10 AI Startup Ideas in 43 Minutes (#506)
Sean Porey, who has invested $2 million in AI startups, outlines ten business ideas from AI sales agents that instantly qualify leads to self-executing to-do lists that turn goals into action. He frames AI as the fourth technological wave and argues the next trillion-dollar opportunity comes from digital intelligence.
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All right, I'm setting my timer. I'm going to give myself 31 minutes to give you 10 specific AI business ideas. You know, I'm doing this because I see a lot of stuff on YouTube that's like, hey, AI is the next big thing. And then they're like, you're like, okay, what? How? For me? What should I do with it? and there's no answers. Or AI's going to kill us all. Like, really? Shit. How? Like, we don't know. Um, so I just don't like the, the just general enthusiasm without the specifics. And so this is all about the specifics. And I think I'm well qualified to do this because I've, my whole life I've been an entrepreneur and I've been an idea guy. I ran an idea lab where I was basically funded to just come up with business ideas and then build them for 6 years. Um, I then have a podcast now. This podcast is all about business ideas. I've also invested in the last year, maybe $2 million into AI companies. So I've about a dozen companies that I said yes to, plus probably another 100 or so that we passed on. So I've seen a bunch in this AI space. I know what the, the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are doing. That's where I live. And so I wanted to share with you my list from number 10 to number 1, number 1 being the best, the biggest opportunity that I see in the, in the space. That if I wasn't just chilling out rich and happy and being a dad, I would go and jump in and do these right away. Instead, I'm gonna invest from the side. I hope somebody takes an idea from this list and just goes and does it. Um, but before I tell you the ideas, a quick little history lesson, a quick little trip down memory lane, a little I told you so. 3 years ago on this exact podcast, I did an episode called Is GPT the Next Big Thing? I think it was like episode 94. We're on like 500 now, and this was back in July of 2020, so it's like, COVID had just hit, people are freaking out. But me and Sam got on the set podcast and we said, is GPT-3 the next big thing? We had gotten access to this tool that there was no ChatGPT at the time. You had to like get a favor from somebody to even be able to try it. And we used it to write rap lyrics, which of course being idiots that we are, we thought, oh, that's the best thing we can do with artificial intelligence. And so we, well, we thought it was amazing. We were like, wow, this is really good. And we, the episode, is GPT the next big thing? We were basically saying, yeah, it will be. Now that's 2020. Fast forward today, OpenAI is worth $90 billion. They're doing $1 billion a year. ChatGPT is the fastest growing product in history to hit 100 million users. Um, you know, so I'm not saying that we called it. I'm not saying that we're business geniuses. We kind of did, and we kind of are. So, you know, if you, if you listen to me then, you probably could have made a bunch of money. Listen to me now because I got— for today I'm going to share with you 10 specific AI business ideas ranging from simple doable things for somebody who's non-technical all the way to like moonshot, really big ideas that, uh, I think are game-changing. And so I'm going to read you the list from number 10 to number 1. They include things from about, you know, robotics and therapy and celebrities and education to porn to— I got everything. And the last one, the very last one, I think is the biggest idea, um, that exists today. So the biggest— I think it is the biggest opportunity that exists today for any entrepreneur. You know, like, um, when you think about, uh, Mark Zuckerberg stumbling into sort of like the social networking craze, or, um, You know, when Steve Jobs created the iPhone, that changed everything. There are these sort of change everything moments. And like, you know, I was a kid when the internet came out. I'm 35 years old now. So I was, you know, I remember being on the internet as like a 12 or 13-year-old, um, using like, you know, whatever, very basic, uh, dial-up connections and BBS forums and stuff like that. But it was clear to me that the internet was a thing. It's just, I was a kid. So I didn't think about how I could bend, like, I just wanted to use it. I didn't think about I wasn't an entrepreneur. I was a teenager, right? I couldn't even spell entrepreneur. Still can't. Um, but then when I graduated from college, I graduated in 2010, the iPhone had come out the year before. I think the App Store had come out, but I wasn't— I didn't have the light bulb on. I didn't really understand that there are few times— I think, what's that Warren Buffett quote? He's like, um, something like, uh, there are moments, there are moments every once in a while where where the skies get cloudy and it begins to rain opportunity. And when it does, let us not run out with spoons, but with bathtubs to, you know, to catch the opportunity. So I didn't really realize when mobile was the big opportunity. It was right in front of my nose, right? Like we were working on things and we had a mobile developer, one guy, and we would, you know, we would, we would try to make a mobile version of our website, but we didn't realize, yo, mobile's changing everything. And all of a sudden, You know, this thing's got a GPS. That means now Uber is possible. Google Maps is possible. This has a camera. So that means that Snapchat and Instagram are, are now possible. Um, you know, I'm carrying this with me everywhere. So all of a sudden WhatsApp is possible. Uh, you know, this thing has an accelerometer inside. That means that MyFitnessPal is possible, right? So the, the technology unlocks the opportunity. So now to my specific list of 10 ideas. That I think anybody could do. And by the way, well, here's my disclaimer. These specific ideas don't matter. I know I'm hyping them up a little bit, but it's not the ideas that matter. Uh, Naval has this great quote where he says, you know, you don't read books for the information. You read books because books spark ideas in your head, right? Reading a great book is like, uh, you know, lighting a match or starting a bonfire in your brain. And so that's my goal. I want to start a little bonfire in your brain. I want these ideas to, help you get to the real ideas. I don't think that these are necessarily gonna be the ones, but I hope that they really stimulate you to, to think. Um, okay, so let's jump in. Number 10, eliminate the wait. Okay, so we think of the internet as this fast place, a place where you can just click and you instantly get what you want. But, um, that's true. Like the internet, if you just compare normal business, I used to have to drive, go to my car, drive to a store, park, get out, walk in if I wanted to buy something. And now the internet, I don't have to do any of that shit. I just website, click, boom, it'll be here in 2 days, right? That's kind of amazing. So the internet has killed waiting in a bunch of different ways, and that's generated billions and billions and billions of dollars of value. But all waiting is not gone. There's still some waiting left. Um, I want to tell you about it. So like, for example, this is, uh, one of my companies is called Shepard, right? I'm a minority owner of, uh, of Shepard. I bought a minority stake earlier this year. They do a very simple thing. So they find you employees overseas that will cost you 80% less than if you're hiring in the US. They're like recruiters that will find the best talent in the Philippines or LATAM that just solves whatever problem you have. Okay, great. So now when somebody comes to this website and this business works, right, it makes millions of dollars a year, but it also loses, I believe, millions of dollars a year because of one very simple problem, which is that when you click start hiring here, it's going to tell you to book a call. It says, great, tell us some information. And then when you do, when once you fill this in, uh, you know, you fill in a small form. As soon as you do that, then it's going to, uh, tell you to book a call. And that book of calls might be 2 days from now, 3 days from now, 4 days from now. Um, by then you're cooled off, right? Like you, you know, you've lost anybody. Any salesperson knows that like you need to strike while the iron's hot. You're gonna have the highest conversion rate in that moment. So let me show you what an AI company is doing that I think is very smart. This is called some company called SameDay. I'm not involved in this at all. I just think they're, it's a very cool idea. So they're like, hey, what if we just had a phone agent, an AI phone agent that could just reply to anybody who calls you right away? So, uh, listen to this. How can I help you today? Yeah, I got a call from my wife a minute ago. She said there's a bunch of ants coming through our kitchen window. How soon can you guys come out? That's the worst. Luckily, I can probably have someone out as soon as tomorrow to take care of those ants. Can I get your address to confirm? Yeah, it's, uh, but can you transfer you to a person? Yeah, I can transfer you to a person, but you'll be on hold for about 9 minutes. Now I can answer any questions and get you scheduled in under 2. How does that sound, Aaron? That sounds good, but what's it going to cost? Oh, of course, I just need to know. You get the idea. Uh, I think it's funny they made him have an accent. But, um, you know, instead of I'm interested and then 3-day gap, now we get on a Zoom call and you're trying to remember the context and then we fumble and bumble. How about right when I say I'm interested, an AI sales agent is gonna call me, uh, you know, or, or create a voice call right here on the, on, on the browser and, um, ask the questions that it needs to do to qualify me as a potential customer, as well as answer the questions that you have and even give you a sales pitch, right? You might look at that and be like, oh, you know, it's a little slow the way it talks, or it's not as good as a human. And I would tell you two things. Number one, that, uh, the conversion rate in the moment versus the drop-off of people not, not, you know, bouncing because they don't want to book a call or, um, not showing up to the call, like the show-up rate might be 65% to a call. Uh, you know, you get these huge drop-offs for every step of the, every additional step in the funnel. So you wanna just remove steps in any funnel. So I believe that an AI sales agent will be, um, higher converting than doing it the sort of slower human way. And the second thing is, this is V1. Imagine, you know, like you remember the V1 of anything, the brick cell phones or the V, even V1 of the iPhone compared to what we have now on iPhone 15. Like, just wait 2 years. This is gonna be incredible. And it's already good enough to, um, make up for the fact that you know, you know how many businesses don't even have a phone number or don't answer the phone when you call them? Like every pest control service or lawn care service or self-storage facility or whatever, you name it. Um, you can go and become the, uh, the AI phone sales guy for every business on the internet. I think that's, that's one opportunity that's there for the taking is forget this whole idea of, you know, call me, I'll call you back or book a call in a few days and we'll talk. It's no, no, no. It's going to be, we'll talk right now. With my highly trained sales agent who always sticks to the script, is always polite, never gets frustrated, never gets sick, never takes a day off. That's what's going to happen here. That, that's, that's where this is going. Okay. Idea number 9, therapy for everybody. So therapy used to be pretty taboo and every year it's becoming less and less so. Every year more and more people are going to therapy and there are multiple billion-dollar therapy startups that just connect you with a therapist. However, that's still only a fraction of the opportunity. How do you make this 100 times more accessible, right? Like, I think most people could probably benefit from having somebody to talk to, having somebody who's there for them, supportive, ask good questions, gives good advice. That seems like something that's going to help every couple, every individual person, every executive, etc. And, uh, the biggest barrier to this is now is cost and sort of like the friction or privacy that's involved. It's almost like, uh, remember how Hims came out and they were like, you know what, erectile dysfunction is a big deal. It's a big problem, but people don't want to go to the doctor, admit this to another person, and then have to go to a pharmacy and say, hey, can I get my pills please? Um, instead, what if it was, you could just telemedicine, you could just get diagnosed online, get the prescription really quickly from the comfort of your own home without going anywhere. And then we'll deliver it to your doorstep in very discreet packaging. And there you go. And Hims and RØDE did this and built billion-dollar companies just on that one, that one way of increasing access. Well, I think for therapy, you gotta do two. I think you gotta decrease the cost and increase the privacy. So, solution, put an AI therapist in everyone's pocket. You train it on 100 million hours of therapy, uh, you know, transcripts and, um, and conversations that, that, uh, that exist or could exist. And, um, and you provide the service to, to everybody, even people who can't afford $100 an hour therapist or $200 an hour therapist. Um, you know, you drop the cost of that by 100x. So how do I get this for $10 a month or $5 a month? That's the, that's the big opportunity. And how do I, in doing so, you would 100x the number of people that get this benefit, right? It's a win-win. And, uh, you know, I don't know the exact specifics, like, you know, you may need, it's gonna take some time to train this to be good. Um, there may be some things like, you know, the difference between creating drugs or a supplement, like you have to get, you have to do like either clinical trials and get FDA approval or you just create a vitamin and you can like sell that online tomorrow. You know, it might have to be framed less medically and more like a life coach, I'm not sure. But the idea of providing therapy for everybody is a big idea. Number 8, robots that automate warehousing. So I, for my e-commerce business, was running a warehouse for, I don't know, a year, year and a half. Uh, we had a, I don't know, 10,000 or 15,000 square foot facility here in California, and we had 10, 20 people there. Absolute pain in the ass for everybody. Nobody liked it. They didn't like working there. We didn't like having people there. We didn't like running the thing. It was slow. It was expensive. It was bad in like pretty much every single way. And then you look at Amazon and Amazon has invested billions of dollars. I've read anything from $10 billion all the way up to $100 as an estimate of how much they've invested in R&D. Around their warehouse automation. Uh, back in the mid-2000s, they bought a company for almost a billion dollars, Kiva, I think Kiva Systems. And those are those little sleds. You can see these insane videos online. The sled basically like goes into the warehouse, finds the set of boxes that somebody ordered something from, picks it up, drives back. And these are all like, there's hundreds of these going at once and they're all like part of one big brain. So they know how to never bump into each other. Um, and so they, then they drive all the way up to a human who's sitting in a chair who just pulls the item out of the box, puts it in the package. And, um, that's, you know, what the Amazon product is. And this is a perfect example of my export framework. So my export business framework is basically, it's a way to generate business ideas, which is you look at any big company and you see what did they spend millions of dollars building a homebrew solution for something that, uh, works for them and made their life better. And then can you export that idea as a product that any company could use without having to spend the money on the R&D? Tons of examples of this. Uh, simple one, LaunchDarkly. Um, billion-dollar company now. They were working at Facebook. Facebook had a feature that they had built interno— a product they had built internally, spent a bunch of engineering resources building, which was a way to launch new features under feature flags, meaning you launch a feature, it's in the app, but you can turn it on for 5% of the population. If it's bug-free, then you can turn it on for 25% of the population. Or if it starts to have a bug, you can turn it off quickly, uh, remotely from your server. So the idea of feature flags, they productized it, took it out there and said, hey, the thing that Facebook uses for their app, you should use in your app. And of course it works. So I think somebody's gonna do that here with Amazon's warehouse technology. I'll just give you this crazy stat. Just the, this stat is the business plan for this business, right? I talk about this idea of one chart businesses, one stat businesses. It's, a single stat that basically encapsulates the entire opportunity, which is that today 2% of all warehouses use robotics, right? So 2% of all fulfillment warehouses are using robots today. That number's going very close to 100%. And so just the shift from what's going to take it from 2% to 100%, you could just sit down and brainstorm what is that going to take? Is it new robotics technology? Is it better sales, uh, you know, better sales and development process? Is it consulting practice? What are the different ways you could take that number from 2 to 100? I think that's just one big opportunity. All right. Number 7, similar to what I just said, consulting McKinsey for AI. So technologies come, but they don't— it's not evenly distributed. Doesn't just get everywhere all at once, right? There's still like, I don't know, 4 million people with dial-up internet using AOL to get online right now in the United States. And so, um, it takes time for these technologies to sort of propagate through the, through the community, through the population. And so AI, AI does all this amazing stuff. It can help businesses become more efficient, more smart, more intelligent, serve their customers better. But it's not just gonna like appear overnight in every company, um, at all. No way. And so I think somebody can build a killer combo of conferences, content, and consulting, the 3 C's, package those together. And build something. So here's what I would do if I'm working at McKinsey, right? I'm one of these, you know, fancy pants, smart people who works at, gets a job at McKinsey. And you have two choices. You're either going to grind the McKinsey ladder for like the next, I don't know, 5 to 10 years with the end goal of maybe becoming a partner someday and making a million bucks a year. Or door number two, quit your job tomorrow and launch an AI-specific consulting practice. That is going to identify one type of customer. Maybe it's, uh, mid-market industrial companies or it's lawyer law firms or dental practices or whatever, and identify AI market fit. So identify one AI tool or process that would help one type of customer and start there. Start consulting there. You can build a multimillion dollar service business from there and stack more and more. And basically in the same 10 years, instead of just grinding it out at McKinsey, just spend 5 years doing this on AI, building the AI consulting company and sell it back to McKinsey for 100 or 1,000x the payout. You know, you— I believe that there's going to be billion-dollar consulting companies that are specifically just about AI, that the big consulting companies, Deloitte, PwC, McKinsey, etc., they're going to need to buy. They're going to acquire practices that, that do this. And so I think if you have the chops to do it, conferences, content, and consulting, I think a combo of those 3 would work. And specifically around conferences, what I don't mean is what I think everybody wants to do is create the AI conference. That's cool. Somebody's going to do that, but that's also very crowded. Instead, I think the easier opportunity is to create the AI for X conference. So AI for healthcare conference. Hey, healthcare, you work, you have a healthcare company. Uh, we have a conference that's specifically about marrying the best AI companies and startups and experts to healthcare companies like you and seeing how you guys are going to be using AI in the next 3 years in order to build a better company. And I think you could do that with every niche, every industry, every industry could have this. So you could do this in healthcare, you could do this in whatever, you could do this in farming, you could do this in any industry, any vertical industry. You could create conferences around that. So I think that's separately just a good idea. All right, next one, Cameo. Okay, so Cameo was this app that got really popular because it lets you buy shoutouts and greetings from celebrities. Great. But if we just step back for a second, like influencers and celebrities make money off their name, their face, their voice, all that. And today, if they want to do that, they have to cut these deals with companies. They have to agree, hey, you're going to have to fly fly out to Tucson and we're gonna film this commercial and you're gonna be here on set all day and you have to read these lines and it's a pain in the ass and that's why you have to charge a bunch of money for it. Well, now that AI's here, we have something called deepfake technology, which basically means you can make a fake video of anyone's face. Uh, you've probably seen the, uh, the deepfake Tom Cruise, or you've seen the deepfake, um, music video that's, that was made where the guy's shape face was shifting from one celebrity to the next. Indiana Jones, I think, used deepfake tech to have like the young Indiana versus the old Harrison Ford, Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones. Deepfakes are getting really, really good. And so this is an opportunity. Now, here's the problem. Here's where everyone gets it wrong. People think, entrepreneurs think, I talk to a lot of startups that do this. They're pitching me for investment and they're like, we're going to make this deepfake tech. It's going to be great. It's not a tech problem really right now. It's actually a rights problem. So what somebody needs to do, the move here is not to go all in on product, but to go all in on biz dev, which is a total narrative violation. Nobody says, hey, go all in on biz dev, but that's what you need to do for this business. What you gotta do is create some sort of digital likeness license. You need to go to athletes and celebrities, everybody CAA represents and WME. You gotta go to them and you gotta get partner with them and basically say, hey, I'd like to sign up to be your rights provider, rights holder and provider and license Um, licensing technology for you so that anytime a brand comes and wants to use your name and face and voice, um, they can do so and you can get paid for it. They can have the official training data for you. They can have your signature and your rights that saying you're, you're allowed to use my face and my voice to do this. And then after you have the rights, once you, and, and this is beautiful by the way, because we all know in businesses the value of a business is in the defensibility. And the defensibility here is not the technology, it's the rights ownership. So if you can go lock up the rights, there's a land grab right now. If you can go lock up the rights to the right names and faces and voices, um, and you own that, right? You either license it from them and then you sub-license it out, or you create the product that they use to manage their rights and licenses. Uh, you have a moat because there's people only want celebrities to do this. And so, um, Whoever gets them first wins. And after that, you can either buy technology, partner with technology, do whatever you want to actually deliver this deepfake stuff. And so, you know, in the future, when LeBron James does a McDonald's commercial, he's not going to have to go fly to Georgia and film that commercial. They're just going to put in an API request, pay the money, get the license to his face, his voice, his whatever. Then they're going to be able to script it. He's going to be able to sign off for approval. That's it. Like that's how the whole process is gonna go. He's gonna make more money with less time. That's where that's going. So idea number 5 is the opposite of that, the anti-Cameo. So I was on TikTok yesterday and I saw this video of MrBeast giving away iPhones. Now, your boy's not a dummy, so I know he's not actually doing that. This was a deepfake, but a lot of people didn't know that. They were clicking on it. And in fact, MrBeast tweeted this out, was like, hey, A lot of people are seeing this and this is fucked up. How can I get rid of this? Like, how do I stop this? This is terrible. You're using my face in ways that I definitely don't want. Similarly, I saw, you know, Taylor Swift is all the rage right now because she's dating Travis Kelce. Somebody used Midjourney or one of the AI image tools to make photos of Taylor Swift like smoking weed or whatever. They put her in a bunch of compromising situations that you wouldn't want to be in. She doesn't want to be in. That's bad for her brand. But now it's easy for anybody to just deepfake that. And so, um, you need an anti-Cameo. So the, so protection. So the takedown and protection and detection and monitoring service for all these celebrities to say, hey, we are scouring the web to make sure your face is not showing up in deepfake porn or in ads that you're not actually endorsing and things like that. Um, that's gonna become a no-brainer business. It's a, it's a consequence of how good this technology is. And by the way, for all my crypto haters out there, this is a great blockchain use case. There's a company doing this that, um, basically what they do is they say, yeah, we're gonna basically let you create, uh, every, everyone who, who is a celebrity or whatever, anybody, any company, you have a private key. And so anytime there's media out there, you can sign the, sign the media with your private keys that only you have controlled. To say, yes, this is real. I actually said this. I actually vouch for this. I actually created this. I actually endorsed this. And what's going to happen is that in the future, media that doesn't have that digital signature is going to be seen as untrustworthy. And so what they did with the blockchain was very smart, was they let anybody create their keys, their digital signature, so that they can sign off on these and have it encoded that yes, I indeed Did say this, do say this, I endorsed this, I allowed for this. So that's going to be a big deal. All right, number 4, AI tutors. So education is obviously a big space. How amazing would it be if everybody had their own AI tutor? So everybody had a patient, infinitely intelligent tutor who is going to let them just take a picture of the problem that you're trying to solve. You can ask me to explain it. You can ask me for more examples. You can ask me to go slower. You can ask me to go faster. You can, the tutor can quiz you after they've explained it to you once to make sure that you understand the concept. The tutor can draw diagrams. The tutor can animate diagrams faster than any human tutor could, better than anyone could on a chalkboard. And ultimately they can keep track of what you have mastery on and where you need work. And it can kind of customize a curriculum that fits you versus just you going by the book of whatever, whatever the herd is trying to learn right now. And so I think an amazing thing that's going to happen is that we're going to get these AI tutors that are really going to help, you know, help teach you. And I think this is one of the big use cases of ChatGPT today is like sort of like homework shortcuts. But I think part of those shortcuts are going to be not just do it for you, but, uh, explain it, explain it to me if I want to learn, right? And so you're not gonna be able to force people to learn, but for the people who do wanna learn, I think an AI tutor is gonna be a kind of a game changer. I know for me, I used to love watching Khan Academy videos anytime I had a question, 'cause Sal Khan is just an amazing teacher. He could teach millions of people 'cause he's patient, he's clear, he, uh, has a very good little drawing setup. This is what's gonna happen with AI. We're gonna have Sal Khans for all of us, some that are funny, some that are good at math, some that are good at, really slow explanations, some that are very advanced and very— keep you on your toes. You're going to have different AI tutors to choose from. Okay. Number 3, call center accent changes. This is a fun one. So a lot of customer service help, as we know, is offshore. It's cheaper. That's why businesses do it. However, there's one big cost that people get enraged when you call You know, you're calling Dell for help and, uh, you know, all of a sudden you're getting Arjun in India who says, hey, it's Arjun from Dell and he's got the accent and he doesn't quite understand what you're saying. The connection isn't great, blah, blah, blah. Well, there's companies right now that are doing AI accent removal. So what they're doing is they, the guy Arjun's in India, but when he talks, he sounds like Adam in, you know, California. Um, because on the fly they're able to adjust using AI, his voice, so that he doesn't have the accent. And so think about it, if you're a company, would you not pay an extra, whatever, 5%, 10% to be able to remove accents from all of your customer support people so that, you know, you have higher NPS, higher customer service scores and less issues and complaints? Of course, of course you will. And so now you multiply that across a very big industry of customer support. And that's one really specific way that you take this technology unlock of being able to imitate anyone's voice and you apply it in a business context. So number 2, I had to do it. I had to do it. You know me. I'm the guy who's been telling you that OnlyFans was going to be a big business for years now. AI porn, aka the fantasy factory. So porn is one of the biggest markets in the world. Uh, historically porn has been an early adopter of new technology. So video streaming, you know, early on was used for porn. Online payments early on was used for porn. And so porn has been an early adopter of many new technologies. Um, and I think there's a big benefit for AI porn. So first, I think on the consumer side, you're going to have On the demand side, you have infinite personalization to your taste. Like, have you ever gone to a porn site and seen how many categories there are? There's like a trillion categories. Why? Because there's a trillion fantasies that people have that they're looking for. And, um, you know what, whatever, however number of categories they have, there's probably actually room for 100 times more, right? Because that's just what they're able to service. That's not actually the limitations of what people want or what they're interested in. And so infinite personalization is, is the first thing. So what exactly is your thing? We can provide that to you. That's going to beat out somebody else who just says, here's what I have. Do you like it? Right. So it's like the difference between, you know, going to Blockbuster back in the day and seeing 25 movies on the shelf versus Netflix or Amazon, which have an infinite shelf. Um, it's the difference between, you know, uh, watching, you know, one episode of America's Funniest Home Videos versus opening up TikTok anytime you want, swiping, getting personalized entertainment, bite-sized entertainment for you in an infinite— for an infinite scroll, right? Like, it's— one is a lot more powerful and, and, uh, and, and, uh, will satisfy demand much better. Okay, then the supply side. AI porn, I believe, is more ethical. So, you know, just like the way we have plant-based proteins and cruelty-free makeup and vegan leather, no humans are going to be harmed in the production of this video, right? Like, I think that Uh, the idea that we could satisfy the demand for porn without subjecting people to the lifestyle of being a porn professional, um, is— is that what they call them? Porn— porn— I like how they don't call themselves porn professionals. Porn stars. I like that. I'm a business star, not an entrepreneur. Um, yeah, so I think that's gonna happen. And I think for the companies, it drops your cogs down, right? So like, you don't have to worry about all the takedown notices and copyright issues and lawsuits that you're going to have, that you have from, uh, from people uploading stolen works or having to share revenue with all the production companies. It's just going to drop down to whatever the cost is of the GPU to create the thing, right? That's, that's what it's going to drop down to. And so I believe, you know, if you ever go want to go down a rabbit hole, go look up the company MindGeek in Canada. They own all the porn sites. It's a, you know, a multi, multi-billion dollar conglomerate just spinning off tons and tons of cash. Somebody's going to do— somebody's going to go after that market with AI. And I think they will win because, again, way more powerful tool to satisfy demand, way lower COGS and more ethical supply. That's a winning formula. This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client's whole history— calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed. HubSpot, grow better. All right, now we're here. Number 1, this is it. This is the winner of my list. Okay, this is the number 1 biggest opportunity. And I hate to be that guy that's like, this is the biggest opportunity of our lifetimes, right? Like timeshare guy. All the timeshare guys who are now YouTubers just selling the biggest, the biggest next big thing. But in this case, I think it's actually warranted. I mean, AI is a big freaking deal, right? Like, you got to be nuts to be denying that at this point. And within AI, this is what I genuinely believe is the biggest opportunity. So let me just rewind for a second. If you think about the previous waves, I count 4 waves in my lifetime. Of giant sort of inflections or opportunities, the, the sort of like the big gold rush moments, the huge tidal waves that you could go surf as an entrepreneur. So the first one was early internet, right? And now you have what they used to call the information superhighway, if you remember that dorky phrase. Uh, but it was right. Information was the thing, the ability to find anything. And there's really two big winners. So Google and Amazon were the two biggest winners of the information find anything paradigm. And what you could do is, you know, Google let you go find any information and Amazon let you go find any stuff. And those two created a trillion dollars or more than a trillion dollars, almost $2 trillion of value just on those two companies alone out of the information wave. Second wave you then got was communication. So it started with email, but then quickly became all social networking, social media. So Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat. Uh, Pinterest, WhatsApp, YouTube, all of that, right? So the ability for people to communicate with each other. And this even extended, by the way, to like riders connecting, communicating with drivers, right? And Uber, basically the ability to say, I need a ride and somebody else say, I have a ride for you, right? That connecting the dots, human coordination and communication was the big second wave. And again, a trillion dollars plus of market value created out of that communication wave that came. Okay, then what's come next? And then you had the value wave, and this was now we're talking early 2010s up to basically the last decade, 2010 to 2020. And this is crypto. So Bitcoin, Ethereum, just those two alone are a trillion dollars of value that got created, right? The best investment you could make since the year I graduated, 2010, would've been into Bitcoin and Ethereum. That is the best asset that was created them as highest performer. And, uh, again, so we had digital information, then we had digital communication, then we had digital value. And so, you know, the ability to have a digital money and digital value. And so now what's the next one? The what's number 4, right? Coming into the 2020s, we're going from 2020 to 2030. What's gonna be the next one? I believe it's digital intelligence. So that's AI. Okay, so who's gonna be the Bitcoin? Who's gonna be the Google? Who's gonna be the Facebook of the intelligence wave? Well, so far we've seen, you know, NVIDIA make chips. They've done extremely well. We've seen OpenAI become almost a $100 billion company by training these models that you can use for AI applications. And I think those are great, but I think there's going to be more. And the one that I think is missing is, you know, I had two kind of that I was thinking about. The first one was self-driving cars because I'm like, okay, that's a, you know, driving is a huge part of human life. And when that goes self-driving, you're going to have safer, more efficient, more comfortable, more entertainment. You're going to have a better ride experience. And that's going to obviously change the way that cars work, right? Cars are parked 90% of the time, but when they're self-driving, you're going to park your car and you're going to say, go make me money, car. And the car's going to go drive around and be an Uber for people, picking people up, right? So just a game changer in terms of how this works. We're going to need less cars, which means we need less parking, which means we need different roads and city structures. There's a whole bunch of things that can change. But as I was thinking about that, I thought about a bigger opportunity. And the bigger opportunity is actually related. So I was like, oh man, self-driving cars are gonna be great because you just get in the car and you just say your destination and then the car's gonna figure out all the things to do to get you to your goal. So I just say, I'm trying to, hey, take me to Starbucks. It's gonna say, great, look up the nearest Starbucks, find the address, input the address to navigation, turn the car on, shift gears from park to drive, accelerate, stop at the stop sign, signal, turn, shift lanes, exit the highway, whatever, right? All of the middle steps. It's going to create a list. It's going to do them. And what I realized was that's not going to stop at just cars, that the biggest opportunity is the self-doing to-do list, just like we have the self-driving car. And what's a self-doing to-do list? A self-doing to-do list is going to be, well, all of our productivity today comes from basically the following the following system. Person thinks about what they want, goal. Then they create a list of actions that they think will move them in the direction of that goal. And then they do those actions. And the extent to which you hit your goals is based on your ability to like know what you want, create the list of things you need to do to get there, and then actually do the list. Well, I think what AI is going to do is actually change how that works. Um, it's actually going to let you just say what you want. AI will then generate the list and then it'll just do it. And so, and we've seen this by the way, so that what this is called is right now they're calling this the agents and agents might end up being the information superhighway, like a word that gets phased out over time. But here's the simple model. We've all used ChatGPT where you type something in and it gives you an answer. And the better question you ask, the better answer it'll give you. Or the, you have to know what to prompt it to do. If you don't do anything, it's just gonna sit there. It's gonna do absolutely nothing for you. Whereas there's a new model called AI agents. What AI agents are based on is that you don't need to tell it, you don't need to ask it specific questions or give it specific instructions for a task. All you need to do is tell the AI what you want as your goal. And what you want as your goal is, let's just take an example. Hey, I run an e-commerce business and I wanna reduce, my inventory waste. Okay, so I'm gonna reduce my, I'm gonna make my inventory more efficient. So the AI could then generate a list of things to do. Analyze the inventory to find the highest fast movers and slow movers. And then it will take the slow movers and it will put them on sale. It will take the fast movers and it will analyze, you know, what you're lacking, you know, where there's more demand than you have supply in stock. It'll create a purchase order, send the purchase order to the factory, and get the next order delivered for you. So you could see in theory how you'd be able to just say a goal and have the AI create a list and then do it. Another, you know, silly example, let's say I wanted to lose 15 pounds. Well, we all know to lose 15 pounds, what you need to do is you need to, you know, burn more calories than you're going to consume. Well, in theory, AI is gonna be able to help you do that. So you're gonna say, I wanna lose weight, and it's gonna say, great, We are gonna take your current weight. We're gonna then create a calorie meal plan of how many calories you're supposed to intake per day and how many you're supposed to burn per day, which is gonna create a workout plan for you. It's gonna create a meal plan for you. It's gonna then take the meal plan. It's gonna create, break that down into recipes, break the recipes down into ingredients. It's gonna go onto Instacart. It's gonna order the ingredients to your house for you. And you know, there you go, right? So it's gonna take you as far as it can. It's not gonna be able to do every single thing in the real world until you have a robot sitting in your house that's gonna then take those groceries and it's gonna prepare the meal for you, right? Like Jetsons style. And we're talking about in the future, but like, this is the future. Like, I mean, dude, I used to have this, I'm holding up my phone, like my cell phone right now that I can use to run my business, to entertain myself endlessly for hours, to play video games, to navigate all around the world. Like I can pay for things on this. I don't need my wallet. It's insane, right? This thing, this thing is insane to 12-year-old me. And 12-year-old me is not that long ago. That's 20 years ago or whatever. It's like 12-year-old me would be mind-blown because 12-year-old me had just gotten their first computer in their house. We used to have a computer room. There was a room in our house called the computer room. And whoever wanted to use the computer had to go to the computer room. And when you were in the computer room, then we got the internet through a CD from AOL. And then when we had that, you used to have to pick and choose. Do you want to be able to receive phone calls as a house Or do you want to be on the internet? Because if somebody picked up the phone when you were on the internet, you would like disconnect from the internet and they would hear crazy internet sounds. Um, like you, it was insane. Like the way that we were when I, you know, when I started on the internet to what now holding my iPhone 15 Pro Max with, you know, wireless internet while I'm driving or on an airplane is mind-blowing. And so all I'm asking you to do is just sort of think 20 years in the future, the idea that we're going to have, you know, our Jettson's robot in our house and we're gonna be able to tell our to-do list just what our wishes and dreams are, and then it's gonna create the list and do them. That's the big idea. That is the big idea. That is the idea that is mind-blowing. That's also the idea that scares people, by the way, because, you know, the thought experiment is someone says, hey, I wanna maximize, you know, uh, what's it, the paperclip example. I wanna maximize the production of paperclips or sales for my paperclips. And it's like, okay. Great, the AI, it got your goal and it doesn't care what comes in the way, right? It's gonna start shredding cars to create scrap metal to produce more paperclips, right? It will do anything to hit that goal. And so that's the scary part about AI. And now I'm not the guy to do the AI safety conversation and the AI ethics conversation. That's not me. I'm an idea guy. I'm thinking about how technology can do really cool things that will improve people's lives. And then of course, as we do them, we're gonna need to put in guide, you know, guardrails and guidelines and be able to not, you know, crush all of civilization in the process. But, um, that's kind of a Debbie Downer. I'm not really looking to get into that conversation. What I'm excited about is a future where work gets done for you. That's what's gonna come from the intelligence wave. That's different than the value wave, the communication wave, or the information wave. The intelligence wave is gonna do intelligent things. It's gonna use its brain. For you, right? It's got this right side of the AI brain that could do creative shit. It can draw, it can write, it can sing, it can make songs, it can rap, it can do anything. And then on the left side, it's got this like informational analytical brain that can— you dump in a PDF and it'll summarize it for you in a second. It'll generate a P&L for your business. It'll give you advice, strategic advice on your taxes, right? Like it could do all these things that are highly, let's say, left brain. And so now we have this AI intelligence brain and the ideas that I came up with or just my first pass at what's gonna come from this. I want to hear what you're gonna do. I mean, I'm investing in this space. If you're doing something cool, reach out to me, sean@seanporey.com. I want to hear what your ideas are and I wanna hear what you think about these. Go in the YouTube comments and let me know because that's it. Those are my ideas from 10 to 1. I hope you liked it. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope I started a little bonfire in your brain. All right, I'm outta here.
