Jun 20, 2024 · 1h 22m · startup-ideas
Do THIS to Make $30,000/month
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Greg Isenberg and Cody Schneider break down nine actionable startup and agency ideas, illustrating how founders can leverage platform shifts, AI automation, and owned media distribution to build highly profitable businesses.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Greg holds 30.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Greg as informed peer 6.3 Guest teaching 5.1 Guest disagreement 0.2 Greg pushing back 0.4
speaking balance: gold is Greg, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:04:18 Cody forcefully warns against building healthcare EHRs
Cody aggressively warns listeners to never attempt building an electronic health record startup due to entrenched government lobbying and regulatory moats.
Hardest push from Greg ▶ 47:53 Greg pivots the client target from founders directly to VC fundsGreg reframes the media agency pitch, arguing that selling directly to VC funds for deal-flow acquisition is far more lucrative than selling to individual portfolio founders.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 29:45 Cody teaches social follower scraping and validation mechanicsCody walks through the exact technical process of scraping follower emails from Twitter and LinkedIn and running validation tools to build cold newsletter subscriber lists.
Greg holds their own ▶ 42:57 Greg demonstrates YouTube business leverage with real backend dataGreg pulls up his live analytics dashboard, proving the economic flywheel of owned YouTube media by sharing exact view counts, watch hours, and ad revenue figures.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Greg as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Greg pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Case Study: Turning Cricut SVGs into a Cash-Flowing Business | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Cody shares how a listener built a business around Cricut SVG designs using Midjourney and Shopify apps. Greg validates the low-cost nature of the business model and encourages listeners to execute on ideas. | |
| Startup Idea 1: Done-For-You LinkedIn Vertical Video Agency | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Cody pitches a productized agency that scripts and repurposes vertical video for founders to exploit LinkedIn's new algorithm. Greg listens as Cody outlines the operational cadence. | |
| Sponsor Break: DesignScientist.com | 7 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Greg draws parallels to Twitter algorithmic feed changes and introduces tiered pricing models along with a specific community funnel strategy. Cody agrees and expands on founder branding dynamics. | |
| Startup Idea 2: Productized AI Automation Agency for SMBs | 7 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Cody presents search volume trends for AI automation for SMBs. Greg shares firsthand experience from his company 'You Probably Need a Robot', detailing how automation sells on clear cost savings. | |
| Startup Idea 3: AI Graphic Designer with Brand Constraints | 7 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Cody proposes an AI graphic designer constrained by brand style kits. Greg references Canva's product keynote and benchmarks the opportunity against Design Pickle's pricing model. | |
| Startup Idea 4: Ghostwritten Founder Newsletters and List Scraping | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Cody outlines scraping Twitter and LinkedIn follower lists to populate ghostwritten founder newsletters. Greg contextualizes the offer as return on audience spend and platform de-risking insurance. | |
| Startup Idea 5: Data-Driven YouTube Thumbnail and Title Library | 7 | 5 | 0 | 1 | Cody proposes a subscription library for YouTube thumbnails. Greg builds on it by stressing title-thumbnail pairings, vidIQ data integration, and revealing his own YouTube channel metrics. | |
| Startup Idea 6: Media Agency for Venture Capital Deal Flow | 8 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Greg proposes building content and media engines specifically for VC firms to drive deal flow. Cody connects this to his experience scaling Rupa Health's social channels to attract VCs. | |
| Startup Idea 7: Dedicated Video Captioning Plugin for Canva | 6 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Cody spots a gap in Canva's ecosystem for a dedicated video captioning plugin. Greg maps out a growth-to-acquisition exit strategy targeting Canva directly. | |
| Startup Idea 8: Localized Cheap Flight Deal Newsletters | 7 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Cody explains how to build a localized flight deal newsletter using automated Google Flights alerts. Greg introduces Canadian regional sites like YYZ Deals and suggests unbundling metro flight lists globally. | |
| Startup Idea 9: Unbundling Accounting with Verticalized 'QuickBooks for X' | 8 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Greg brings his own idea based on Finaloop's $35M funding round, proposing unbundled accounting software for niche verticals. Cody suggests mining QuickBooks app extensions for market demand. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Isenberg: Listeners cash-flow $10K to $100K monthly executing show ideas
“They're listening to this pod and they're cash flowing, you know, 10,000, a 100,000 dollars a month sometimes.”
Schneider: LinkedIn is rolling out a TikTok-style vertical video feed
“The reason this is happening is LinkedIn is rolling out like a for you page feed, just like TikTok.”
Schneider: A LinkedIn video agency can hit $30K monthly in 180 days
“Like if you just have a little bit of execution per hours and know how to work with offshore teams, like this is easily, I bet you could get this to 30 K, you know, a month in like probably 90 to a 180 days. Like no questions asked.”
Isenberg: Platform product changes drove Twitter audience growth, not content
“I got a big Twitter audience when
Threat, two things happen.
Threads, the ability to create a thread, you know, they, that was, that wasn't a feature and became a feature on Twitter, and then number two,
The feed was latest and it moved to algorithmic.
So all …”
Schneider: Bootstrapping only works by riding macro trends, not educating markets
“Look for things that are bigger than you that are happening.
And then how do you attach yourself to them?
It's the classic playbook.
Like, especially when you're trying to bootstrap a thing or self-funded it's the only way to do it that I've seen at work.
When…”
Isenberg: Customers asking for AI tools actually just want operational automation
“So we built a AI newsletter community business called you probably need a robot.com helping people Be more productive using AI. And the biggest lesson we learned is people were asking for AI, but what did they really want? Automation.”
Isenberg: Design Pickle generates approximately $30 million in annual revenue
“They probably do
you know, thirty million a year in, in revenue.”
Schneider: Scraping Twitter followers yields a 40% to 50% valid email rate
“I've just been running this scraper, scraping emails from like my Twitter followers and then using a validation tool to like, okay, are these real or not? And like the data I'm getting back is like almost like 40 to 50% of them are valid emails, which is insan…”
Schneider: YouTube will dominate long-form, podcasting, and short-form video formats
“Like, I think YouTube is becoming the social media and they're owning it, right? They're owning long form. They're owning podcasting. They're owning short form. They're owning monetization. Like, all of the tailwinds are there for this platform to kind of just…”
Isenberg: YouTube channel gained 6,300 subscribers and $3,000 in 28 days
“And then, I added 6300 subscribers in the last 28 days. And I made an estimated revenue of 3000 dollars.”
Schneider: Founders building owned media outperform traditional VC-backed entrepreneurs
“And it's almost like you're not even playing the game at the pro level, unless you're doing this now. Like I look at the stand store guy, like he's funded, right? Like classic path, but he's also doing this. And I'm like, you're playing at a caliber, like at a…”
Schneider: Every venture capitalist secretly wants to be famous
“Also, every VC you talk to wants to be famous. Every single one of them. They all get envy on this shit.”
Isenberg: Venture capitalists dominated early Tech Twitter follower counts, not founders
“That's why people forget, but in tech Twitter, in the beginning, the people who had the most amount of followers weren't entrepreneurs. It was the VCs. Like the Fred Wilson's and, you know, all those guys.”
Schneider: Scott's Cheap Flights lost its appeal after rebranding to Going.com
“It's now going or something stupid. And it's just evolved into this like It's just behemoth that, you know, it's just, it's lost all, all flavor.”
Schneider: Founders should never build an EHR startup to fight the government
“Do not build an EHR. Just full stop. Do not build this. Like if you're listening right now, never even think about this idea, never approach it. There's no way you can win. You're fighting the government.”
Isenberg: Niche creators with 5,000 to 10,000 followers generate millions annually
“Like, I know guys, girls, whatever, who have five, 10,000 followers are making millions of dollars a year from that from that group.”