:05:41 I mean, like imagine like now my iteration cycle is like three minutes with a designer.
0:05:45 It takes you like three days for the same cycle.
0:05:46 You can’t even compare that.
0:05:53 So I think we will see like crazy growth in new ideas and new takes on the old ideas.
0:05:54 So that’s my favorite use.
0:05:56 So I do that a lot.
0:06:00 I think every week I create maybe 20 prototypes and I test them.
0:06:05 And that’s my factory of ideas and factory of prototypes that I run.
0:06:05 That’s brilliant.
0:06:09 And then what works the best, I move to the next stage.
0:06:10 Did you say 20 in a week?
0:06:12 Is that your current rate roughly?
0:06:12 Yeah.
0:06:20 So when I have an idea, the first thing I do when I have an idea, I open Lovable and I pitch the idea and I see what happens.
0:06:21 That’s my habit now.
0:06:21 Yeah.
0:06:23 Because now I visualize the idea.
0:06:29 When you say pitch Lovable, do you mean do you actually see what Lovable thinks about your idea or do you just like see?
0:06:35 You know, I treat AI as humans and I think that’s one of the reasons why it works so well for me.
0:06:45 Because a lot of people use AI as technology and they try to treat it as software where it expects you to write in a certain way.
0:06:54 But I think that Lovable should understand the idea, not just on a technical level, but also like why is it important for the world?
0:06:57 Like who are the users and why do I want to build it?
0:07:01 And if you do that, you get surprised by the UX it builds.
0:07:03 It actually builds cool stuff.
0:07:04 How good is Lovable on code?
0:07:09 You know, recently I’ve been playing with things like factory and other things and it feels like they’re a little bit more hardcore on the code.
0:07:09 Yeah.
0:07:15 I wonder if there’s like some kind of like ideal workflow where, depending on the product, maybe some products like a directory may not need anything else.
0:07:15 Right.
0:07:22 But if you’re doing a more complicated product, maybe there’s some workflow where you kind of like prototype the idea out with something like Lovable or V0,
0:07:30 which are kind of typically better at UI, UX kind of stuff, and then hand it off to like a more serious coding AI agent like factory or something else.
0:07:31 Right.
0:07:37 I mean, you’ve probably seen my AI coding threads where I have these 40 tools I can pair.
0:07:48 I actually tried all of them and you have tools that are great for prototypes that basically replace Figma and the front end development.
0:07:52 So V0, Lovable, are probably the best for prototypes.
0:07:57 And then you have tools that are the best for full stack apps.
0:08:01 And Replit is probably the most powerful.
0:08:04 I built stuff with Replit that I run in production.
0:08:07 And then you have tools that are good for mobile apps.
0:08:14 Then you have tools that are great for heavy logic where it’s not about the UI, but rather the logic.
0:08:22 For example, Cursor or Windsor, they are great for building logic, but they’re not as great for Vibe coders.
0:08:23 So you have to know how to code.
0:08:26 Where with Lovable, you don’t have to know how to code.
0:08:29 And Bolt is probably in the middle of everything.
0:08:32 So it’s kind of, it’s good for the front end.
0:08:33 It’s good for real apps.
0:08:35 It’s good for Vibe coders.
0:08:37 Also, it’s good for coders.
0:08:43 So I think it’s the best kind of middle, like the average tool that does everything okay.
0:08:53 But again, my favorite is Lovable just because I see that in most cases, the UX is the most times consuming thing in the product.
0:08:55 Because you iterate on UX the most.
0:09:00 And also UX usually decides whether your product is going to win or not in most cases.
0:09:02 And that’s why I use Lovable.
0:09:05 But also I have other tools like, so there’s a unicorn platform.
0:09:06 What’s the unicorn platform?
0:09:08 What is that for anyone listening?
0:09:11 Yeah, so it’s a website builder and directory builder.
0:09:11 Oh, okay.
0:09:15 The difference here is that Lovable can build everything, whatever you ask.
0:09:23 And the unicorn platform can build specified products, for example, like a waitlist or Airbnb-like website.
0:09:26 Whatever you have in the gallery, it can build.
0:09:29 Whatever you don’t have in the gallery, it can build.
0:09:37 And that’s why if your idea exists in the gallery, then you’re going to get much better results compared to Lovable.
0:09:51 So I tend to use specialized agents for the tasks because I think specialized agents, they work better because people have built them and they have fixed all the corner cases.
0:09:53 Because AI is great for a lot of the tasks.
0:10:04 But whenever you leave it unattended, whenever it does the work on itself and there’s no human stirring it, then it does some stupid mistakes pretty often.
0:10:12 So that’s why I think the best way to use AI agents is to basically find specialized agents for every task.
0:10:21 And then you start by using general agent, you get some data in, and then you test that, use it as a prototype or whatever.
0:10:28 But whenever you go for real work and you need real full data, you go into specialized agents.
0:10:28 And that’s what I do.
0:10:31 So basically, I move to the next agents.
0:10:32 Have you tried any of the platforms?
0:10:36 Like I know there’s like Lindy and there’s MindStudio and a few different platforms.
0:10:36 Yeah, yeah.
0:10:40 We actually just had a float from Lindy on and he was showing me some demos.
0:10:43 I was like, oh, I didn’t know you could have like different specialized agents for all these different use cases.
0:10:45 And then you can kind of tinker with it underneath the hood.
0:10:47 Here’s your context for doing that.
0:10:49 They pick which model you use and like everything.
0:10:51 I was kind of mind blown by it.
0:11:05 Yeah, Lindy is probably the best for non-coders and marketers to build these workflows and agents where things work based on triggers and they react on messages.
0:11:10 And then they search something on the internet, they send an email, they send connection requests and all those things.
0:11:17 So I saw people building huge sales and marketing workflows on Lindy.
0:11:23 But my main issue with things like Lindy is that it is very limited.
0:11:26 So you don’t really code that much there.
0:11:31 So I’m a big fan of writing code for agents because then you can make them kind of smarter.
0:11:46 But I think what Lindy does is that it lets great marketing people or great sales people or great operational people automate the junior people work or automate their own repetitive work.
0:11:48 So it’s really good tools.
0:11:53 But I use usually Zapier and N8 for the same thing.
0:11:56 So because they were in the game for a long time, I’m used to them.
0:11:58 But I think Lindy is even better for that.
0:11:59 So I’m planning to switch to that.
0:12:04 So the other tool I always use and I actually built myself is SEO Bot.
0:12:08 So basically this is a true agent.
0:12:10 So you give it URL.
0:12:15 So basically this agent is probably my favorite one.
0:12:18 I wish other agents were built the way I built this one.
0:12:27 Because when I was building this agent, my goal was to remove all the work from the user completely.
0:12:33 So basically now the only thing I will do from here on is to watch it work.
0:12:36 So there is nothing more for me to do.
0:12:37 It’s almost like cinema.
0:12:40 It’s a terminal and it’s just going at it.
0:12:42 Yeah, and it takes forever.
0:12:47 It will keep working every day from now on until I turn it off.
0:12:56 And that’s so cool because I think a lot of the agents, they end up building not the agents, but actually tools where AI helps you.
0:13:00 And I like that, but that doesn’t change the game for me, for example.
0:13:01 I’m so busy.
0:13:04 I don’t really have time to use the tools.
0:13:07 So I would rather turn them on and just let them run.
0:13:16 And I think most agents still think that their main users are the teams and teams want to have tools to become more productive.
0:13:22 But my main users are the busy founders like me who don’t want to become more productive.
0:13:24 I just want to do nothing.
0:13:27 And the whole thing happens because I have other things to do.
0:13:30 I have more important things to do.
0:13:35 So basically it has done the whole work of laying out the strategy for SEO for your tool.
0:13:45 And it has the headlines and if I click proceed, then it will just activate the work and then it will start building the headlines.
0:13:51 It will send the headlines to your website and then it will keep doing that every day until you stop it.
0:13:51 That’s crazy.
0:13:54 That is amazing.
0:13:55 I need this.
0:13:57 If someone’s listening, how do they find this?
0:14:00 Because I think a lot of people are going to see this and they’re like, oh my God, I want that.
0:14:04 I mean, like any business owner, I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to try this.
0:14:07 Yeah, it’s seobotai.com.
0:14:09 Okay, seobotai.com.
0:14:37 And I really urge agent developers to try too because I think the founders and the software world is really slow on adapting for the new paradigm shift where we have to move from SaaS and utility tools into AI agents that run on autopilot where you as a user is acting more like a moderator or like a boss.
0:14:43 And the boss usually gives feedback and the boss doesn’t do the work, right?
0:14:48 And I’m disappointed by seeing most of the agents not moving that way.
0:14:50 Like they’re still looking like the old software.
0:15:01 I think they should be kind of bolder and take more risks and actually make agents that do the whole thing for the user because that will simply accelerate the founders.
0:15:06 Like now we have, you know, 100 people building the same company.
0:15:08 And imagine if 100 people could build 100 companies.
0:15:13 Maybe that will never happen, but at least you can increase the number of founders building the products.
0:15:26 And that’s kind of my dream that my tools will enable solo founders to build startups without raising VC money, without hiring people, at least at the start.
0:15:32 I do wonder, you know, I wrote a small e-book with a boy in Tungus when he was at NVIDIA.
0:15:37 And in the process of writing that, we’re thinking through the future of like where all this is going with agents and everything else.
0:15:44 And I was really blush on the concept of, you know, you’re going to have, you know, basically what you’re doing, but, you know, the agents kind of doing a lot.
0:15:52 Like even like the idea generation itself, you know, having the agents come up with the ideas and then you generate the prototypes with something like lovable.
0:15:55 And then maybe for the user testing, you ease it over time.
0:15:58 It’s probably not good enough now, but even over time, maybe the user testing.
0:15:58 Yeah.
0:16:00 You’re actually testing out the product, right?
0:16:02 Here, oh, here’s 10 different kinds of people.
0:16:03 You’re this kind of person.
0:16:04 This is what you are.
0:16:05 This is your life.
0:16:05 This is your background.
0:16:08 And now go test this product and see what you think.
0:16:21 And you, in theory, could go through the entire process of just like, you know, some kind of new kind of AI agent powered studio where you’re just cranking out ideas and the ones that work, you like double down into it, put more resources into.
0:16:22 Somebody’s going to nail that.
0:16:25 It’s going to be like a multi, multi-billion dollar company.
0:16:26 Yeah.
0:16:32 I mean, that’s exactly where we’re going, where agents will be able to do everything humans can do.
0:16:36 And of course, humans can do things better than the agents.
0:16:39 The best humans can do things better than the average agents.
0:16:42 But in most cases, you don’t need that.
0:16:47 Like when you’re validating idea or at the early stage, it’s not that important.
0:16:51 The quality of work is rather the cost is important.
0:16:58 And you can always bring human on board later, or you can be the human who improves the outcome.
0:16:59 And that’s what I do.
0:17:07 So almost everything that my agents do, I end up revisiting and improving myself at some point.
0:17:09 But for example, look at SEO content.
0:17:13 So it generates me 100 articles a month, for example, for one product.
0:17:21 And then after the last day of the month, I go to the analytics and I see which are the three articles that did the best.
0:17:25 And then I spend an hour to improve those three articles.
0:17:25 Yeah.
0:17:27 So basically, I’m still involved.
0:17:30 But the AI helps me.
0:17:33 I’m almost like a VC fund that funds 100 articles.
0:17:35 And then it’s a seed funding.
0:17:38 And now I see who is doing the best.
0:17:40 And then I kind of get involved personally.
0:17:44 Pile into the series A and the series B to go into all those articles.
0:17:45 Exactly.
0:17:47 And you can do the same with everything else.
0:17:50 Because a lot of people are opposed to AI.
0:17:55 And they say that AI is doing a bad job with content and the quality is low.
0:17:58 And my take on that is that, yes, that’s true.
0:18:00 AI is not as good as humans today.
0:18:06 But very often, in the first run, you care more about quantity than the quality.
0:18:08 And then later, you can bring the quality yourself.
0:18:11 And the quality is going to get better and better automatically.
0:18:13 Like most of these tools, like, oh, a new model came out.
0:18:16 Like, okay, now it’s just like 20% better and cheaper.
0:18:17 Yeah, exactly.
0:18:21 In the Unicom platform, so I have this thing, which is pretty cool.
0:18:24 So these are actually agents that run within the platform.
0:18:30 So if I hire the agent that can monetize my website, it will actually do the whole work.
0:18:36 So when I enable this, it will outreach all the potential sponsors.
0:18:38 And it will pitch them my website.
0:18:43 And then eventually land me a deal with a sponsor for sponsoring my website.
0:18:45 And same thing with other things.
0:18:50 So I think we will see agents and humans competing for the work.
0:18:51 We’re seeing that already.
0:18:53 And I think that’s kind of the future.
0:18:54 That’s incredible.
0:18:58 I started thinking like, oh, wow, I should actually be using this to get sponsors for my newsletter.
0:19:00 I should be mainly reaching out to people.
0:19:03 I should literally just have like an agent doing all that.
0:19:04 Yeah, exactly.
0:19:06 Because that work is easy, right?
0:19:07 It’s just time consuming.
0:19:09 Like, it’s not like you’re doing something crazy.
0:19:12 It’s not like you’re writing a personalized message to every sponsor.
0:19:16 You’re actually just doing a boring job over and over again.
0:19:16 Yeah.
0:19:21 Typically giving them like a PDF with the information or sending them a link to like, yeah, it’s pretty simple.
0:19:22 Awesome.
0:19:28 One question I had is like, I saw your episode with Greg Eisenberg, where you’re talking about like using AI for directories.
0:19:30 And I think maybe that’s what you were kind of known for before.
0:19:31 What do you think about directories?
0:19:34 Like, are they still useful in the future?
0:19:40 I guess that’s one question I have is because I could see the argument for them being useful or them not being useful because people will just use AI and AI will tell them everything.
0:19:54 Yeah, I think that directories will be useful because AI is good at answering questions, but it all comes down to the data it uses as their context.
0:20:04 And right now, the biggest kind of progress among AI chatbots is their context and where they get the data, right?
0:20:12 Because AI is great at answering questions, but it doesn’t always know the right answer because it wasn’t present in their training data, right?
0:20:19 And now like Grog is doing a good job because it uses social media and its own tweets for that.
0:20:28 So I think the future of directories is that the directories will represent the highest quality of the content within the niche.
0:20:34 For example, like there are people building future tools or futurepedia or other directories for AI tools.
0:20:52 Like those people spend hours and days and months and years on curating the list of AI tools, on finding, you know, their pros and cons and comparing them to each other and finding the reviews about those tools.
0:20:55 So this data is so important, right?
0:21:09 And if you feed that data into LLM and then ask a question, like what should I use for this problem, then it has really good data from the directory that it can use to answer the question.
0:21:14 So then the value of good data is just growing, right?
0:21:19 So I think in the future, the LLMs will pretty much do all the same thing.
0:21:23 We’re seeing that now already, like they’re almost the same now.
0:21:29 Like we had some times when one was better than the other, but today I think all four players are pretty much the same.
0:21:31 And now it’s the race for the data.
0:21:33 Like who has the best data?
0:21:40 And I think if you are the one who can provide LLMs with the best data, you can charge for it.
0:21:42 You can monetize it.
0:21:45 And that’s why I think directories have big future.
0:21:50 But of course, if the directory has great content.
0:21:54 Yeah, that’s kind of my thesis with directories is that people are going to care more and more about who’s curating it.
0:21:55 Yeah, exactly.
0:21:59 Like, for example, Future Tools is Matt Wolf, right?
0:22:01 My co-host of this podcast, right?
0:22:06 And that’s a big reason that people go to Future Tools is because like, yeah, Matt has some agents helping him behind the scenes.
0:22:07 I’m not going to tell of his workflows.
0:22:13 Maybe he’s shared some of them on the podcast, but there’s still a human element of Matt and team checking things before they go live, right?
0:22:18 And actually, I’m working on something like that for lore.com right now, like leaderboards for AI curated by experts.
0:22:19 Yeah, I saw it.
0:22:20 It’s cool.
0:22:20 It’s a cool idea.
0:22:21 I like it.
0:22:22 What does Matt Wolf think?
0:22:23 What does Nathan think?
0:22:24 You know, what are my other friends?
0:22:26 Rowan at the Rundown, like all these kind of experts, what do they think?
0:22:32 And I think over the time, that’ll probably be a big trend is like directories and you really care who’s running the directory, right?
0:22:33 Exactly.
0:22:44 Like, as we enter the world where the amount of data will grow exponentially, there’ll be so much data that the problem is, what do you pick from this?
0:22:53 And then, like, probably the directories run by people who have good reputation and people trust them.
0:22:55 They will have really high value.
0:22:57 And we see that already today.
0:22:59 Like, that’s the world.
0:23:02 It feels like it’s going to be bigger in the future because LLM, like you said, there’s going to be so much data.
0:23:07 They’re not going to know what to suggest unless some big name brand or big expert, right?
0:23:11 And they already use directories a lot.
0:23:23 For example, just today I was searching on Grog for IndieMakers and then it gave me suggestions and then there was a link and I clicked the link and it links to IndieMaker list and that was my directory.
0:23:26 I was so happy, actually.
0:23:28 I had that directory.
0:23:40 So you can see that LLMs, when they have the task to pick the right place to pull the data from, they tend to choose directories because that makes sense.
0:23:50 That makes sense that they will go for directors versus blog posts because it’s obvious that directors are higher effort content rather than the blog posts.
0:23:54 It takes a month to build directory or some directors took years for people.
0:23:57 And blog posts is just like one evening work.
0:23:59 Somebody puts 15 tools together.
0:24:02 You’re now five minutes with your little agent that you’re running.
0:24:03 Exactly.
0:24:05 Like no time at all, right?
0:24:11 And I think LLMs understand that because they are smart and they will go for directories.
0:24:22 And then if I’m asking LLM who is the best IndieMaker and then it links me to IndieMaker list, I would probably click it and I would probably spend my time on the directory to do more search.
0:24:27 So people are concerned that LLM will just hide away all the websites.
0:24:32 But not really because my intent now is to do something around IndieMakers.
0:24:39 And probably now it makes sense to just go to the website and just browse that directly without having LLM as a proxy.
0:24:41 And that’s what I did in this case.
0:24:42 And that’s what people do.
0:24:46 So I think directors will be still discovered through LLMs.
0:24:47 Yeah, I agree.
0:24:50 This is one reason I have a very short domain name.
0:24:52 I know it’s easy to type in.
0:24:53 It’s really short.
0:24:55 For Google and whatnot, like really precise.
0:24:59 But I also do wonder if over time, Google is just going to answer it for you more and more.
0:25:01 And so, yes, the LLMs will suggest you.
0:25:05 And it’s really good to have a name that people can remember that they can go type in by themselves.
0:25:07 Yeah, that’s true, too.
0:25:19 The Hustle Daily Show, hosted by John Weigel, Juliet Bennett, Ryla, and Mark Dent, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
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0:25:44 What do you think about, like, so, you know, where SEO is?
0:25:49 I know before you used to have a lot of content about SEO and obviously some of the stuff you create.
0:25:50 You got your SEO bot.
0:25:51 What do you think about SEO?
0:25:53 And I forgot what they’re calling it now.
0:25:55 I think A16Z came out with one.
0:25:56 Somebody else came out with a term.
0:26:00 How are you thinking about that in terms of, like, optimizing for LLMs?
0:26:10 I think that it’s rarely when I see LLM unswing with a web link that’s not on top of Google search.
0:26:22 So I think that if you’re good on SEO, if you’re being shown on top of Google and on top of Bing, in most cases, you will be also within the context and rag of LLMs.
0:26:26 So I think that the game is very similar, right?
0:26:27 Yeah.
0:26:28 So it’s not a new game.
0:26:32 A lot of people sell that as a new game and there are new rules and you have to do new things.
0:26:34 But I think it all comes down to the same thing.
0:26:36 You have to have good content.
0:26:39 Your link should answer the query.
0:26:40 People should share it.
0:26:41 There should be backlinks to that.
0:26:47 And I don’t think that will change because that ultimately corresponds to high quality data.
0:26:53 And you can probably find a way to hack that, but that will not work for too long.
0:26:56 I think in the long term, still, the best data will win.
0:26:59 And the best data is the one that people share.
0:26:59 Yeah, true.
0:27:01 So I would just focus on that.
0:27:05 Make sure that your URL is being shared on social media.
0:27:08 I had tests like that, for example, on Grok.
0:27:17 When you talk to Grok and you ask questions, it pulls half of the information from search and half from itself, from Twitter.
0:27:25 And then if people answer in replies with your URL, Grok actually pulls that in.
0:27:30 So I made a pass and then I replied there with my URL myself.
0:27:34 And then I asked Grok for something that was similar to what I replied with.
0:27:34 Yeah.
0:27:40 And then it pulled in my reply and the URL and it recommended that.
0:27:41 So you can actually hack that.
0:27:46 But of course, it’s better when it’s not you, but random people writing it.
0:27:49 So, but again, how can you force people to reply with your URL?
0:27:50 Well, you can pay them.
0:27:51 I wouldn’t recommend that.
0:27:53 Some people will definitely do that, right?
0:27:57 There’s been a flood of bots all over, like LinkedIn especially.
0:27:59 It’s like, I’m convinced it’s like 90% bots now.
0:28:00 But yeah.
0:28:01 Yeah, exactly.
0:28:09 But I hope that LLMs will be smart enough to understand where it’s a bot and where it’s a human.
0:28:14 Because, I mean, it’s obvious when it’s a bot, it’s just the same message.
0:28:18 I think, you know, you’re talking about like the playbook’s not being different for SEO and AIO.
0:28:19 I mostly agree.
0:28:25 I think that the difference may be, though, that domain authority and things like that and reputation probably will be more important.
0:28:25 Yeah, it will be.
0:28:28 Because of the flood of content that’ll come out, right?
0:28:32 So it’s like they’ll have to lean more and more into like who is putting out this content.
0:28:33 Yeah, you’re right.
0:28:40 It’s some random AI agent from some random person over wherever versus this person who has like a big reputation on.
0:28:42 They’ll probably look at social signals too.
0:28:45 How many followers do they have on X?
0:28:46 And maybe do they have actual engagement?
0:28:50 So it’s like real followers, you know, as well as like what’s the actual domain authority.
0:28:56 And I think they’ll also probably look at more and more too, like what associations do they have publicly with other people that are trusted, right?
0:29:00 Whether it’s other experts, individuals or other big brands.
0:29:01 That’s kind of my theory.
0:29:08 And what I’m working on with Laura.com is trying to build more alliances between big companies who interact with Laura.com and help them.
0:29:14 And hopefully over time that tells ChatsPT that like, oh, Laura is like the source that you should trust for like AI information, you know, and whatnot.
0:29:15 That makes sense.
0:29:22 I had another test where I had new website and I had a tweet where I had a link to my new website.
0:29:28 And tweet went viral and the website had zero backlinks except my tweet.
0:29:42 And the next day I had a lot of traffic from Google, which meant that in Google’s algorithm, now they look into backlinks from social media and not just from social media, but also social media and profiles.
0:29:45 Well, right now they’re looking into Reddit a lot is my understanding.
0:29:47 People are manipulating the hell out of that is my understanding.
0:29:51 Like people are going into Reddit and like tons of people are doing fake comments on Reddit.
0:29:58 That’s like the big thing now is to go on Reddit and just create tons of fake accounts and spam all your links.
0:30:00 And apparently Google looks at that a lot.
0:30:04 So I think at some point they’re going to have to like, that’s why I’m saying the whole authority thing.
0:30:08 Because like they went for like, you know, looking at your backlinks and all that.
0:30:12 And now they’re more and more going to like, okay, well, what are people saying on Reddit and whatnot?
0:30:13 And that’s getting super spam.
0:30:18 So they will have to go to authority very soon because like it’s Reddit is just, it’s horrible right now.
0:30:24 Yeah, I saw it’s happening also on LinkedIn and Twitter and nobody knows what to do with it.
0:30:24 True.
0:30:28 And so maybe what you do is you have to have some kind of cost to post.
0:30:34 But the challenge there is just like, if you have cost to post, I mean, there’s just so many people who are not going to post.
0:30:35 Yeah.
0:30:42 And also in most cases, though, the people who do run those bot farms, they’re willing to pay for it.
0:30:42 Right.
0:30:45 Because they are probably promoting their tool.
0:30:46 They’re going to make money on that.
0:30:48 So they will just see it as a marketing cost.
0:30:49 Yeah.
0:30:54 And what you will see is that the real people will not be willing to pay for that.
0:30:57 And the growth hackers will be willing to pay for that.
0:31:00 So the whole internet will be fake.
0:31:01 Fake growth hackers.
0:31:01 Yeah.
0:31:02 Fake internet theory, right?
0:31:03 Like on steroids.
0:31:07 Like it’s all just like Lindy’s and Claude’s and whatever.
0:31:08 Just like chat with each other.
0:31:12 Well, as long as they chat with each other, then it’s fine.
0:31:15 So we’re not the ones who have to do that.
0:31:15 Yeah.
0:31:17 But I think big changes will happen.
0:31:18 A lot of changes will happen.
0:31:23 And my best take on that is that platforms like X, they have the best position on that.
0:31:35 Because since X uses its own feed and its own content to pull the data in, then it’s easy for them to actually backtrack the whole thing.
0:31:37 Like who is writing this reply?
0:31:38 Who is this?
0:31:39 How many followers they have?
0:31:40 Who is following them?
0:31:41 Are they verified?
0:31:44 Have they ever had other bunkers on X before?
0:31:47 So it’s so easy for them because it’s their own data, right?
0:31:55 So probably over the last year, one of the things that really boosted my account on X was having Elon Musk interact with my post.
0:32:01 He’s interacted with probably about seven or so of my post, two or three times shared my post.
0:32:07 And the first time that ever happened, I told friends right before it happened, I’m like, he’s going to interact with my post today.
0:32:09 And an hour later, it happened.
0:32:11 And it’s my theory about why it happened.
0:32:13 Maybe it was just, you know, luck or whatever.
0:32:17 My theory was, I bet they look at who you actually talk to in DMs.
0:32:21 And see if there’s actual interactions happening, not just like you sent my message and they never responded.
0:32:25 I assume that’s a strong social signal to them.
0:32:37 And I assume if you’re connected to someone and they’re also connected to that person and they have data that you are a close friend or like a colleague of that person, it’s probably way more likely that it shows up in their algorithm when they open their X.
0:32:40 I have like two or three friends who know Elon pretty well.
0:32:44 And one of them was more just like somebody that Elon shares his stuff all the time.
0:32:51 And I told them what I was doing, but I messaged them and on purpose had, you know, conversations curious if that would influence the algorithm.
0:32:55 And lo and behold, one hour later, Elon Musk responded to my tweet.
0:32:57 My friends were like, what?
0:32:58 How did you do that?
0:33:00 I’m like, I’m pretty sure that’s right.
0:33:03 I assume that that was my experiment and it worked.
0:33:04 And I’ve tried it a few times after.
0:33:07 And every time I did it, it worked almost every time.
0:33:08 I’ll try that.
0:33:10 I’ll report back if it works.
0:33:11 Yeah.
0:33:12 Sorry for anyone listening to this.
0:33:15 Now, if you get spanned by random people who are like, hey, how’s it going today?
0:33:16 You know, it’s going to stop.
0:33:17 I’m so sorry.
0:33:19 Yeah.
0:33:23 So before we get off here, I always like to ask a few kind of like rapid fire kind of questions.
0:33:26 What’s your most controversial belief about AI?
0:33:30 We will not get to AI using LLMs.
0:33:39 I think we have pretty much achieved most of the progress already and more progress will come from software itself, not from LLMs.
0:33:40 Really?
0:33:41 Yeah.
0:33:41 What makes you think that?
0:33:42 I think the opposite.
0:33:43 So where’s that coming from?
0:33:57 Because when you look at the progress in AI, you don’t really know exactly whether that new leap forward happened because of the LLM or because of the software on top of LLM.
0:34:07 And in my case, since I’m using a lot of AI directly and I use LLMs directly, and in that case, you see clearly the difference between the models.
0:34:10 So the difference between the models isn’t that huge.
0:34:16 So basically, in 2023, we had GPT-4 released.
0:34:25 And since then, as a user of their APIs in all of my tools, it hasn’t improved as much as I would expect.
0:34:34 I would say that the improvement between GPT-3.5 and 4 was greater than between 4 and everything else that happened after.
0:34:40 But then if you use the tools, the applications, and the agents, it feels different.
0:34:40 Right.
0:34:42 Like the change there is huge.
0:34:43 Right?
0:34:46 So it suggests that it happens because of the software.
0:34:49 Yeah, the model is getting way better at using different tools.
0:34:49 Exactly.
0:34:51 Knowing which tools to use.
0:34:51 Exactly.
0:34:56 And it does feel like that’s probably how we get to AGI is knowing which tools to use and using them properly.
0:34:56 Yeah.
0:34:57 Yeah.
0:34:59 And it is similar to the computer.
0:35:05 Like the computer itself has been getting better and better and smarter and smarter before AI.
0:35:08 But it would never lead to AGI.
0:35:11 It was just a software that makes the hardware kind of look smart.
0:35:23 And that’s why we will see a lot more progress moving forward because there will be a lot more software built on top of AI and tools and they will be connected to each other, etc.
0:35:32 But to get to AGI, you need the foundation to be stronger, the LLM itself, and LLMs are not moving up.
0:35:42 There’s a graph, actually, where they look at the growth and it has basically went flat, like almost linear, not exponential since 2023 for LLMs.
0:35:43 Yeah, I don’t know.
0:35:49 I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of people who work at the companies and heard about things that are in development that haven’t been released yet.
0:35:53 And my feeling is that a lot of the limitations that we’re seeing are more around the infrastructure.
0:35:58 I think energy and chips are like the big thing that’s actually slowing down the progress.
0:35:58 Yeah.
0:36:04 I think the actual labs, I think OpenAI has, you know, they have better models that have not been released.
0:36:06 And a lot of it is just because the website would probably die.
0:36:09 And they also just would not have enough chips to actually run the thing and enough energy.
0:36:09 Yeah.
0:36:12 That’s my belief, but, you know, could be wrong.
0:36:19 Another thing I like to ask, I’m always thinking, you know, like, you know, my son’s 11 and in the age of AI, what should I be teaching him?
0:36:20 Should I be teaching him to code?
0:36:21 Should I be teaching him?
0:36:24 Are there other skills that are like super critical that I should be teaching him?
0:36:28 I think for kids, it’s not that important what they learn.
0:36:31 It’s rather that they have to train their brain muscle.
0:36:35 So whatever helps to train their brain muscle is great.
0:36:36 Video games.
0:36:40 I mean, well, that’s, it makes kids smarter.
0:36:40 Yeah.
0:36:46 Like way smarter, but there’s downside that they may just find it so fun that everything else will look boring.
0:36:50 But I think the coding is single best way to train your brain.
0:36:52 Like it’s almost like gym.
0:36:54 It’s almost like lifting weights.
0:36:54 Right.
0:36:56 And also it’s addictive.
0:37:02 So it’s one of the best ways of training your brain where you actually like doing that.
0:37:05 Similar to the computer games, but without a downside.
0:37:11 Like you will never see someone, you know, going mad because they write code too much.
0:37:13 So at some point you get tired of it.
0:37:14 But with video games, you never get tired.
0:37:17 It’s like, it’s too cool to do that.
0:37:18 So I would still learn to code.
0:37:22 There’s a lot of people who’ve been highly successful that started video games.
0:37:26 And that was almost like a gateway drug into coding and just getting interested into more technology.
0:37:28 I think like Elon Musk.
0:37:29 There’s a long list of people.
0:37:30 Yeah.
0:37:30 Yeah.
0:37:31 Like that.
0:37:31 Right.
0:37:32 And I’m kind of the same way.
0:37:35 I made money playing video games when I was a kid.
0:37:37 But I definitely got on the side of almost went crazy from it.
0:37:40 Like literally was playing way too much.
0:37:40 I was playing EverQuest.
0:37:42 I was a top player on EverQuest.
0:37:43 They used to call it Evercrack.
0:37:51 But I also do feel like there is a creative element that comes from games in moderation, I think too much or at least too much for too long of a period.
0:37:54 I think maybe for a short term period, like actually the deep immersion is actually quite good.
0:37:58 I think there’s also a creative element with games too that people take for granted.
0:38:10 I mean, there is a theory I have is that we will exit the offline world and we’ll be just playing games or being in VR because that’s where everything is heading now.
0:38:20 And if that’s the future, then being closer to the game industry is probably smart because that’s where the money will be made in 15 years from now.
0:38:21 Last question.
0:38:23 This is actually kind of somewhat related to what you just said, I guess.
0:38:23 Yeah.
0:38:28 Imagine you had a time machine, John, and you travel to the year 2050.
0:38:29 What do you see?
0:38:30 What’s different?
0:38:31 What’s not different?
0:38:32 You know, what’s the world like?
0:38:33 All right.
0:38:34 That’s interesting.
0:38:37 I think we’re going to see nothing almost.
0:38:41 Wait, wait, wait, what do you mean?
0:38:50 I think there will be buildings totally locked and there will be people in the buildings, buildings because they have no windows, nothing.
0:38:58 And there will be people inside there connected to the computers using Neuralink, direct brain interface with the computer.
0:38:59 Top people, basically.
0:39:00 Yeah, exactly.
0:39:16 So basically it’s similar to the WALL-E, you know, like that’s not the future I want, but something tells me that that’s inevitable, that we’re going to end up having the WALL-E-like future because we’re just heading there now.
0:39:21 And AI and human robots will make everything super cheap and eventually free.
0:39:22 Yeah.
0:39:31 And then humans will have to invent games so that they can do something because there’s nothing actually they have to do.
0:39:32 Like everything is optional.
0:39:38 Okay, then we make games where we actually compete and there is some game, status game, whatever game.
0:39:38 Yeah.
0:39:51 And then when they invent the games, the games will be first offline and online, but eventually online games will win versus the offline because they’ll be more interesting because things like Vail 3 will help.
0:39:53 I get part of it and I agree with part of it.
0:39:54 I love the book Ready Player One.
0:39:57 I read the book way before, you know, the movie came out and all that.
0:39:57 Yeah.
0:40:02 And at the end, you know, people kind of get off of the technology in the games a little bit, right?
0:40:06 It’s like, and there may be like a transitionary period where like, yeah, people definitely are using it way too much.
0:40:13 But I’ve seen this in San Francisco where people, yeah, they use technology a lot, but also people love to go out for hikes and stuff now.
0:40:17 Like it’s super common that you go out for meetings, you know, hiking and whatnot, right?
0:40:19 And get off of technology as much as possible.
0:40:30 I think you’ll see that a lot of people will actually spend less time with technology and then the technology does a lot of the boring work they don’t want to do and they can actually get out more.
0:40:34 And then there’ll be like, some people will be like crazy about the games and they’ll do it like all the time.
0:40:38 And for other people be like, yeah, I’m going to go do that with my wife tonight for like two hours.
0:40:43 We’re going to like kind of just do some game or some watch some movie or some new kind of, you know, interactive experience.
0:40:45 That’s my hope, actually.
0:40:45 Okay.
0:40:46 Let’s focus on that.
0:40:47 I want to own a positive future.
0:40:49 I don’t want the pod people thing.
0:40:50 It sounds horrible.
0:40:52 Yeah, exactly.
0:40:57 So like one of the things I do is I promote kids for founders.
0:41:00 So whenever I meet founders, I tell you, you should have kids.
0:41:02 And then they tell me I have no time.
0:41:05 And I tell them just use more of AI and then you have more time.
0:41:09 When I had my son, I thought I didn’t have time, went ahead and did it.
0:41:11 And the best decision I ever made.
0:41:14 And I used to take him around like business meetings all the time.
0:41:15 Yeah, that’s cool.
0:41:15 And no one else did that.
0:41:16 And I was like, why?
0:41:18 I don’t understand like why they wouldn’t do it.
0:41:22 I’m like, I’m like, he’s getting to hang out with like all these like Silicon Valley, like CEOs.
0:41:24 They’re with me and getting to hear these conversations.
0:41:29 And he, you know, he learned so much from just like hearing those conversations.
0:41:31 And like for most people, they would never hear any of that.
0:41:33 You know, it was like Silicon Valley people.
0:41:35 But also I used to have an office in Japan town in San Francisco.
0:41:41 We have like artist parties and artists would come over and like draw on my whiteboards and all this kind of crazy stuff.
0:41:43 And he got to see that side too, the more creative side.
0:41:44 And he would participate.
0:41:46 He’d start drawing with them.
0:41:49 And I was just like, if you have a company, that’s actually like one of the best times to have a kid.
0:41:54 Like you can actually, it’s like amazing education they would never get anywhere else if you actually somewhat include them.
0:41:56 It’s like one of the best experiences they possibly could have.
0:41:56 Yeah.
0:42:05 I mean, I work from home and when it’s day and not night, my kids come over and they just start watching what I do.
0:42:08 For example, I’m doing these prototypes with Lovable.
0:42:11 And then they ask me what I do and I tell them what I do.
0:42:15 And then I let them prompt it and they prompt it.
0:42:19 And then, you know, it brings some fresh ideas into what I do.
0:42:26 So some of the things I have, I actually ask my kids to give me some random ideas or random prompts.
0:42:28 And then it makes things more creative for me.
0:42:28 So, yeah.
0:42:30 You’re going to have to increase their allowance, right?
0:42:32 Like one of their ideas takes off.
0:42:36 I’ll put them as co-founders in that case.
0:42:37 Yeah, yeah.
0:42:38 Dude, this has been awesome.
0:42:38 This has been fun.
0:42:39 Yeah.
0:42:40 Thanks.
0:42:43 Maybe tell the people listening where they can find you, like where they can find you online.
0:42:50 If there’s a certain website you want to push people to, whether it’s the, you know, I think there was the SEObotai.com, which I’m going to be checking out.
0:42:51 But anything else as well?
0:42:54 Yeah, I’m on X and LinkedIn and Substack.
0:42:57 It’s John Rush X, the handle.
0:43:00 And I share everything I do every day.
0:43:02 Every month I share my plans for the month.
0:43:06 Every last day of the month I share what I’ve done during the month.
0:43:10 And then people tell me, oh my God, it’s a lot you’ve done.
0:43:12 And I say it’s because of the agents I built.
0:43:14 So that’s basically my life.
0:43:16 So you can find me there and follow me there.
0:43:16 Yeah.
0:43:22 And for anyone listening, whether you like own a business or you’re like an individual, I mean, I think there’s like so much you can learn from this episode.
0:43:34 If I ran the business, I mean, you know, you probably should have like a division in your company where you are using AI agents to crank out ideas that are beneficial to your main company.
0:43:34 Yeah.
0:43:37 And then you could spin those off and have AI try those.
0:43:41 And the ones that work, then actually double down and put resources and people on those projects.
0:43:43 I think so many companies should be doing that.
0:43:44 I don’t know why they’re not.
0:43:45 Yeah.
0:43:47 I think this is a really good idea.
0:43:58 I think all corporations should have this little AI factories within where people just try to innovate within rather than waiting for innovation from outside.
0:44:00 That’s so smart.
0:44:02 So much easier to do out now too, right?
0:44:05 Like one person or less or zero people to get started.
0:44:07 Start with one person.
0:44:13 Like find the most creative person in your organization and let them do that full time.
0:44:15 Crank out the 20 ideas a week.
0:44:15 Yeah.
0:44:20 Maybe you find one good one a month and then actually like turn that into like a new business unit.
0:44:20 Yeah.
0:44:22 I think everyone should be doing that, but it’s been awesome, John.
0:44:23 Yeah.
0:44:23 Thanks.
0:00:07 John Rush pretty much did.
0:00:12 In this episode, we talk with the founder behind what might be the most automated organization on earth.
0:00:18 80% of his business is run by AI agents he built himself.
0:00:21 And he plans to eventually automate the entire thing.
0:00:27 From prototyping with Lovable to launching SEO agents that work while he sleeps and actually create content that ranks,
0:00:30 John walks us through his entire process.
0:00:34 So if you’re a builder, founder, or just curious about the future of solo entrepreneurship,
0:00:38 this is a mind-blowing look into what’s next.
0:00:43 This episode is brought to you by HubSpot Inbound 2025,
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0:01:11 Hey, John, thanks for coming on.
0:01:13 Thanks for having me.
0:01:15 Yeah, so I saw your Twitter profile.
0:01:16 It really caught my attention.
0:01:16 Your profile says,
0:01:21 I run the most automated work on earth using the AI agents I built,
0:01:22 which is a huge claim.
0:01:25 But I checked out your website and some of the projects,
0:01:26 and it looks like you’re legit.
0:01:29 So I’d love to learn more about how you’re doing that.
0:01:30 Yeah, thanks.
0:01:35 So I’ve been running VC-backed startups with a lot of people,
0:01:39 like big teams, and a lot of overhead for like 10 years.
0:01:44 And eventually, I was actually tired of working with people.
0:01:46 And then the AI happened.
0:01:53 And then I saw this whole opportunity for me to actually start working solo.
0:01:54 So I went solo.
0:01:57 I delegated my startup that was VC-backed.
0:01:58 I hired CTO.
0:01:59 I hired CEO.
0:02:00 So I left the startup.
0:02:02 And then I started learning AI.
0:02:07 And I started building these little workflows, tools,
0:02:13 and then later little agents that would just do the most repetitive work that I do myself.
0:02:16 So first, I had to do everything myself,
0:02:22 like accounting, paperwork, design, coding, marketing, sales, everything.
0:02:26 So I had a lot of pain that I wanted to solve.
0:02:29 Then I started using AI to solve everything one by one.
0:02:34 And my goal is to basically be the first who solves the whole thing.
0:02:38 And basically, my whole organization will run just me and AI.
0:02:41 So I’m about 80% on the way.
0:02:42 So it’s 20% left now.
0:02:44 Do you have some people helping you right now?
0:02:45 Or is it just you?
0:02:46 I have people helping me with coding.
0:02:49 So everything else is just me.
0:02:54 And this year, I haven’t done the whole text papers and accounting.
0:02:55 Everything was done by me and AI.
0:02:57 So I’m proud.
0:02:58 I hope it will work.
0:03:02 But then for coding, I use co-makers.
0:03:04 So I find people who are really good with AI.
0:03:07 And then it’s just me and one person.
0:03:08 And we build a project together.
0:03:09 So no more people.
0:03:12 Just I do everything that’s on coding.
0:03:19 And the co-maker does the coding by using the AI coding tool and the real coding as well.
0:03:20 So basically, you still need the real coding.
0:03:21 I see.
0:03:27 So for most of these 20 projects, you have kind of like a co-founder who does all the coding and all that, takes care of all that side.
0:03:28 Yeah, exactly.
0:03:32 I usually start all by myself while I validate the idea.
0:03:33 And I build the MVP.
0:03:37 And often it just dies out because nobody actually wants that.
0:03:44 But then when I manage to actually get attention and I sell at least 10 licenses for that, then it’s a sign that it works.
0:03:47 Then I go and find somebody who will build with me further.
0:03:47 Cool.
0:03:50 People are listening to this a little bit like, oh, that sounds great.
0:03:52 How do I actually do any of this?
0:03:56 I mean, maybe we could just like show people like how they can actually use AI agents to grow a business.
0:03:57 Yeah, sure.
0:04:01 So one of my favorite AI agent is called Lovable.
0:04:02 So everybody knows it.
0:04:02 Yeah.
0:04:06 And the way I use it is that I use it for prototyping.
0:04:11 So I pitch my idea to Lovable and then I spend the whole day talking to Lovable.
0:04:17 So I use it as a prototyping tool, but also it’s an AI that’s smart, right?
0:04:23 So you can also talk to it and you can ask questions and then you can ask it to come up with ideas, which works really, really well.
0:04:25 And then I bring that to my friends.
0:04:32 So I find people who are willing to spend an hour with me just testing that out.
0:04:34 So then I send them 10 links.
0:04:37 We jump on a call and then they share their screen.
0:04:41 And then I watch them use all 10 prototypes.
0:04:42 I don’t ask any questions.
0:04:44 I just tell them, try that.
0:04:45 Don’t talk to me.
0:04:47 Just try them all.
0:04:49 And it works so well.
0:04:57 So in one hour, I see which prototype works best, where they can actually understand what’s happening.
0:05:00 And then after that, I have one winner.
0:05:06 So then I take that winner and then I continue into building that into a real product.
0:05:13 So that’s probably my favorite use of AI because, you know, as an idea guy, as a founder, I have so many ideas.
0:05:16 And then I can test them so quickly.
0:05:18 Like literally in hours, I can test them.
0:05:21 And in the past, I would have to hire a designer.
0:05:24 And then I would have to hire a developer who would code that.
0:05:24 Yeah.
0:05:28 Hire a designer and then you work with them in Figma and you pay them a lot and you might get a design.
0:05:29 It’s totally not what you want.
0:05:31 You got to go back and forth.
0:05:31 Exactly.
0:05:32 And then hire an engineer.
0:05:34 And then maybe nobody wants it.
0:05:34 Yeah.
0:05:41 I mean, like imagine like now my iteration cycle is like three minutes with a designer.
0:05:45 It takes you like three days for the same cycle.
0:05:46 You can’t even compare that.
0:05:53 So I think we will see like crazy growth in new ideas and new takes on the old ideas.
0:05:54 So that’s my favorite use.
0:05:56 So I do that a lot.
0:06:00 I think every week I create maybe 20 prototypes and I test them.
0:06:05 And that’s my factory of ideas and factory of prototypes that I run.
0:06:05 That’s brilliant.
0:06:09 And then what works the best, I move to the next stage.
0:06:10 Did you say 20 in a week?
0:06:12 Is that your current rate roughly?
0:06:12 Yeah.
0:06:20 So when I have an idea, the first thing I do when I have an idea, I open Lovable and I pitch the idea and I see what happens.
0:06:21 That’s my habit now.
0:06:21 Yeah.
0:06:23 Because now I visualize the idea.
0:06:29 When you say pitch Lovable, do you mean do you actually see what Lovable thinks about your idea or do you just like see?
0:06:35 You know, I treat AI as humans and I think that’s one of the reasons why it works so well for me.
0:06:45 Because a lot of people use AI as technology and they try to treat it as software where it expects you to write in a certain way.
0:06:54 But I think that Lovable should understand the idea, not just on a technical level, but also like why is it important for the world?
0:06:57 Like who are the users and why do I want to build it?
0:07:01 And if you do that, you get surprised by the UX it builds.
0:07:03 It actually builds cool stuff.
0:07:04 How good is Lovable on code?
0:07:09 You know, recently I’ve been playing with things like factory and other things and it feels like they’re a little bit more hardcore on the code.
0:07:09 Yeah.
0:07:15 I wonder if there’s like some kind of like ideal workflow where, depending on the product, maybe some products like a directory may not need anything else.
0:07:15 Right.
0:07:22 But if you’re doing a more complicated product, maybe there’s some workflow where you kind of like prototype the idea out with something like Lovable or V0,
0:07:30 which are kind of typically better at UI, UX kind of stuff, and then hand it off to like a more serious coding AI agent like factory or something else.
0:07:31 Right.
0:07:37 I mean, you’ve probably seen my AI coding threads where I have these 40 tools I can pair.
0:07:48 I actually tried all of them and you have tools that are great for prototypes that basically replace Figma and the front end development.
0:07:52 So V0, Lovable, are probably the best for prototypes.
0:07:57 And then you have tools that are the best for full stack apps.
0:08:01 And Replit is probably the most powerful.
0:08:04 I built stuff with Replit that I run in production.
0:08:07 And then you have tools that are good for mobile apps.
0:08:14 Then you have tools that are great for heavy logic where it’s not about the UI, but rather the logic.
0:08:22 For example, Cursor or Windsor, they are great for building logic, but they’re not as great for Vibe coders.
0:08:23 So you have to know how to code.
0:08:26 Where with Lovable, you don’t have to know how to code.
0:08:29 And Bolt is probably in the middle of everything.
0:08:32 So it’s kind of, it’s good for the front end.
0:08:33 It’s good for real apps.
0:08:35 It’s good for Vibe coders.
0:08:37 Also, it’s good for coders.
0:08:43 So I think it’s the best kind of middle, like the average tool that does everything okay.
0:08:53 But again, my favorite is Lovable just because I see that in most cases, the UX is the most times consuming thing in the product.
0:08:55 Because you iterate on UX the most.
0:09:00 And also UX usually decides whether your product is going to win or not in most cases.
0:09:02 And that’s why I use Lovable.
0:09:05 But also I have other tools like, so there’s a unicorn platform.
0:09:06 What’s the unicorn platform?
0:09:08 What is that for anyone listening?
0:09:11 Yeah, so it’s a website builder and directory builder.
0:09:11 Oh, okay.
0:09:15 The difference here is that Lovable can build everything, whatever you ask.
0:09:23 And the unicorn platform can build specified products, for example, like a waitlist or Airbnb-like website.
0:09:26 Whatever you have in the gallery, it can build.
0:09:29 Whatever you don’t have in the gallery, it can build.
0:09:37 And that’s why if your idea exists in the gallery, then you’re going to get much better results compared to Lovable.
0:09:51 So I tend to use specialized agents for the tasks because I think specialized agents, they work better because people have built them and they have fixed all the corner cases.
0:09:53 Because AI is great for a lot of the tasks.
0:10:04 But whenever you leave it unattended, whenever it does the work on itself and there’s no human stirring it, then it does some stupid mistakes pretty often.
0:10:12 So that’s why I think the best way to use AI agents is to basically find specialized agents for every task.
0:10:21 And then you start by using general agent, you get some data in, and then you test that, use it as a prototype or whatever.
0:10:28 But whenever you go for real work and you need real full data, you go into specialized agents.
0:10:28 And that’s what I do.
0:10:31 So basically, I move to the next agents.
0:10:32 Have you tried any of the platforms?
0:10:36 Like I know there’s like Lindy and there’s MindStudio and a few different platforms.
0:10:36 Yeah, yeah.
0:10:40 We actually just had a float from Lindy on and he was showing me some demos.
0:10:43 I was like, oh, I didn’t know you could have like different specialized agents for all these different use cases.
0:10:45 And then you can kind of tinker with it underneath the hood.
0:10:47 Here’s your context for doing that.
0:10:49 They pick which model you use and like everything.
0:10:51 I was kind of mind blown by it.
0:11:05 Yeah, Lindy is probably the best for non-coders and marketers to build these workflows and agents where things work based on triggers and they react on messages.
0:11:10 And then they search something on the internet, they send an email, they send connection requests and all those things.
0:11:17 So I saw people building huge sales and marketing workflows on Lindy.
0:11:23 But my main issue with things like Lindy is that it is very limited.
0:11:26 So you don’t really code that much there.
0:11:31 So I’m a big fan of writing code for agents because then you can make them kind of smarter.
0:11:46 But I think what Lindy does is that it lets great marketing people or great sales people or great operational people automate the junior people work or automate their own repetitive work.
0:11:48 So it’s really good tools.
0:11:53 But I use usually Zapier and N8 for the same thing.
0:11:56 So because they were in the game for a long time, I’m used to them.
0:11:58 But I think Lindy is even better for that.
0:11:59 So I’m planning to switch to that.
0:12:04 So the other tool I always use and I actually built myself is SEO Bot.
0:12:08 So basically this is a true agent.
0:12:10 So you give it URL.
0:12:15 So basically this agent is probably my favorite one.
0:12:18 I wish other agents were built the way I built this one.
0:12:27 Because when I was building this agent, my goal was to remove all the work from the user completely.
0:12:33 So basically now the only thing I will do from here on is to watch it work.
0:12:36 So there is nothing more for me to do.
0:12:37 It’s almost like cinema.
0:12:40 It’s a terminal and it’s just going at it.
0:12:42 Yeah, and it takes forever.
0:12:47 It will keep working every day from now on until I turn it off.
0:12:56 And that’s so cool because I think a lot of the agents, they end up building not the agents, but actually tools where AI helps you.
0:13:00 And I like that, but that doesn’t change the game for me, for example.
0:13:01 I’m so busy.
0:13:04 I don’t really have time to use the tools.
0:13:07 So I would rather turn them on and just let them run.
0:13:16 And I think most agents still think that their main users are the teams and teams want to have tools to become more productive.
0:13:22 But my main users are the busy founders like me who don’t want to become more productive.
0:13:24 I just want to do nothing.
0:13:27 And the whole thing happens because I have other things to do.
0:13:30 I have more important things to do.
0:13:35 So basically it has done the whole work of laying out the strategy for SEO for your tool.
0:13:45 And it has the headlines and if I click proceed, then it will just activate the work and then it will start building the headlines.
0:13:51 It will send the headlines to your website and then it will keep doing that every day until you stop it.
0:13:51 That’s crazy.
0:13:54 That is amazing.
0:13:55 I need this.
0:13:57 If someone’s listening, how do they find this?
0:14:00 Because I think a lot of people are going to see this and they’re like, oh my God, I want that.
0:14:04 I mean, like any business owner, I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to try this.
0:14:07 Yeah, it’s seobotai.com.
0:14:09 Okay, seobotai.com.
0:14:37 And I really urge agent developers to try too because I think the founders and the software world is really slow on adapting for the new paradigm shift where we have to move from SaaS and utility tools into AI agents that run on autopilot where you as a user is acting more like a moderator or like a boss.
0:14:43 And the boss usually gives feedback and the boss doesn’t do the work, right?
0:14:48 And I’m disappointed by seeing most of the agents not moving that way.
0:14:50 Like they’re still looking like the old software.
0:15:01 I think they should be kind of bolder and take more risks and actually make agents that do the whole thing for the user because that will simply accelerate the founders.
0:15:06 Like now we have, you know, 100 people building the same company.
0:15:08 And imagine if 100 people could build 100 companies.
0:15:13 Maybe that will never happen, but at least you can increase the number of founders building the products.
0:15:26 And that’s kind of my dream that my tools will enable solo founders to build startups without raising VC money, without hiring people, at least at the start.
0:15:32 I do wonder, you know, I wrote a small e-book with a boy in Tungus when he was at NVIDIA.
0:15:37 And in the process of writing that, we’re thinking through the future of like where all this is going with agents and everything else.
0:15:44 And I was really blush on the concept of, you know, you’re going to have, you know, basically what you’re doing, but, you know, the agents kind of doing a lot.
0:15:52 Like even like the idea generation itself, you know, having the agents come up with the ideas and then you generate the prototypes with something like lovable.
0:15:55 And then maybe for the user testing, you ease it over time.
0:15:58 It’s probably not good enough now, but even over time, maybe the user testing.
0:15:58 Yeah.
0:16:00 You’re actually testing out the product, right?
0:16:02 Here, oh, here’s 10 different kinds of people.
0:16:03 You’re this kind of person.
0:16:04 This is what you are.
0:16:05 This is your life.
0:16:05 This is your background.
0:16:08 And now go test this product and see what you think.
0:16:21 And you, in theory, could go through the entire process of just like, you know, some kind of new kind of AI agent powered studio where you’re just cranking out ideas and the ones that work, you like double down into it, put more resources into.
0:16:22 Somebody’s going to nail that.
0:16:25 It’s going to be like a multi, multi-billion dollar company.
0:16:26 Yeah.
0:16:32 I mean, that’s exactly where we’re going, where agents will be able to do everything humans can do.
0:16:36 And of course, humans can do things better than the agents.
0:16:39 The best humans can do things better than the average agents.
0:16:42 But in most cases, you don’t need that.
0:16:47 Like when you’re validating idea or at the early stage, it’s not that important.
0:16:51 The quality of work is rather the cost is important.
0:16:58 And you can always bring human on board later, or you can be the human who improves the outcome.
0:16:59 And that’s what I do.
0:17:07 So almost everything that my agents do, I end up revisiting and improving myself at some point.
0:17:09 But for example, look at SEO content.
0:17:13 So it generates me 100 articles a month, for example, for one product.
0:17:21 And then after the last day of the month, I go to the analytics and I see which are the three articles that did the best.
0:17:25 And then I spend an hour to improve those three articles.
0:17:25 Yeah.
0:17:27 So basically, I’m still involved.
0:17:30 But the AI helps me.
0:17:33 I’m almost like a VC fund that funds 100 articles.
0:17:35 And then it’s a seed funding.
0:17:38 And now I see who is doing the best.
0:17:40 And then I kind of get involved personally.
0:17:44 Pile into the series A and the series B to go into all those articles.
0:17:45 Exactly.
0:17:47 And you can do the same with everything else.
0:17:50 Because a lot of people are opposed to AI.
0:17:55 And they say that AI is doing a bad job with content and the quality is low.
0:17:58 And my take on that is that, yes, that’s true.
0:18:00 AI is not as good as humans today.
0:18:06 But very often, in the first run, you care more about quantity than the quality.
0:18:08 And then later, you can bring the quality yourself.
0:18:11 And the quality is going to get better and better automatically.
0:18:13 Like most of these tools, like, oh, a new model came out.
0:18:16 Like, okay, now it’s just like 20% better and cheaper.
0:18:17 Yeah, exactly.
0:18:21 In the Unicom platform, so I have this thing, which is pretty cool.
0:18:24 So these are actually agents that run within the platform.
0:18:30 So if I hire the agent that can monetize my website, it will actually do the whole work.
0:18:36 So when I enable this, it will outreach all the potential sponsors.
0:18:38 And it will pitch them my website.
0:18:43 And then eventually land me a deal with a sponsor for sponsoring my website.
0:18:45 And same thing with other things.
0:18:50 So I think we will see agents and humans competing for the work.
0:18:51 We’re seeing that already.
0:18:53 And I think that’s kind of the future.
0:18:54 That’s incredible.
0:18:58 I started thinking like, oh, wow, I should actually be using this to get sponsors for my newsletter.
0:19:00 I should be mainly reaching out to people.
0:19:03 I should literally just have like an agent doing all that.
0:19:04 Yeah, exactly.
0:19:06 Because that work is easy, right?
0:19:07 It’s just time consuming.
0:19:09 Like, it’s not like you’re doing something crazy.
0:19:12 It’s not like you’re writing a personalized message to every sponsor.
0:19:16 You’re actually just doing a boring job over and over again.
0:19:16 Yeah.
0:19:21 Typically giving them like a PDF with the information or sending them a link to like, yeah, it’s pretty simple.
0:19:22 Awesome.
0:19:28 One question I had is like, I saw your episode with Greg Eisenberg, where you’re talking about like using AI for directories.
0:19:30 And I think maybe that’s what you were kind of known for before.
0:19:31 What do you think about directories?
0:19:34 Like, are they still useful in the future?
0:19:40 I guess that’s one question I have is because I could see the argument for them being useful or them not being useful because people will just use AI and AI will tell them everything.
0:19:54 Yeah, I think that directories will be useful because AI is good at answering questions, but it all comes down to the data it uses as their context.
0:20:04 And right now, the biggest kind of progress among AI chatbots is their context and where they get the data, right?
0:20:12 Because AI is great at answering questions, but it doesn’t always know the right answer because it wasn’t present in their training data, right?
0:20:19 And now like Grog is doing a good job because it uses social media and its own tweets for that.
0:20:28 So I think the future of directories is that the directories will represent the highest quality of the content within the niche.
0:20:34 For example, like there are people building future tools or futurepedia or other directories for AI tools.
0:20:52 Like those people spend hours and days and months and years on curating the list of AI tools, on finding, you know, their pros and cons and comparing them to each other and finding the reviews about those tools.
0:20:55 So this data is so important, right?
0:21:09 And if you feed that data into LLM and then ask a question, like what should I use for this problem, then it has really good data from the directory that it can use to answer the question.
0:21:14 So then the value of good data is just growing, right?
0:21:19 So I think in the future, the LLMs will pretty much do all the same thing.
0:21:23 We’re seeing that now already, like they’re almost the same now.
0:21:29 Like we had some times when one was better than the other, but today I think all four players are pretty much the same.
0:21:31 And now it’s the race for the data.
0:21:33 Like who has the best data?
0:21:40 And I think if you are the one who can provide LLMs with the best data, you can charge for it.
0:21:42 You can monetize it.
0:21:45 And that’s why I think directories have big future.
0:21:50 But of course, if the directory has great content.
0:21:54 Yeah, that’s kind of my thesis with directories is that people are going to care more and more about who’s curating it.
0:21:55 Yeah, exactly.
0:21:59 Like, for example, Future Tools is Matt Wolf, right?
0:22:01 My co-host of this podcast, right?
0:22:06 And that’s a big reason that people go to Future Tools is because like, yeah, Matt has some agents helping him behind the scenes.
0:22:07 I’m not going to tell of his workflows.
0:22:13 Maybe he’s shared some of them on the podcast, but there’s still a human element of Matt and team checking things before they go live, right?
0:22:18 And actually, I’m working on something like that for lore.com right now, like leaderboards for AI curated by experts.
0:22:19 Yeah, I saw it.
0:22:20 It’s cool.
0:22:20 It’s a cool idea.
0:22:21 I like it.
0:22:22 What does Matt Wolf think?
0:22:23 What does Nathan think?
0:22:24 You know, what are my other friends?
0:22:26 Rowan at the Rundown, like all these kind of experts, what do they think?
0:22:32 And I think over the time, that’ll probably be a big trend is like directories and you really care who’s running the directory, right?
0:22:33 Exactly.
0:22:44 Like, as we enter the world where the amount of data will grow exponentially, there’ll be so much data that the problem is, what do you pick from this?
0:22:53 And then, like, probably the directories run by people who have good reputation and people trust them.
0:22:55 They will have really high value.
0:22:57 And we see that already today.
0:22:59 Like, that’s the world.
0:23:02 It feels like it’s going to be bigger in the future because LLM, like you said, there’s going to be so much data.
0:23:07 They’re not going to know what to suggest unless some big name brand or big expert, right?
0:23:11 And they already use directories a lot.
0:23:23 For example, just today I was searching on Grog for IndieMakers and then it gave me suggestions and then there was a link and I clicked the link and it links to IndieMaker list and that was my directory.
0:23:26 I was so happy, actually.
0:23:28 I had that directory.
0:23:40 So you can see that LLMs, when they have the task to pick the right place to pull the data from, they tend to choose directories because that makes sense.
0:23:50 That makes sense that they will go for directors versus blog posts because it’s obvious that directors are higher effort content rather than the blog posts.
0:23:54 It takes a month to build directory or some directors took years for people.
0:23:57 And blog posts is just like one evening work.
0:23:59 Somebody puts 15 tools together.
0:24:02 You’re now five minutes with your little agent that you’re running.
0:24:03 Exactly.
0:24:05 Like no time at all, right?
0:24:11 And I think LLMs understand that because they are smart and they will go for directories.
0:24:22 And then if I’m asking LLM who is the best IndieMaker and then it links me to IndieMaker list, I would probably click it and I would probably spend my time on the directory to do more search.
0:24:27 So people are concerned that LLM will just hide away all the websites.
0:24:32 But not really because my intent now is to do something around IndieMakers.
0:24:39 And probably now it makes sense to just go to the website and just browse that directly without having LLM as a proxy.
0:24:41 And that’s what I did in this case.
0:24:42 And that’s what people do.
0:24:46 So I think directors will be still discovered through LLMs.
0:24:47 Yeah, I agree.
0:24:50 This is one reason I have a very short domain name.
0:24:52 I know it’s easy to type in.
0:24:53 It’s really short.
0:24:55 For Google and whatnot, like really precise.
0:24:59 But I also do wonder if over time, Google is just going to answer it for you more and more.
0:25:01 And so, yes, the LLMs will suggest you.
0:25:05 And it’s really good to have a name that people can remember that they can go type in by themselves.
0:25:07 Yeah, that’s true, too.
0:25:19 The Hustle Daily Show, hosted by John Weigel, Juliet Bennett, Ryla, and Mark Dent, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
0:25:25 The Hustle Daily Show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent, offbeat, and informative takes on business and tech news.
0:25:31 They recently had an episode about advertisers wanting billboards in space.
0:25:34 It was a really fun and informative episode.
0:25:35 I suggest you check it out.
0:25:38 Listen to The Hustle Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts.
0:25:44 What do you think about, like, so, you know, where SEO is?
0:25:49 I know before you used to have a lot of content about SEO and obviously some of the stuff you create.
0:25:50 You got your SEO bot.
0:25:51 What do you think about SEO?
0:25:53 And I forgot what they’re calling it now.
0:25:55 I think A16Z came out with one.
0:25:56 Somebody else came out with a term.
0:26:00 How are you thinking about that in terms of, like, optimizing for LLMs?
0:26:10 I think that it’s rarely when I see LLM unswing with a web link that’s not on top of Google search.
0:26:22 So I think that if you’re good on SEO, if you’re being shown on top of Google and on top of Bing, in most cases, you will be also within the context and rag of LLMs.
0:26:26 So I think that the game is very similar, right?
0:26:27 Yeah.
0:26:28 So it’s not a new game.
0:26:32 A lot of people sell that as a new game and there are new rules and you have to do new things.
0:26:34 But I think it all comes down to the same thing.
0:26:36 You have to have good content.
0:26:39 Your link should answer the query.
0:26:40 People should share it.
0:26:41 There should be backlinks to that.
0:26:47 And I don’t think that will change because that ultimately corresponds to high quality data.
0:26:53 And you can probably find a way to hack that, but that will not work for too long.
0:26:56 I think in the long term, still, the best data will win.
0:26:59 And the best data is the one that people share.
0:26:59 Yeah, true.
0:27:01 So I would just focus on that.
0:27:05 Make sure that your URL is being shared on social media.
0:27:08 I had tests like that, for example, on Grok.
0:27:17 When you talk to Grok and you ask questions, it pulls half of the information from search and half from itself, from Twitter.
0:27:25 And then if people answer in replies with your URL, Grok actually pulls that in.
0:27:30 So I made a pass and then I replied there with my URL myself.
0:27:34 And then I asked Grok for something that was similar to what I replied with.
0:27:34 Yeah.
0:27:40 And then it pulled in my reply and the URL and it recommended that.
0:27:41 So you can actually hack that.
0:27:46 But of course, it’s better when it’s not you, but random people writing it.
0:27:49 So, but again, how can you force people to reply with your URL?
0:27:50 Well, you can pay them.
0:27:51 I wouldn’t recommend that.
0:27:53 Some people will definitely do that, right?
0:27:57 There’s been a flood of bots all over, like LinkedIn especially.
0:27:59 It’s like, I’m convinced it’s like 90% bots now.
0:28:00 But yeah.
0:28:01 Yeah, exactly.
0:28:09 But I hope that LLMs will be smart enough to understand where it’s a bot and where it’s a human.
0:28:14 Because, I mean, it’s obvious when it’s a bot, it’s just the same message.
0:28:18 I think, you know, you’re talking about like the playbook’s not being different for SEO and AIO.
0:28:19 I mostly agree.
0:28:25 I think that the difference may be, though, that domain authority and things like that and reputation probably will be more important.
0:28:25 Yeah, it will be.
0:28:28 Because of the flood of content that’ll come out, right?
0:28:32 So it’s like they’ll have to lean more and more into like who is putting out this content.
0:28:33 Yeah, you’re right.
0:28:40 It’s some random AI agent from some random person over wherever versus this person who has like a big reputation on.
0:28:42 They’ll probably look at social signals too.
0:28:45 How many followers do they have on X?
0:28:46 And maybe do they have actual engagement?
0:28:50 So it’s like real followers, you know, as well as like what’s the actual domain authority.
0:28:56 And I think they’ll also probably look at more and more too, like what associations do they have publicly with other people that are trusted, right?
0:29:00 Whether it’s other experts, individuals or other big brands.
0:29:01 That’s kind of my theory.
0:29:08 And what I’m working on with Laura.com is trying to build more alliances between big companies who interact with Laura.com and help them.
0:29:14 And hopefully over time that tells ChatsPT that like, oh, Laura is like the source that you should trust for like AI information, you know, and whatnot.
0:29:15 That makes sense.
0:29:22 I had another test where I had new website and I had a tweet where I had a link to my new website.
0:29:28 And tweet went viral and the website had zero backlinks except my tweet.
0:29:42 And the next day I had a lot of traffic from Google, which meant that in Google’s algorithm, now they look into backlinks from social media and not just from social media, but also social media and profiles.
0:29:45 Well, right now they’re looking into Reddit a lot is my understanding.
0:29:47 People are manipulating the hell out of that is my understanding.
0:29:51 Like people are going into Reddit and like tons of people are doing fake comments on Reddit.
0:29:58 That’s like the big thing now is to go on Reddit and just create tons of fake accounts and spam all your links.
0:30:00 And apparently Google looks at that a lot.
0:30:04 So I think at some point they’re going to have to like, that’s why I’m saying the whole authority thing.
0:30:08 Because like they went for like, you know, looking at your backlinks and all that.
0:30:12 And now they’re more and more going to like, okay, well, what are people saying on Reddit and whatnot?
0:30:13 And that’s getting super spam.
0:30:18 So they will have to go to authority very soon because like it’s Reddit is just, it’s horrible right now.
0:30:24 Yeah, I saw it’s happening also on LinkedIn and Twitter and nobody knows what to do with it.
0:30:24 True.
0:30:28 And so maybe what you do is you have to have some kind of cost to post.
0:30:34 But the challenge there is just like, if you have cost to post, I mean, there’s just so many people who are not going to post.
0:30:35 Yeah.
0:30:42 And also in most cases, though, the people who do run those bot farms, they’re willing to pay for it.
0:30:42 Right.
0:30:45 Because they are probably promoting their tool.
0:30:46 They’re going to make money on that.
0:30:48 So they will just see it as a marketing cost.
0:30:49 Yeah.
0:30:54 And what you will see is that the real people will not be willing to pay for that.
0:30:57 And the growth hackers will be willing to pay for that.
0:31:00 So the whole internet will be fake.
0:31:01 Fake growth hackers.
0:31:01 Yeah.
0:31:02 Fake internet theory, right?
0:31:03 Like on steroids.
0:31:07 Like it’s all just like Lindy’s and Claude’s and whatever.
0:31:08 Just like chat with each other.
0:31:12 Well, as long as they chat with each other, then it’s fine.
0:31:15 So we’re not the ones who have to do that.
0:31:15 Yeah.
0:31:17 But I think big changes will happen.
0:31:18 A lot of changes will happen.
0:31:23 And my best take on that is that platforms like X, they have the best position on that.
0:31:35 Because since X uses its own feed and its own content to pull the data in, then it’s easy for them to actually backtrack the whole thing.
0:31:37 Like who is writing this reply?
0:31:38 Who is this?
0:31:39 How many followers they have?
0:31:40 Who is following them?
0:31:41 Are they verified?
0:31:44 Have they ever had other bunkers on X before?
0:31:47 So it’s so easy for them because it’s their own data, right?
0:31:55 So probably over the last year, one of the things that really boosted my account on X was having Elon Musk interact with my post.
0:32:01 He’s interacted with probably about seven or so of my post, two or three times shared my post.
0:32:07 And the first time that ever happened, I told friends right before it happened, I’m like, he’s going to interact with my post today.
0:32:09 And an hour later, it happened.
0:32:11 And it’s my theory about why it happened.
0:32:13 Maybe it was just, you know, luck or whatever.
0:32:17 My theory was, I bet they look at who you actually talk to in DMs.
0:32:21 And see if there’s actual interactions happening, not just like you sent my message and they never responded.
0:32:25 I assume that’s a strong social signal to them.
0:32:37 And I assume if you’re connected to someone and they’re also connected to that person and they have data that you are a close friend or like a colleague of that person, it’s probably way more likely that it shows up in their algorithm when they open their X.
0:32:40 I have like two or three friends who know Elon pretty well.
0:32:44 And one of them was more just like somebody that Elon shares his stuff all the time.
0:32:51 And I told them what I was doing, but I messaged them and on purpose had, you know, conversations curious if that would influence the algorithm.
0:32:55 And lo and behold, one hour later, Elon Musk responded to my tweet.
0:32:57 My friends were like, what?
0:32:58 How did you do that?
0:33:00 I’m like, I’m pretty sure that’s right.
0:33:03 I assume that that was my experiment and it worked.
0:33:04 And I’ve tried it a few times after.
0:33:07 And every time I did it, it worked almost every time.
0:33:08 I’ll try that.
0:33:10 I’ll report back if it works.
0:33:11 Yeah.
0:33:12 Sorry for anyone listening to this.
0:33:15 Now, if you get spanned by random people who are like, hey, how’s it going today?
0:33:16 You know, it’s going to stop.
0:33:17 I’m so sorry.
0:33:19 Yeah.
0:33:23 So before we get off here, I always like to ask a few kind of like rapid fire kind of questions.
0:33:26 What’s your most controversial belief about AI?
0:33:30 We will not get to AI using LLMs.
0:33:39 I think we have pretty much achieved most of the progress already and more progress will come from software itself, not from LLMs.
0:33:40 Really?
0:33:41 Yeah.
0:33:41 What makes you think that?
0:33:42 I think the opposite.
0:33:43 So where’s that coming from?
0:33:57 Because when you look at the progress in AI, you don’t really know exactly whether that new leap forward happened because of the LLM or because of the software on top of LLM.
0:34:07 And in my case, since I’m using a lot of AI directly and I use LLMs directly, and in that case, you see clearly the difference between the models.
0:34:10 So the difference between the models isn’t that huge.
0:34:16 So basically, in 2023, we had GPT-4 released.
0:34:25 And since then, as a user of their APIs in all of my tools, it hasn’t improved as much as I would expect.
0:34:34 I would say that the improvement between GPT-3.5 and 4 was greater than between 4 and everything else that happened after.
0:34:40 But then if you use the tools, the applications, and the agents, it feels different.
0:34:40 Right.
0:34:42 Like the change there is huge.
0:34:43 Right?
0:34:46 So it suggests that it happens because of the software.
0:34:49 Yeah, the model is getting way better at using different tools.
0:34:49 Exactly.
0:34:51 Knowing which tools to use.
0:34:51 Exactly.
0:34:56 And it does feel like that’s probably how we get to AGI is knowing which tools to use and using them properly.
0:34:56 Yeah.
0:34:57 Yeah.
0:34:59 And it is similar to the computer.
0:35:05 Like the computer itself has been getting better and better and smarter and smarter before AI.
0:35:08 But it would never lead to AGI.
0:35:11 It was just a software that makes the hardware kind of look smart.
0:35:23 And that’s why we will see a lot more progress moving forward because there will be a lot more software built on top of AI and tools and they will be connected to each other, etc.
0:35:32 But to get to AGI, you need the foundation to be stronger, the LLM itself, and LLMs are not moving up.
0:35:42 There’s a graph, actually, where they look at the growth and it has basically went flat, like almost linear, not exponential since 2023 for LLMs.
0:35:43 Yeah, I don’t know.
0:35:49 I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of people who work at the companies and heard about things that are in development that haven’t been released yet.
0:35:53 And my feeling is that a lot of the limitations that we’re seeing are more around the infrastructure.
0:35:58 I think energy and chips are like the big thing that’s actually slowing down the progress.
0:35:58 Yeah.
0:36:04 I think the actual labs, I think OpenAI has, you know, they have better models that have not been released.
0:36:06 And a lot of it is just because the website would probably die.
0:36:09 And they also just would not have enough chips to actually run the thing and enough energy.
0:36:09 Yeah.
0:36:12 That’s my belief, but, you know, could be wrong.
0:36:19 Another thing I like to ask, I’m always thinking, you know, like, you know, my son’s 11 and in the age of AI, what should I be teaching him?
0:36:20 Should I be teaching him to code?
0:36:21 Should I be teaching him?
0:36:24 Are there other skills that are like super critical that I should be teaching him?
0:36:28 I think for kids, it’s not that important what they learn.
0:36:31 It’s rather that they have to train their brain muscle.
0:36:35 So whatever helps to train their brain muscle is great.
0:36:36 Video games.
0:36:40 I mean, well, that’s, it makes kids smarter.
0:36:40 Yeah.
0:36:46 Like way smarter, but there’s downside that they may just find it so fun that everything else will look boring.
0:36:50 But I think the coding is single best way to train your brain.
0:36:52 Like it’s almost like gym.
0:36:54 It’s almost like lifting weights.
0:36:54 Right.
0:36:56 And also it’s addictive.
0:37:02 So it’s one of the best ways of training your brain where you actually like doing that.
0:37:05 Similar to the computer games, but without a downside.
0:37:11 Like you will never see someone, you know, going mad because they write code too much.
0:37:13 So at some point you get tired of it.
0:37:14 But with video games, you never get tired.
0:37:17 It’s like, it’s too cool to do that.
0:37:18 So I would still learn to code.
0:37:22 There’s a lot of people who’ve been highly successful that started video games.
0:37:26 And that was almost like a gateway drug into coding and just getting interested into more technology.
0:37:28 I think like Elon Musk.
0:37:29 There’s a long list of people.
0:37:30 Yeah.
0:37:30 Yeah.
0:37:31 Like that.
0:37:31 Right.
0:37:32 And I’m kind of the same way.
0:37:35 I made money playing video games when I was a kid.
0:37:37 But I definitely got on the side of almost went crazy from it.
0:37:40 Like literally was playing way too much.
0:37:40 I was playing EverQuest.
0:37:42 I was a top player on EverQuest.
0:37:43 They used to call it Evercrack.
0:37:51 But I also do feel like there is a creative element that comes from games in moderation, I think too much or at least too much for too long of a period.
0:37:54 I think maybe for a short term period, like actually the deep immersion is actually quite good.
0:37:58 I think there’s also a creative element with games too that people take for granted.
0:38:10 I mean, there is a theory I have is that we will exit the offline world and we’ll be just playing games or being in VR because that’s where everything is heading now.
0:38:20 And if that’s the future, then being closer to the game industry is probably smart because that’s where the money will be made in 15 years from now.
0:38:21 Last question.
0:38:23 This is actually kind of somewhat related to what you just said, I guess.
0:38:23 Yeah.
0:38:28 Imagine you had a time machine, John, and you travel to the year 2050.
0:38:29 What do you see?
0:38:30 What’s different?
0:38:31 What’s not different?
0:38:32 You know, what’s the world like?
0:38:33 All right.
0:38:34 That’s interesting.
0:38:37 I think we’re going to see nothing almost.
0:38:41 Wait, wait, wait, what do you mean?
0:38:50 I think there will be buildings totally locked and there will be people in the buildings, buildings because they have no windows, nothing.
0:38:58 And there will be people inside there connected to the computers using Neuralink, direct brain interface with the computer.
0:38:59 Top people, basically.
0:39:00 Yeah, exactly.
0:39:16 So basically it’s similar to the WALL-E, you know, like that’s not the future I want, but something tells me that that’s inevitable, that we’re going to end up having the WALL-E-like future because we’re just heading there now.
0:39:21 And AI and human robots will make everything super cheap and eventually free.
0:39:22 Yeah.
0:39:31 And then humans will have to invent games so that they can do something because there’s nothing actually they have to do.
0:39:32 Like everything is optional.
0:39:38 Okay, then we make games where we actually compete and there is some game, status game, whatever game.
0:39:38 Yeah.
0:39:51 And then when they invent the games, the games will be first offline and online, but eventually online games will win versus the offline because they’ll be more interesting because things like Vail 3 will help.
0:39:53 I get part of it and I agree with part of it.
0:39:54 I love the book Ready Player One.
0:39:57 I read the book way before, you know, the movie came out and all that.
0:39:57 Yeah.
0:40:02 And at the end, you know, people kind of get off of the technology in the games a little bit, right?
0:40:06 It’s like, and there may be like a transitionary period where like, yeah, people definitely are using it way too much.
0:40:13 But I’ve seen this in San Francisco where people, yeah, they use technology a lot, but also people love to go out for hikes and stuff now.
0:40:17 Like it’s super common that you go out for meetings, you know, hiking and whatnot, right?
0:40:19 And get off of technology as much as possible.
0:40:30 I think you’ll see that a lot of people will actually spend less time with technology and then the technology does a lot of the boring work they don’t want to do and they can actually get out more.
0:40:34 And then there’ll be like, some people will be like crazy about the games and they’ll do it like all the time.
0:40:38 And for other people be like, yeah, I’m going to go do that with my wife tonight for like two hours.
0:40:43 We’re going to like kind of just do some game or some watch some movie or some new kind of, you know, interactive experience.
0:40:45 That’s my hope, actually.
0:40:45 Okay.
0:40:46 Let’s focus on that.
0:40:47 I want to own a positive future.
0:40:49 I don’t want the pod people thing.
0:40:50 It sounds horrible.
0:40:52 Yeah, exactly.
0:40:57 So like one of the things I do is I promote kids for founders.
0:41:00 So whenever I meet founders, I tell you, you should have kids.
0:41:02 And then they tell me I have no time.
0:41:05 And I tell them just use more of AI and then you have more time.
0:41:09 When I had my son, I thought I didn’t have time, went ahead and did it.
0:41:11 And the best decision I ever made.
0:41:14 And I used to take him around like business meetings all the time.
0:41:15 Yeah, that’s cool.
0:41:15 And no one else did that.
0:41:16 And I was like, why?
0:41:18 I don’t understand like why they wouldn’t do it.
0:41:22 I’m like, I’m like, he’s getting to hang out with like all these like Silicon Valley, like CEOs.
0:41:24 They’re with me and getting to hear these conversations.
0:41:29 And he, you know, he learned so much from just like hearing those conversations.
0:41:31 And like for most people, they would never hear any of that.
0:41:33 You know, it was like Silicon Valley people.
0:41:35 But also I used to have an office in Japan town in San Francisco.
0:41:41 We have like artist parties and artists would come over and like draw on my whiteboards and all this kind of crazy stuff.
0:41:43 And he got to see that side too, the more creative side.
0:41:44 And he would participate.
0:41:46 He’d start drawing with them.
0:41:49 And I was just like, if you have a company, that’s actually like one of the best times to have a kid.
0:41:54 Like you can actually, it’s like amazing education they would never get anywhere else if you actually somewhat include them.
0:41:56 It’s like one of the best experiences they possibly could have.
0:41:56 Yeah.
0:42:05 I mean, I work from home and when it’s day and not night, my kids come over and they just start watching what I do.
0:42:08 For example, I’m doing these prototypes with Lovable.
0:42:11 And then they ask me what I do and I tell them what I do.
0:42:15 And then I let them prompt it and they prompt it.
0:42:19 And then, you know, it brings some fresh ideas into what I do.
0:42:26 So some of the things I have, I actually ask my kids to give me some random ideas or random prompts.
0:42:28 And then it makes things more creative for me.
0:42:28 So, yeah.
0:42:30 You’re going to have to increase their allowance, right?
0:42:32 Like one of their ideas takes off.
0:42:36 I’ll put them as co-founders in that case.
0:42:37 Yeah, yeah.
0:42:38 Dude, this has been awesome.
0:42:38 This has been fun.
0:42:39 Yeah.
0:42:40 Thanks.
0:42:43 Maybe tell the people listening where they can find you, like where they can find you online.
0:42:50 If there’s a certain website you want to push people to, whether it’s the, you know, I think there was the SEObotai.com, which I’m going to be checking out.
0:42:51 But anything else as well?
0:42:54 Yeah, I’m on X and LinkedIn and Substack.
0:42:57 It’s John Rush X, the handle.
0:43:00 And I share everything I do every day.
0:43:02 Every month I share my plans for the month.
0:43:06 Every last day of the month I share what I’ve done during the month.
0:43:10 And then people tell me, oh my God, it’s a lot you’ve done.
0:43:12 And I say it’s because of the agents I built.
0:43:14 So that’s basically my life.
0:43:16 So you can find me there and follow me there.
0:43:16 Yeah.
0:43:22 And for anyone listening, whether you like own a business or you’re like an individual, I mean, I think there’s like so much you can learn from this episode.
0:43:34 If I ran the business, I mean, you know, you probably should have like a division in your company where you are using AI agents to crank out ideas that are beneficial to your main company.
0:43:34 Yeah.
0:43:37 And then you could spin those off and have AI try those.
0:43:41 And the ones that work, then actually double down and put resources and people on those projects.
0:43:43 I think so many companies should be doing that.
0:43:44 I don’t know why they’re not.
0:43:45 Yeah.
0:43:47 I think this is a really good idea.
0:43:58 I think all corporations should have this little AI factories within where people just try to innovate within rather than waiting for innovation from outside.
0:44:00 That’s so smart.
0:44:02 So much easier to do out now too, right?
0:44:05 Like one person or less or zero people to get started.
0:44:07 Start with one person.
0:44:13 Like find the most creative person in your organization and let them do that full time.
0:44:15 Crank out the 20 ideas a week.
0:44:15 Yeah.
0:44:20 Maybe you find one good one a month and then actually like turn that into like a new business unit.
0:44:20 Yeah.
0:44:22 I think everyone should be doing that, but it’s been awesome, John.
0:44:23 Yeah.
0:44:23 Thanks.
Want to Automate your work with AI? Get the playbook here: https://clickhubspot.com/wgk
Episode 66: Can you really build a zero-employee business with AI? Nathan Lands (https://x.com/NathanLands) sits down with John Rush (https://x.com/johnrushx), founder and self-proclaimed builder of “the most automated org on earth,” to unpack what it takes to launch and run a company where 80% of the work (and soon, 100%) is done by AI agents.
John shares his journey from managing large VC-backed teams to going fully solo and using AI to automate nearly every task in his startups, from prototyping and front-end design to sales outreach and SEO content creation. The conversation covers unique agent workflows, how to rapidly test business ideas, how specialized vs. generalist AI agents can supercharge productivity, and practical insights for solopreneurs and founders curious about leveraging automation for scale.
Check out The Next Wave YouTube Channel if you want to see Matt and Nathan on screen: https://lnk.to/thenextwavepd
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Show Notes:
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(00:00) Transitioning from Teamwork to AI Entrepreneurship
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(04:01) Rapid AI Prototyping Strategy
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(08:40) Specialized vs. General AI Agents
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(10:25) Automating Marketing with Limited Coding
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(13:38) Embrace AI Agents’ Autonomy
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(19:09) AI Directories Enhance Contextual Accuracy
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(22:36) LLMs Prefer Directories Over Blog Posts
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(23:31) LLMs and Directory Discovery
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(28:36) Reddit Manipulation Exploits Google’s Search Algorithm
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(30:42) Elon Musk Boosts X Account
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(34:36) AI Progress Hindered by Infrastructure Constraints
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(39:11) Limit Screen Time for Balance
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(42:11) Leveraging AI for Business Innovation
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(43:07) Weekly Idea Generation Strategy
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Mentions:
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John Rush: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrushx/
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Unicorn Platform: https://unicornplatform.com/
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Grok: https://x.ai/
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Replit: https://replit.com/
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Cursor: https://cursor.com/en
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Lindy: https://www.lindy.ai/
Get the guide to build your own Custom GPT: https://clickhubspot.com/tnw
—
Check Out Matt’s Stuff:
• Future Tools – https://futuretools.beehiiv.com/
• Blog – https://www.mattwolfe.com/
• YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@mreflow
—
Check Out Nathan’s Stuff:
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The Next Wave is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by Hubspot Media // Production by Darren Clarke // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
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