The Startup Ideas Podcast
The best businesses are built at the intersection of emerging technology, community, and real human needs.
Leveraged Agency Progression Framework
A three-phase approach to building AI startups by starting with manual service work, then systematically replacing human labor with AI agents while maintaining service pricing and margins.
How It Works
Phase 1: Manual labor agency (learn edge cases, $1-5K/month). Phase 2: AI agent integration (double margins to 80%, handle 10x clients, $5-25K/month). Phase 3: Multiple tiers with enterprise/self-serve/API offerings ($5M ARR goal).
Components
Find extremely boring, painful tasks that everyone needs
Start manual agency doing 3-6 months of work yourself
Document every edge case and create SOPs
Wire AI agents to mirror your SOPs exactly
Keep same service pricing (outcome stays same for client)
Add enterprise tier, self-serve tier, and API access
Reinvest profits into better agents and content distribution
When to Use
When you want to build an AI startup with high probability of success, need to understand domain expertise deeply, or want to be profitable from month one while learning customer needs.
When Not to Use
When you have deep domain expertise already, are building consumer products requiring scale first, or have access to significant capital and can afford long burn periods.
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
Example
“Start a PDF-to-Salesforce data entry service. Spend 4 months manually processing forms for 5 clients at $500/month each. Document every data validation rule and edge case. Build AI agents to replicate your exact process. Keep charging $500/month but now serve 50 clients with 80% margins instead of 40%.”
Related Knowledge
Rigged Slot Machine Framework
A business model where you know with high confidence that investing $1 will return $1.
Digital-to-IRL Conversion Framework
A systematic approach to taking successful digital products, services, or communities and recreating them as premium in-person experiences.
I'm trying to create like a rigged slot machine where I put a dollar in and get $1.30 out
Focus on predictable profitability rather than uncertain growth - find formula that works and scale it
vitamin or painkiller vitamin don't want to be painkiller really need
Products solving urgent, desperate problems (painkillers) succeed better than nice-to-have improvements (vitamins)
This isn't your 101. You're going to be running a business by yourself with AI employees.
AI agents represent a fundamental shift from simple automation to full business operation assistance
usage-based business model MicroSaaS going get more more common
Usage-based pricing will become increasingly common for MicroSaaS products instead of flat monthly subscriptions