AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

College didn’t get expensive. It got unnecessary for anyone who wants to make real money in the next 10 years.Because the future isn’t “learn more.” It’s learn fast, get licensed, get paid.America has about 700,000 registered apprentices. That’s roughly 0.4% of the workforce. Basically… nobody.Meanwhile we’ve got over a million electrician jobs open, licensed workers retiring, and data centers sucking power like a black hole.So the government did what it always does.It didn’t “incentivize” apprenticeships. It basically said:“If you want the juicy tax credits on big renewable energy projects… you need apprentices on the job.”Andy Seth saw the mess up close. The tools were trash. The bureaucracy was thicker than a Denver winter.So during COVID, he taught himself to build software, apprenticed under a real dev, and built apprentix.io.Then he did the scary founder move. He niched down hard.And it worked.He hit $1M ARR with zero W2 employees. SaaS margins. Seven-day sales cycles.Not because he “hustled harder.”Because he found the hidden lever: businesses don’t buy training. They buy revenue and compliance that doesn’t ruin their life.Founder idea: stop building better education.Build less paperwork.Every regulated industry has a compliance bottleneck begging to be turned into a software ATM.If your product disappeared tomorrow, would your customers miss the value… or would they miss the relief?If you’re a founder obsessed with leverage, niche strategy, and finding markets where demand is literally written into law, you’re going to want the full breakdown.If you like founder stories with receipts and real numbers, get on the newsletter at aiforfounders.co.It’s the closest thing to business school that won’t charge you rent. aiforfounders.co.Your next unfair advantage might be one email away. Go subscribe: aiforfounders.co.If this made you think, leave a review like you’re rating a rollercoaster you survived… and include one word: again.Founders, quick reality check: being great at what you do isn’t the bottleneck.Being known is the bottleneck.And the fastest way to become known, trusted, and repeatedly referenced is still the same: go on podcasts.Kitcaster helps founders get booked on shows your customers already listen to.Not random podcasts. Not your aunt’s mindfulness hour.The shows where buyers hang out, where deals start as conversations, and where credibility compounds.Podcasts do what ads can’t.They make you sound like the person who’s already won.You get 30 minutes to explain your thinking, tell the real story, and build trust at human speed.And if you’re thinking, “I don’t have time to pitch shows,” perfect.Kitcaster handles the targeting, outreach, booking, and coordination so you just show up and perform.If you want inbound leads that don’t feel like pulling teeth, go to kitcaster.com and get booked.https://apprentix.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyseth/https://aiforfounders.co/ ⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Business owners, I already know you hate taxes.Not the “ugh, paperwork” kind of hate. I mean the kind of hate where you’d rather get dental work at a gas station than explain your P&L.And here’s the part that should scare you a little: taxes aren’t just expensive. They’re sneaky. Most founders don’t overpay on purpose.They overpay because they’re too busy.And even worse, half of you are sitting there thinking, “I hope my tax person is doing it right.” Hope is not a strategy when the IRS is involved. Believe me, I know. I’ve been audited twice.So listen, there’s finally a tool that makes this easy. It’s called deduction.com.And yes, I’m shilling for it because it’s awesome. The founder, Sai, is a buddy of mine. He’s a Denver guy. Well, he’s British, but he’s here now, so we’re claiming him.For $500, Deduction.com’s agent will complete and file your return, and there’s a human reviewing it and signing it. And right now, Sai is onboarding every single customer himself.You can say you knew him when.At that price, and I’m being dead serious, I’d have them run it just to double-check your tax preparer. Because if you catch one mistake, one missed deduction, one “oops”… it pays for itself instantly.Here’s the real question though: if taxes are the biggest bill you pay every year, why are you treating them like an afterthought?So go check out deduction.com and stop donating extra money to the government like it’s a charity.It ain’t.And tell Sai I said what’s up.https://deduction.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/saayuj/https://aiforfounders.co/ ⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Hot take: Healthcare doesn’t have a diagnosis problem. It has a time problem. And that time problem is quietly ruining lives.Most patients get 13 minutes with a doctor. That’s barely enough time to describe symptoms, let alone find the real cause. So you get pills, not answers. Not because doctors don’t care, but because the system doesn’t allow them to.Haresh Patel learned this the hard way. He spent 12 years building a company, burned about $30 million, and still only won after years of pivots. His takeaway is painful and useful: building the tech is the easy part. The hard part is knowing who you serve, how you make money, and why your product should exist.So this time he did something most founders won’t. He stopped building and spent two years just listening to doctors, patients, and anyone living in the gaps of modern medicine.Founder use case: steal this method. Before you build your MVP, build your “13-minute advantage.” Create a system that turns messy records, wearable data, and life context into a clean story a human expert can use fast. AI isn’t here to replace doctors. It’s here to give them their brain back.Deep question: What problem in your life or business keeps “coming back” because you’re treating symptoms instead of digging for the pearl under the mattress?If you want the full breakdown on building in healthcare, validating before coding, and why rookie thinking beats resume thinking, this is for founders, operators, and anyone obsessed with solving real problems.Three quick things: Go to aiforfounders.co and subscribe so your brain stays ahead of your calendar. Steal one idea per week and pretend it was your own, I won’t tell. If you’re building something big, you’re going to need a bigger mind, start there.And if you like the show, leave a review. Write: “I came for the strategy, stayed for the uncomfortable truth.”https://www.linkedin.com/in/hareshpatel/https://hareshpatel.ai/https://aiforfounders.co/⁠⁠https://codestory.cohttps://warmstart.ai ⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

You know that moment when your “vibe coded MVP” finally gets users… and then it starts breaking in ways you can’t even explain?That’s where Mike Vitez shows up.Mike’s a computer scientist who was doing machine learning and building his own big data and clustering algorithms before AI was cool. Then he launched a software company straight out of school, watched the industry evolve from “just ship code” to “ship business outcomes” and built Saturnia Design for founders who realize: building is easy now. Building the right thing is the hard part.Here’s the conflict Mike calls out.Founders protect their idea like it’s a newborn. They build in isolation. They avoid customers because it hurts to hear the truth.And then they burn months, sometimes years, on the wrong problem.Mike’s fix is brutally simple.Stop guessing.Run real user interviews.Turn the chaos into an audit with an action list.Fix the bottlenecks that block revenue first.A novel founder use case.If your product spec is literally one sentence like “We need a launchpad,” Mike’s team will workshop it into market clarity, user personas, and a testable thesis before you waste a penny building from scratch.Deep question for founders:Are you building what feels impressive… or what your customer would actually pay for even if it bruises your ego?Stick around and you’ll learn how smart founders validate fast, why UX is a revenue lever, and when you should not build at all. This is for builders with traction who need the bridge from scrappy MVP to real product.Sign up for the newsletter at aiforfounders.co if you want founder stories that punch you in the brain.Sign up at aiforfounders.co if you want the playbook behind the wins, not the highlight reel.And yeah, aiforfounders.co if you’re done guessing and ready to ship with receipts.And if the show has helped you even once, leave a review like you’re tipping your future self.https://saturniadesign.comhttps://medium.com/@saturniadesignhttps://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

You ever watch a “non-tech” industry get quietly eaten alive by a kid with a phone and zero patience?Kai Stone went from post-college degenerate mode to building Stone Systems. A $297/month “copy-paste” software stack that helps contractors run their whole business from their PHONE. Because most contractors aren’t at a laptop. Some don’t even own one.Here’s the tension: marketing agencies lose either way.If they don’t get contractors leads, they get fired.If they get them too many leads, they STILL get fired because the calendar explodes.Kai flipped the model.Sell the baseline software first. Make it sticky. Then upsell services later, after trust.The founder lesson: don’t build “better tech.” Build tech that matches how your customer actually lives.Novel use case: if your buyers live on text messages, build your product so their phone buzz becomes the dopamine loop that keeps them paying.Deep question: What part of your life or business are you avoiding fixing because failing at it would feel like failing at YOU?What you’ll learn and who it’s for: you’ll learn Kai’s “meet them where they are” product strategy, his scrappy customer acquisition playbook, and how he thinks about churn, retention, and scaling. This is for founders selling to blue-collar, offline, or “non-tech” markets, and anyone trying to build sticky SaaS without a giant team.https://stonesystems.iohttps://www.instagram.com/kaistone808https://aiforfounders.co/ ⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

You raised a seed round. You sold the dream to investors. You sold the dream to your team.And now comes the part nobody budgets for… the dream might be wrong.Ali from Wednesday has seen this movie a thousand times. Founders obsess over signups, views, downloads… and then wonder why revenue is allergic to them.His move is brutal and simple: Sprint Zero.Audit the “pirate metrics” that actually matter: retention, referral, revenue.Then force a 30–45 day roadmap tied to real outcomes.Not vibes. Not vanity. Data. Customer pull.Here’s the cheat code: record your customer calls, send them to Ali’s team, and they’ll help you separate insights from noise.Because customers will say “yes”… while silently meaning “no.”He even gives retention guardrails:B2C: Day 1 = 50%, Day 7 = 25%, Day 30 = 10–15%.B2B: 20–30% retention over the first 30 days.If you miss that, you don’t need more features.You need a new direction.So here’s the founder gut-check:Are you building what makes you feel smart… or what makes customers come back when nobody’s watching?You’ll learn how to move from MVP to real PMF, how to cut your failure odds, and how to build around demand.This is for seed to Series A founders who want momentum that actually sticks.If you like founders’ playbooks without the motivational poster energy, go to aiforfounders.co.Join the newsletter and I’ll send you tactics you can steal before your next sprint planning meeting ruins your weekend.Sign up at aiforfounders.co and let’s turn your “big vision” into “customers who don’t leave.”Leave a review for the podcast like you’re tipping a bartender for a dangerously good drink.⁠https://wednesday.is⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alihafizji/⁠https://aiforfounders.co/ ⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Most startups don’t break because they lack talent.They break because the product quietly splits into parallel universes.One team ships a feature.Another ships the same feature… differently.Both are “right.”Everyone’s moving fast.No one’s moving together.Chris Strahl saw this up close and decided chaos was not a growth strategy.Before co-founding Knapsack, he watched high-performing teams drown in edge cases, forks, and silent product drift.Same company.Same roadmap.Multiple realities.The fix wasn’t more syncs.It was fewer interpretations.Knapsack became infrastructure.A single system where product, design, and engineering agree before shipping.Enterprise adoption.Thousands of users per account.Multi-x growth without burning people out.And here’s the founder lesson hiding underneath.Scaling isn’t about better judgment.It’s about building systems so judgment isn’t constantly required.So sit with this:What part of your business only works because you’re still manually resolving contradictions every day?Stick around and you’ll learn how real teams scale without fragmentation, why systems beat heroics, and how founders stop being the merge conflict.This is for founders, operators, product leaders, and anyone building past the early chaos stage.ist the URLS_https://designsystemspodcast.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisstrahlhttps://knapsack.cloudhttps://wikimediafoundation.orghttps://protectourwinters.orghttps://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.coa⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

What if the biggest AI risk in your company isn’t hallucinations… it’s that you’re quietly turning your team into button clickers.Because right now, everyone’s “doing AI,” but most companies are just buying the same tools as their competitors and calling it strategy.Geoff Gibbins from Human Machines is obsessed with the real advantage. Not better prompts. Better collaboration between humans and AI.And here’s a novel founder use case you can steal today: an AI “collaboration coach” that watches how your team uses ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, then flags when you’re outsourcing judgment, missing the real question, or wasting time switching tools.So here’s the question for you:If you could test 300 ideas before lunch, see which ones actually work in the market, and only apply human judgment at the moments that truly matter… how would you redesign your week, your team, or your entire company?https://human-machines.comhttps://aiforfounders.cohttps://kitcaster.comhttps://corrix.aihttps://www.stjude.orghttps://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffgibbins/https://ryanestes.info/

It’s late December energy. The year’s basically over. The cookies are gone, the group chats are quiet, and this is the one moment where you’re allowed to stop shipping long enough to look back.Because 2025 was insane for AI. Every week felt like a new launch, a new model, a new panic, a new promise that this one would change everything. Faster code. Cheaper labor. Smarter agents. Louder fear. And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, a lot of founders quietly fell behind without realizing it.That’s why this moment matters. Not to chase headlines, but to understand what actually shifted.Ran Aroussi has been building software for 30 years, and what he’s seeing isn’t hype. It’s pressure. In 2025, delivery timelines got cut in half. Clients didn’t ask for less. They asked for more, faster. AI didn’t end projects early. It turned the same teams into factories. MVPs shipped sooner, and instead of stopping, they kept going. More features. Better architecture. Automated workflows. Less “we’ll clean this up later.”Here’s the part founders miss. The advantage isn’t the model. It’s the system around it. If your onboarding breaks at scale, if your backend can’t handle growth, if your workflows still assume humans for everything repetitive, AI just exposes the weakness faster. That’s where teams like Automaze step in, acting like a technical co-founder, rebuilding foundations while AI quietly takes over the expensive, soul-crushing work you assumed required more headcount.And looking ahead to 2026, the big question isn’t capability. It’s trust. Agents can already do more than we’re comfortable admitting. The real winners will be the founders who learn how to delegate to AI without surrendering judgment. Copilots turn into coworkers. Systems get quieter. Interfaces disappear. Output goes up. And the margin between leaders and laggards gets brutal.So here’s the question worth sitting with. If your company doubled its output overnight, would it give you freedom, or would it just raise expectations and tighten the leash?__https://automaze.io/https://aiforfounders.co/https://mxi.org/https://x.com/aroussi__https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

If you have an app idea and it is still living in Notes, you are not “early.” You are stuck.Because the new founder trap is not lack of code. It is fake momentum.Vibe coding gets you a pretty prototype fast, then the last 30% hits like a brick wall. Architecture, requirements, integrations, security, the stuff that makes you want to delete the repo and move to a cabin.Ehsan Mirdamadi built Codalio to be the “between a CTO and a tech lead” layer.You prompt in plain English, Codalio interviews you back, pulls the idea out of your head, and turns it into real requirements and technical scope.Then it generates a full app, front end and back end, around 80% to 90% of the build.The use case founders are sleeping on. Use it to build a real internal tool in a weekend. Think ops dashboard, customer intake workflow, distribution center digitization, or a data ingestion pipeline from drones or robots.Not a demo. A viable product that can actually scale.This is for founders who want speed without building a fragile spaghetti monster.You will learn how to avoid the 70% wall, how to scope like a real CTO, and how to ship something that does not collapse the moment users show up.Are you delaying your product because the idea needs more time, or because you are afraid of finding out it is real?https://codalio.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/ehsan-mirdamadi/__https://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Welcome to AI for Founders, I'm Ryan Estes.Founders, you’re not stuck because your idea is bad. You’re stuck because your AI won’t do the last 10%… and you’re about to rage quit in slow motion.You know the moment.You’ve prompted it 47 different ways.Perplexity, ChatGPT, YouTube tutorials.Your energy leaves your body.The project dies right there on your laptop like a Victorian child.Danny Newman is building a simple fix: OnDemandHuman.com.It’s a “tap a button, get a real expert” marketplace for when vibe coding hits the wall.You’re mid-build, you request help, and you get matched in real time on Zoom with someone who actually knows the exact tool you’re using.Pay per minute. Stay in flow. Ship the thing.And here’s the founder use case that’s sneaky powerful:Use it like instant office hours for your entire startup.Not just code. Figma. Automations. Prompt systems. Sales ops.Any moment where a 15 minute nudge saves a week of stall.What would your business look like if you never lost flow… and you stopped waiting for permission to build?https://ondemandhuman.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielvincentnewman/__https://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Welcome to AI for Founders, I'm Ryan Estes.Every founder I know is sprinting to keep up with AI.New tools. New models. New expectations.But here’s the uncomfortable truth:AI is making technical skill cheaper by the day — and exposing something most leaders never developed.Their human edge.Today’s guest, Uma, spent 20 years inside Microsoft, climbed the ladder, played the game, and then hit a breaking point that forced a hard question:If everyone has access to the same technology, what actually makes a leader indispensable?In this conversation, we unpack how influence, visibility, communication, and emotional intelligence are becoming the real leverage points in an AI-driven world.You’ll learn:Why AI is amplifying weak leadership instead of fixing itThe “human advantage” that separates replaceable operators from irreplaceable leadersHow founders can stay relevant, trusted, and influential as automation acceleratesThis episode is for founders, operators, and execs who don’t just want to survive the AI wave — but lead it.Let’s get into it.https://thelimitlessleaders.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/uma-subramanian-limitless/__https://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Welcome to AI for Founders, I'm Ryan Estes.Every non-technical founder hits the same wall.You’ve got the idea. You’ve got the market. You’ve even got early traction.But then comes the question that kills momentum:“Who’s going to build this?”Technical cofounder? Impossible to find.Dev agency? Expensive and slow.No-code tools? Great… until you need something real.Today’s guests are here to blow that bottleneck up.Ben and Brad are the co-founders of Woz, an AI platform designed to act like your technical cofounder — turning raw ideas into production-ready, scalable software, not demos, not toys.They met as roommates at MIT, raised $6 million, and are building what could become the operating system for non-technical founders who want to ship real products fast.In this episode, we break down:What AI can actually replace in software developmentWhere humans still matter more than everAnd how founders without engineering backgrounds can finally compete at scaleIf you’re a founder, operator, or investor wondering what building software looks like in the AI era — this one’s for you.https://withwoz.comhttps://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Mpk-woz-your-ai-technical-cofounderhttps://www.cervinventures.com/news/building-the-next-generation-of-software-why-we-invested-in-woz__https://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

What happens when you build an AI that can spot disease years before symptoms, cut diabetes related complications by 20 percent, and slash healthcare costs, and the market still shrugs. That is the problem my guest today ran straight into.On this episode of AI for Founders, I am talking with Mariano García Valiño, four-time healthcare entrepreneur and CEO of Axenya. Axenya is an AI-powered operating system for corporate health that monitors over one hundred thousand people, runs around ninety-five million clinical inferences a month, and can intelligently route people to care across more than forty conditions, all while pushing costs from two and a half times inflation down toward inflation.If you are a founder building in AI, health tech, or any regulated, incentive-broken industry, this episode is for you. You are going to learn how Mariano redesigned his entire business model so someone actually had a financial reason to pay for prevention, how he thinks about AI as a copilot for doctors instead of a replacement, and how he keeps his sanity and creativity through writing, photography, sports, and reading while running his fourth company.If you want conversations like this distilled into founder ready experiments every week, head to aiforfounders.co and subscribe to the newsletter. https://axenya.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mgarciavalino/__https://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Welcome to AI for Founders, I'm Ryan Estes.Today’s episode starts with a simple question:What happens when the world’s smartest podcast app is built in a country obsessed with precision, craftsmanship, and self-responsibility… and then shipped to founders who desperately need to learn faster?Because here’s the tension: podcasts have become the biggest knowledge library on Earth, yet most people forget everything they hear.Our guest today — Kevin Smith, founder of Snipd — decided that was unacceptable. So he built the world’s greatest AI-powered podcast app, from Zurich, one of the top AI hubs on the planet, surrounded by Google, Apple, Meta, OpenAI, and ETH talent.In this conversation, Kevin breaks down:Why Zurich gives founders an unfair talent advantageWhy 74 percent of podcast listeners use podcasts to learnHow to build an AI-native product — not an AI add-onAnd the future of audio: chat with episodes, discoverability, and AI-driven learning loopsIf you're a founder who listens to learn, builds with AI, or wants to extract every hidden insight from every episode you hear, this episode is absolutely for you.https://x.com/KevinBenSmithhttps://www.snipd.com/https://x.com/snipd_app__https://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Today’s episode starts with a simple but brutal truth:Vibe coding breaks the moment your idea gets bigger than “make the button blue.”Every founder knows this moment — when you’ve stretched Lovable, Cursor, or Claude Code as far as your vibes can take you… and suddenly the whole thing collapses under unclear prompts, messy code, and your total inability to explain what you want in the first place.Well, today’s guest built the fix.I’m talking with Tyler Wells, co-founder of BrainGrid.ai, the platform powering over 2,000 AI builders and 10,000+ shipped features by turning messy human ideas into precise, AI-ready specs, tasks, and prompts.If you’ve ever wondered how non-technical founders are suddenly shipping multi-tenant SaaS apps, or how senior engineers are spinning up six agents at once without imploding a repo, this is your episode.We get into:how BrainGrid builds the missing planning layer of AI developmentwhy your prompts suck and how to fix themhow founders with zero engineering background are shipping real productsand the future of “anyone with an idea can actually build it” softwareThis episode is for vibe coders, indie hackers, AI-native SaaS founders, and anyone who has ever thought:“Wait… can I seriously build this myself?”Spoiler: yes. And Tyler shows you how.https://www.braingrid.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerswells/https://x.com/tylerwells__https://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Today’s episode starts with a problem almost every founder fears…What happens when the system you're trying to disrupt is so big, so regulated, and so politically volatile… that one election can flip your entire business model overnight?That’s the world my guest lives in — and somehow thrives in.I’m talking to Eugene Sayan, founder and CEO of Softheon, a 25-year-old startup that processes $20 billion in premiums, powers 30 million enrollments, and delivers affordable healthcare access to 10 million Americans — all while building his own AI infrastructure using agentic systems with zero hallucination tolerance.If you’re a founder, operator, or AI-obsessed builder who wants to understand how to scale inside complexity, leverage AI responsibly, and build a company that can survive political headwinds, economic shocks, and massive technical stakes — this conversation is for you.You're going to learn:• How Softheon uses agentic AI + human-in-the-loop workflows to reach 99.99999% accuracy.• Why designing for a problem 10 years in the future is their secret weapon.• How Eugene bootstrapped a healthcare giant by thinking like an outsider — and an immigrant with something to prove.This episode is high-energy, full of insight, and packed with big numbers. Let’s dive in.https://softheon.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/eugenesayan/__https://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Welcome to AI for Founders, I'm Ryan Estes.Today’s episode starts with a problem every founder knows too well:You finally get a user into your product… and then watch them get completely lost.They bounce. They churn. Or they email support with the dreaded:“Hey uh… how do I actually use this?”That onboarding black hole costs SaaS companies billions — and Alex and Andy from Quarterzip.ai say it’s time to kill “activation debt” forever.These two founders sold their last AI company, immediately spun into their next one, and created an entirely new onboarding modality: a real-time AI voice agent that sees your screen, talks to you, guides your steps, and can literally move your cursor for you.They’ve onboarded users across entire product ecosystems without a single line of engineering integration — and booked 250 demos in 48 hours at launch.Today we dig into:The origin story behind QuarterzipWhy onboarding is the hidden growth lever no one talks aboutHow AI design is shifting from textboxes to vision-driven, voice-guided workflowsRemote co-founding across SF and AustraliaAnd what comes after the chatbot eraIf you’re a founder building AI, building with AI, or scaling a product with too many features and too few hands — this episode is for you.https://quarterzip.aihttps://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-valente-829989100/https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewpankevicius/__https://aiforfounders.co/ https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Welcome to AI for Founders, I'm Ryan Estes.Most of us were never really taught how money works—we were taught how to earn it, maybe how to spend it, but never how to build it. Now imagine the largest wealth transfer in human history—somewhere between $60 trillion and $90 trillion—is happening right now… and most of the inheritors don’t know what a limited partnership is. That’s the problem my guest today, CJ Follini, is trying to solve.CJ is the founder of NOYACK, a “learn-plan-invest” ecosystem using AI agents to teach financial literacy and democratize access to alternative assets like real estate, fine art, and venture capital. He’s managed billions for ultra-wealthy families, built an AI called NOYACK.ai to help the next generation DIY their wealth, and—get this—his family once held a $50 million fine-art portfolio before Masterworks existed.In this episode, you’ll learn how CJ turned his father’s medical crisis into a 35-year wealth-management career, why he believes the future belongs to financial generalists, and how AI agents will completely disrupt wealth management. If you’re a founder, investor, or just someone who wants to finally feel confident about your money, this one’s for you.Three reasons to sign up for the AI for Founders newsletter at aiforfounders.co:You’ll get the smartest AI startup insights you can actually use.You’ll never miss the playbooks my guests only share off-air.You’ll look dangerously well-informed at your next investor meeting.If you enjoy this episode, leave a review—tell us what your AI agent would say about it.https://wearenoyack.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cjfollini/__https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠

Welcome to AI for Founders, I'm Ryan Estes.Today’s episode starts with a problem every founder secretly wrestles with: the future is moving faster than your product roadmap. Models change monthly, competitors ship weekly, and half the AI space seems to be guessing their strategy on the fly. But what if prediction wasn’t a parlor trick… but a real capability? And what if the companies who master it don’t just survive the AI boom — they run the table?That’s exactly where we’re going today with Ben Turtel, founder of Lightning Rod AI, a company beating frontier models at forecasting the real world — using messy data, no humans in the loop, and a training method inspired by how humans actually learn.If you’re a founder, CEO, builder, or operator trying to understand:Where the puck is going in AIHow to build a defendable product when software is collapsing to zeroWhat predictive AI means for your roadmap, your team, and the way you make decisions…this conversation is built for you.By the end of this episode, you’ll see the future of AI through a totally new lens — and you may walk away with the most important strategic insight for the next five years.https://aiforfounders.co/https://lightningrod.aihttps://maps.orghttps://www.thefire.orghttps://twitter.com/BTurtel__https://ambient.us⁠⁠https://codestory.co⁠https://warmstart.ai ⁠⁠https://kitcaster.com/application ⁠⁠https://ryanestes.info⁠