Startup Stories - Mixergy

Eric Ries, who helped so many entrepreneurs build phenomenally successful businesses based on his Lean Startup philosophy, is back with a new book called Incorruptible. The book explains why some comp...

The zero-human company with the $10 million run rate has a lot of skeptics online. I collected all the skeptics’ challenges and asked the founder about each one. This is my explosive second interview ...

Chandler Bolt realized that much of what his sales managers did at Selfpublishing.com can be done better by good AI. Within a month, he built a first version with spiked sales. Now he’s replacing all ...

I first heard about this guy on the Joe Rogan show. He built a hot business on a simple concept: Companies hire him to embed AI usage and thinking in their businesses. Now he’s creating his own agent ...

On X, Shane Mac showed how he created an OpenClaw agent and asked it to copy an app. In this interview, he showed how his app Convos, does it. This interview is more visual than our usual ones, so you...

Zapier just announced a new way for founders to integrate all their favorite apps with their favorite AI model. Wade Foster, their co-founder, came on to show what we can build with it. Wade Foster is...

When OpenClaw was released, I watched Nat Eliason create an agent, give it an X account and tell it to earn money. This is the story of how it worked and how you can build an AI agent as your co-found...

There are loads of apps that post to social media. So how did Nevo David get Postiz to take off? He started selling it to AI agents Nevo David is the founder of Postiz, an open-source social media sch...

In private conversations, I’m hearing a lot of founders describe how they’re starting to sell to AI agents, like OpenClaw’s. Zapier has more traction doing that than anyone else I met. So,...

Ben Cera used AI coding agents to build a company that generates $689K. The agent creates ads using AI-generated people, handles customer support, and even builds the product. This is the story of how...

Elad Gil was an early investor in 40 unicorns, including major AI companies like Perplexity. I asked him what’s next for software companies now that AI can code better than humans, and what he’d inves...

Josh Mohrer is the model of the kind of company that can be built with AI. He’s not a developer, but he vibe coded Wave AI into a $7 million / year note taking company. This is how he did it. Josh Moh...

When a new user signs up, most companies add them to a standard drip campaign. Ryan Carson found a better alternative: his AI agent sends customized drip messages to every new registrant. It helps his...

When YouTube kicked Pat Walls’ Starter Story channel off the platform, he spent a weekend getting Claude Code to build him a replacement. I wanted to see how it was done, so he walked me through it st...

My friend created an AI engineering firm and every time I see him, he tells me how much his business is growing. So I asked him to tell me all about it in this interview. This is the story of how Taru...

Yevgeniy Matsay was a real estate broker who hated making cold calls. So he built an AI automation to do it for him. It worked so well that he created an agency that created cold calling automations f...

Over a decade ago, Joe Apfelbaum was on the podcast, telling me how focusing on SEO helped him grow his agency. That was hard for the idea-a-minute founder. Now he’s back. And AI is enabling him to cr...

On the surface, it looks like Ricardo Vice Santos is selling AI-created books for your kids. But he’s aiming for something much bigger: a world where TV, movies, and every other media will be customiz...

Zapier used to be the software that connected all your other software. But it’s AI has become so powerful that people are using it to build software companies. Founder Wade Foster joined me to talk ab...

Helen Hastings wanted to create better accounting software. To figure out what to build, she had humans do the work. This is the story of how she created Quanta, the accounting software that’s taking ...

Ben Tossell used to listen to Mixergy interviews as he hunted for a big idea to launch. Then he nailed it. MakerPad, an educational company for people who wanted to build using no code. It did so well...

Pepper is creating content for clients like Shopify, Adobe and Instacart. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of posts & videos. And this is content that leads to sales. In this interview, founder...

Ethan Smith runs Graphite, the SEO & AEO company that helps brands like Webflow show up on Google’s page one and ChatGPT’s first answer. This is how he does it Ethan Smith is the founder and CEO o...

Coming into this interview I wasn’t even sure what “AI Transformation” was, let alone why so many companies pay for it. Here’s the deal: Tenex, the company founded by Alex Lieberman & Arman Hezark...

“Why did you launch yet another voice dictation app?” I asked Dan Shipper, founder of Every. I thought he’d tell me that there was some kind of research that showed people needed ano...

I’ve been talking with founders who used AI to build companies, but aren’t getting enough customers. I found the perfect person to show them how to grow. Neil Patel has been on the cutting...

AI changed everything. During their time at Y Combinator, startups typically grew revenue weekly by 2-4%. Now? 10-20%! PER WEEK. YC President Garry Tan told me the reason is simple: AI transformed sof...

How can Read.ai keep growing when 1) there are loads of meeting note taking apps, and 2) platforms like Zoom keep adding note-taking features? That’s what I asked its founder David Shim David Sh...

I keep seeing AI agencies pop up everywhere, offering to AI-ify businesses. But what are they AI’ing? How are they doing it? Seems too general and unfocused to work. Still, they do. I wanted to ...

Pavel Doležal built Keboola to $15 million per year. How he did it: 1. Start with consulting, so clients tell you what they need 2. Build software that makes companies’ chaotic data accessible. ...

Ever wish someone would text you every day to make sure you stuck to your goals? That’s exactly what Adam Gilbert built — first for fitness, now for business. He’s the founder of My Body Tutor and Don...

How is Close doing so well in the CRM space against such big competitors? The answer: focus. Instead of chasing enterprise clients or trying to build a CRM that does everything from web hosting to cal...

Hiring has been a huge issue for me. And in a past interview with Cameron Herold, I brought it up because he’s the founder of the COO Alliance, the world’s leading network for the second i...

A topic we don’t talk about on Mixergy is how to actually manage a company. I remember when I was in NYU as an undergrad I loved all my business classes, but management just didn’t feel li...

About a year ago I realized that no matter how much effort we’ve put into my email list, I could never double the response rate. We kept growing it, but people were not using email much. So I st...

I’ll be honest with you. I felt guilt about an interview that I did years ago with today’s guest. This was back in, let me see here, 2013. I interviewed Sam Ovens about how he built up thi...

How does a former lawyer build a multi-million dollar company that teaches social skills. Jordan Harbinger is the co-founder of The Art of Charm, a company that teaches confidence and emotional intell...

On August 4, 2008, I posted a video up on Mixergy where I looked up into the web cam on my computer and I said “I failed.” And I said that I was going to shut down my invitation business a...

A few weeks ago, Andrew was interviewed about his inner doubt by Samantha Alford of WomeninBusinesspodcast.com. I (Arie Saint) thought it was too good not to share with our audience, so I’m publ...

Update: based on the comments we’re getting, Jermaine sent this PDF about Automation. How does a high school senior from the inner city turn $70 into a multimillion dollar instruction web site? ...

How does a wristband help a founder build a $169 million company? Ryan Allis is the founder of iContact, a provider of email marketing tools for small businesses. And a company that was recently sold ...

Many founders I interviewed on Mixergy told me about how their companies virtually disappeared after they sold them. But 4 years after selling Reddit to Conde Nast, Steve Huffman is so proud of how mu...

The founders of Airbnb are guys who couldn’t make rent a few years ago, but they kept turning desperation into creative solutions. In October 2007, eager to make extra money, they noticed that l...

You listen to my programs because I don’t do the cute “let’s get to know the author” interviews that others are known for. I hunt down information that you can use because I...