Episode highlights:

[00:00:00] Businesses built entirely on Zapier
[00:01:30] The roofer-turned-automation-agency story
[00:03:54] What AI enables that wasn’t possible before
[00:07:12] OpenAI Agents vs. Zapier workflows
[00:11:15] Connecting AI agents to real business tools
[00:13:03] Building a meeting-prep agent live
[00:18:00] Why AI is great at building workflows, not just running them
[00:23:06] Zapier customers, revenue, and bootstrapping discipline
[00:28:57] AI-powered lead qualification in real time
[00:33:18] Automation agencies and speed-to-lead economics
[00:40:03] Why Zapier is positioned to last
[00:42:45] Using AI as a neutral leadership coach
[00:47:06] AI tools Wade personally uses

In this episode, Andrew Warner sits down with Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, to explore how AI agents, automation, and workflows are reshaping how modern businesses operate — from solo founders to companies doing hundreds of millions in revenue.

Wade shares real examples of people who’ve gone from running local service businesses to launching automation agencies powered almost entirely by Zapier. Together, they break down how AI changes what workflows can do, why agents and automations are complementary (not competitors), and how founders can turn speed-to-lead, personalization, and internal tooling into real revenue.

You’ll see a live walkthrough of building AI agents inside Zapier — including meeting prep, lead qualification, and internal coaching — all without writing code.

👉 Join us: https://thenextnewthing.ai/

👉 Team member feedback Zap: https://l.thenextnewthing.ai/r/Pdja7P

🎧 Highlights:
[00:00:00] Humans doing the work of AI — before AI existed
[00:01:12] Why accounting is mostly about language, not numbers
[00:02:33] Shadowing bookkeepers to find automation opportunities
[00:06:00] Manual work Quanta knew software had to replace
[00:07:30] Why building on top of legacy systems wasn’t enough
[00:08:24] Rebuilding the ledger from the ground up
[00:10:12] Continuous reconciliation vs. monthly closes
[00:11:24] From Affirm to founding Quanta
[00:13:30] Why delayed financials are useless for startups
[00:16:03] Validating willingness to pay before building
[00:17:42] Using humans for the “last mile” while automating the rest
[00:20:15] Solving trust and data-ownership concerns
[00:22:48] Why most QuickBooks challengers failed
[00:26:33] Saying no to customers to protect quality
[00:33:36] Why AI makes real-time margins mandatory
[00:36:45] Raising $15M Series A ($20M total)
[00:37:21] Prism: asking your financials questions in plain English

In this episode, Andrew Warner interviews Helen Hastings, founder of Quanta, an AI-powered accounting platform built for modern software companies.

Before AI could reliably understand financial data, Helen and her team had humans doing what AI does today — reading receipts, interpreting memos, categorizing transactions, and reconciling books by hand. That hands-on approach helped her uncover where automation really mattered, leading to a ground-up rebuild of accounting software that works in near real time.

Helen shares how Quanta replaces legacy systems by owning the data end-to-end, combining clean ledgers, continuous reconciliation, and AI-powered analysis — and why this approach helped the company raise $15M in Series A funding (over $20M total) and land nearly 100 customers so far.

🎧 Highlights:
[00:00:00] From Makerpad to Factory — Ben Tossell’s journey
[00:01:33] Life after acquisition and redefining work
[00:05:06] Why AI might make things harder, not easier
[00:07:30] No-code lessons and the illusion of simplicity
[00:10:42] From teaching no-code to debugging workflows
[00:12:00] Learning to code with AI as your translator
[00:15:09] Curiosity as the new technical skill
[00:16:21] Building a “source of truth” AI system inside Factory
[00:23:42] How Ben uses AI to search across code, docs, and tickets
[00:27:36] Teaching AI to follow his workflow
[00:30:27] Getting comfortable with the command line
[00:33:45] The first time AI made him feel like a real builder
[00:35:42] Makerpad’s growth, Slack community, and hiring from within
[00:41:24] Newsletter growth hacks and lessons from Ben’s Bites
[00:46:03] Selling Makerpad and rediscovering purpose
[00:49:39] Investing through Ben’s Bites Fund
[00:50:33] Returning to his roots: teaching, learning, and building again
[00:53:18] The one-person billion-dollar company — myth or movement?

In this episode, Andrew Warner talks with Ben Tossell, creator of Makerpad — the #1 community for no-code builders, which he later sold to Zapier. Now at Factory, Ben is helping developers build with AI instead of code — and rethinking what “technical” even means.

Ben opens up about the post-acquisition burnout that came after his sale, why he avoided starting another company, and how AI has reignited his creativity. Together, they explore what it means to go from no-code to “AI-native,” and why the dream of one-person billion-dollar companies might be closer than it sounds.

👉 Join us: https://thenextnewthing.ai/

🎧 Highlights:
[00:00:00] From freelance writer to $10M ARR founder
[00:03:36] How Pepper scaled from a marketplace to an AI-powered content engine
[00:05:06] The hybrid model: humans and AI creating together
[00:07:12] Building “Nimbus” — Pepper’s internal AI platform
[00:08:24] Re-optimizing thousands of old pages automatically
[00:13:03] Why FAQs and freshness signals help you rank in AI results
[00:15:00] GEO: Generative Engine Optimization explained
[00:16:12] Tracking brand mentions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity
[00:18:00] Using AI to generate videos, voices, and creative assets
[00:25:12] Scaling creative testing with 30,000+ AI-made ad banners
[00:27:18] How smaller creators can apply these lessons today
[00:30:27] Reddit, LinkedIn, and UGC as new AI search signals
[00:33:00] Cold-emailing OpenAI’s Greg Brockman and getting access to GPT-3
[00:34:21] Building PepperType.ai and learning from early AI adoption
[00:35:30] Using AI personally to optimize meetings and calendar time

In this episode, Andrew Warner interviews Anirudh Singla, founder and CEO of Pepper, a company that uses AI and human expertise to produce hundreds of thousands of pieces of content for enterprise brands.

Anirudh shares how he went from writing on Upwork to building a platform now doing over $10M ARR, powered by a blend of automation, creativity, and data. He reveals how Pepper uses AI agents to write, edit, and even refresh old content — and why the next big wave isn’t SEO, it’s GEO: Generative Engine Optimization.

Andrew shares the AI tools that real startup founders are using every day — not hype, but the ones that actually help them work smarter.
From AI note-takers that surface your blind spots to automations that coach your team after meetings, these are the tools that top entrepreneurs rely on.

🔗 Tools mentioned:

• Granola App: https://www.granola.ai/

• Claude Console: https://console.anthropic.com/

• TextBlaze: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/text-blaze-templates-and/idgadaccgipmpannjkmfddolnnhmeklj?hl=en-US

• Wade’s Zap: https://agents.zapier.com/copy/f17868bc-cc23-433a-b211-af402f47e1b4

• Garry’s Script Prompt: https://l.thenextnewthing.ai/r/OD14YA

Which of these are you already using — or planning to try next?

🎧 Highlights:
[00:00:00] Intro – “Don’t start with SEO. Start with AEO.”
[00:00:36] Why this is the right time to focus on answer engine optimization
[00:01:30] Case study: Webflow drives 8% of signups from LLMs
[00:03:00] Onsite vs. offsite optimization — Reddit and YouTube matter most
[00:06:18] Why Help Center content outperforms traditional SEO pages
[00:13:30] Why AEO is ideal for small startups without big budgets
[00:16:39] “SEO is not dead” — and why Google’s share of search stays stable
[00:19:39] Myths: LLM.txt, robots.txt, and how misinformation spreads
[00:23:06] The scientific method for testing what actually works
[00:25:57] Affiliates and citations — how paid mentions impact LLM rankings
[00:27:27] How to find high-value questions to target
[00:31:12] 60+ AEO tools — and the new “content scoring” era
[00:35:06] How to build an AEO agency (and what services to offer)
[00:39:36] Marketing Graphite — why thought leadership still wins
[00:43:00] The AEO roadmap: what to do first, step by step
[00:47:00] The MasterClass SEO story
[00:48:18] Fires, gardens, and creative thinking in constraint

SEO is changing—and the next frontier is AEO: Answer Engine Optimization.

In this episode, Andrew Warner sits down with Ethan Smith, founder of Graphite, to break down how brands are already winning visibility on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude — before their competitors even realize what’s happening.

Ethan explains why SEO isn’t dead, but answer engines are the next big channel — and how to optimize your site, videos, and community presence so AI models actually cite your brand in their answers.

🎧 Highlights:

[00:00:00] Intro
[00:02:06] Alex & Arman’s founding story — from pivot to partnership
[00:03:09] Why engineers experience AI’s biggest leverage
[00:05:15] “Think of it as a high-quality AI-powered dev shop”
[00:06:36] The big vision: Building the McKinsey of AI
[00:09:09] Crossing the chasm: From pre-AI to post-AI
[00:13:03] Intelligence arbitrage vs. labor arbitrage
[00:15:00] Using AI to double productivity in dev work
[00:19:12] Why services with recurring revenue outperform “one-off” AI projects
[00:23:06] Real client examples: healthcare, billboards, SaaS
[00:26:06] Debate: Will AI transformation companies run out of work?
[00:29:15] Becoming the CEO’s “growth partner” in the AI era
[00:31:00] The trillion-dollar dev industry opportunity
[00:33:00] Live demos: Claude Code, multi-agent coding, and real-time automation
[00:50:00] Human-in-the-loop AI and the ethics of automation
[00:55:00] How Tenex thinks about pricing, margins, and scaling
[01:00:45] Building “Morning Brew for AI leaders”

In this episode, Andrew Warner, along with Jesse Pujji sits down with Alex Lieberman (Morning Brew) and Arman Hezarkhani, co-founders of Tenex, to unpack how their company is reshaping software development and consulting with AI.

They reveal how engineers are “living in the future,” how AI is collapsing the cost of production, and why most companies won’t have the resources to cross the chasm from pre-AI to post-AI. From building mobile apps in days instead of months to using AI agents that code and run business tasks autonomously, Tenex shows what AI transformation really looks like inside modern organizations.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Intro Montage
00:52 – Every’s portfolio: Monologue, Spiral, Cora, and Sparkle
01:48 – How many people use their tools today?
02:15 – Mostly bootstrapped, with a small raise from Reid Hoffman
04:00 – Building based on internal needs and workflows
06:45 – Monologue’s origin story: weekend build, instant love
09:00 – Why Monologue works for “hybrid language” thinkers
10:30 – Writing → Building → Sharing: the creative flywheel
12:00 – Dan’s AI rituals: Journaling, reading, and thinking
15:00 – Using GPT for self-reflection and lightweight therapy
17:30 – Getting through dense philosophy (e.g., Kierkegaard) with AI
19:00 – Spiral’s evolution from summarizer to ghostwriter
21:00 – Cora: an AI assistant that preps your inbox
23:00 – Sparkle: automatic file organization, context-aware
25:00 – How Dan uses AI to create team handbooks and meetings
27:00 – The “interviewer agent” and writing in your voice
30:00 – Why Spiral isn’t just a wrapper—it’s a writing copilot
33:00 – “Software is the new content”: product = publishing
35:00 – AI is the new Excel, and apps are the new templates
37:00 – How Every maintains creativity while growing beyond 10 people
40:00 – “Smuggled Intelligence” and why AI benchmarks need humans
43:00 – Launching without distribution: the value of momentum
46:00 – Dan’s personal life as product inspiration (love, thoughts, therapy)

Dan Shipper Every, Spiral AI, Monologue app, Cora email assistant, Sparkle file organizer, AI startup tools, bootstrapped SaaS, AI writing tools, AI for journaling, AI productivity apps, GPT for thinking, AI therapy use, AI benchmarks, smuggled intelligence, building with LLMs, Andrew Warner podcast, product-led AI

Every’s style guide + prompt
https://l.thenextnewthing.ai/r/rjyLzl