Learn how a successful $215 million AI CEO would build a profitable AI startup from scratch in just 30 days. This comprehensive 2026 playbook reveals insider strategies, actionable steps, and proven frameworks for launching your own AI business.
🎯 **What You'll Learn:**
- Step-by-step 30-day startup blueprint
- How to identify profitable AI opportunities
- Essential tools and technologies needed
- Marketing and customer acquisition strategies
- Revenue generation tactics
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- Common pitfalls to avoid
Perfect for aspiring entrepreneurs, business owners looking to pivot into AI, and anyone interested in building a profitable startup in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
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#AIStartup #Entrepreneurship #MakeMoney #BusinessStrategy #AI2026 #StartupGuide #PassiveIncome #TechBusiness #BusinessAdvice #OnlineBusiness
🎯 **What You'll Learn:**
- Step-by-step 30-day startup blueprint
- How to identify profitable AI opportunities
- Essential tools and technologies needed
- Marketing and customer acquisition strategies
- Revenue generation tactics
- Scaling strategies for rapid growth
- Common pitfalls to avoid
Perfect for aspiring entrepreneurs, business owners looking to pivot into AI, and anyone interested in building a profitable startup in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
💡 Get the exact playbook that successful AI entrepreneurs are using to build million-dollar companies in 2026.
#AIStartup #Entrepreneurship #MakeMoney #BusinessStrategy #AI2026 #StartupGuide #PassiveIncome #TechBusiness #BusinessAdvice #OnlineBusiness
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TechTranscript
00:00So let's imagine you have to start a company again. Walk me through the first 30 days. What
00:05will you do? If I have to start a company again, I think the first thing is... This is Yang,
00:10co-founder and CEO of OpusClip, an AI tool that turns long videos into viral short clips. In just
00:17two and a half years, he built it into one of the fastest growing AI companies in the world.
00:2250 million users, $215 million valuation. LLMs are advancing so fast and large companies are
00:29releasing better and better products. Do you think there are any niches or
00:33problems that are not worth solving anymore? If you asked me like three years ago,
00:37the answer will be much simpler. I think every AI founder should be somehow AGI-peeled,
00:42which means that you can predict what the foundation models can release in the next few
00:47weeks or months. The rules have changed and most founders don't see it yet. Yang breaks down where
00:52the opportunities are, what to avoid, and what it takes to win in 2026.
00:57This video is sponsored by HubSpot. Okay, Yang, thank you so much for being here. You've built
01:05one of the fastest growing AI companies, 12 million users in 12 months, 215 million in valuation. Can
01:13you introduce yourself in 60 seconds? What do you do? Thank you for having me, Marina. I'm Yang,
01:18co-founder and CEO at OpusClip. We build the products that turn long-form, dense information,
01:23content like articles, blogs, footage, papers into engaging contents like short-form videos that can
01:30attract your audiences worldwide. We have gathered actually more than 15 million users in the past
01:35two and a half years. What? This is crazy. Wow. Super crazy. And also like your story is fascinating
01:42because you started during COVID and you started with all the different features and only this one
01:47stuck. Can you talk to me about this mindset of like trying things and seeing them not work and not
01:53giving up? Yeah. Um, it's kind of frustrating for sure. I think in the early days, like we are like
01:59new founders or early founders. Um, it's actually the passion that drove us to continuously try different
02:05things. Uh, but like probably after half a year or even one year of trying like, let's say three to
02:11four different things, if you don't still get any early signals of the product market fit, you will
02:17be easily fatigued. Um, so I think that's the challenge and we're kind of lucky that we first
02:22built a left streaming tool. Um, nobody likes it, but there's only one feature that is like, um, the
02:29clipping feature in the last mean tool, uh, that had somehow early signal of the product market fit.
02:36And also thanks to that time, which, you know, actually in the same week,
02:41TGPT was launched by open AI. Um, so we quickly married that to this, you know, standalone feature
02:47and pivoted to a new product, which is the open open split right now. What should people pay attention
02:53to when they decide to double down on one particular feature? Good question. So we were not tracking
03:00any classic OG, um, AA, RRR kind of metric. We didn't build a product for open script in the first
03:09day. We actually engineered the results, the final outcome, the final videos, and just email them to
03:16all of the potential customers. Oh, so you're like manually created. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's how you,
03:21that's how you start. Yeah. Yeah. Like we, we man, we, we work, we work with the AI
03:27to edit all these videos and write and send out to all the potential customers. And I think we got
03:32like more than 60% of positive feedback. I love this clip. I want to use it. Like I just want to
03:38tweak one thing and you know, I can publish it right away. So those are the very early feedback.
03:42And then like after a few more weeks, we built the product into a discord bot,
03:48still no interface, right? So we save a lot of time building the, you know, UI UX and all that,
03:52all that kind of stuff and just focus on delivering, delivering the value, validating the outcome.
03:57So we grabbed hundreds of thousands of creators into our discord channel and they are playing with
04:05the bot. So what we were looking at, or basically their retention, right? Their engagement of that tool.
04:10And, but, but beyond that, we also look into the discussions around the content. Like we saw people,
04:17Hey, how do you get that content? How do you get that piece of the clip? So
04:22I think in the early days, quantitative data are important, but qualitative data or feedback
04:29is also super important. When we start hearing people complaining about the queue,
04:34complaining about the quota of their data usage, we realize this is the product market fit moment.
04:41Nice. And was there a metric when you said you were tracking how often people were coming back to the
04:46bot in discord? What's a good number? Cause it's not, I feel like it's not something like Google,
04:50right. When you like Googling several times a day, but for a feature like yours, what's,
04:54what's a good metric. Yeah. The general use case for content creator, let's say they would normally
04:59have like a one piece of long form content, uh, long form footage, and they want to use our tool to,
05:07to generate like five to 10 short clips so that they can post to their channels one clip a day.
05:12Um, so I would say the average, uh, frequency of using our tools like on a weekly basis, but when
05:20we see people like come to use it every day or, you know, multiple times a week, that is a very
05:26strong usage beyond what we can imagine. So based on this story that we just talked about of you
05:33ended up finding this feature, what would be your advice to all the startup founders? What would you
05:38say is the key learning from that? The key learning is that you should build a real business with the
05:44product, not a cool demo, right? Because many people just start with building a very cool demo.
05:50Um, they showed it off to the people and you know, it looks like magic because the demo really
05:56You abolish the way it looks, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the demo shows a very strong capability,
06:03but, um, many founders failed because they didn't find a product market fit for a real business.
06:10What that means is that they are not solving, probably they're not solving a real pain point,
06:15a real painful job to be done in the real world because before your product, if they,
06:21if it is a real painful job to be done, there must be a lot of alternative solutions like, you know,
06:26humans do the job or they build some internal tools or they manually just, you know,
06:32concatenate couple of different snippets of the, or solutions to make it work, right? They spend
06:38extra time effort or, you know, painful hours to get the job down. So are you really replacing those
06:45type of like tedious or human heavy workflows? That is one part of, you know, whether it is a real
06:52business. The second thing would be how your customers, uh, understand the values you created,
06:58right? If you can tell your product value in just like 10 words, maybe, or probably you're close to
07:05a real business. If your product is just cool and all the feedback was like, this is amazing.
07:10This is awesome. But nobody want to give you their credit card information. Nobody want to ask you,
07:16what is the, you know, what is your pricing tier? It's also not helping you, um, get to the product
07:22market fit as well. I really liked the way you approached this. So you figured out the problem that
07:26people are solving manually, and then you created a product manually without any interface. And then
07:32you saw early users feedback. I really liked that approach. If people want to use that approach,
07:36what would you say comes first? Passion about particular problem or the problem itself?
07:42Yeah, I would say both of them are super critical. Um, but my first principle for passion is actually
07:50not necessarily the passion for solving the problem. I think passion is something more emotional. Um,
07:57I think all the entrepreneurs, all the founders need to have the passion to be a problem solver.
08:03You need to have the passion to be a builder, to build something that people want, to build something
08:09that, you know, ideally change the world. I think that's the passion founders need, right? You don't have to
08:14have a passion for like video clipping. You don't have to have a passion for like, you know, running a
08:20restaurant. I think all you need to have for passion is to be a problem solver, be a builder, be a game
08:28changer. And rationally speaking, the real painful job to be done is something that is inevitable in your
08:36journey. Um, you have to be very rational to figure out this is a real problems to be solved by my passion,
08:43right? Um, so the deep understanding about the industry, about the workflow, about the customer
08:49profiles, about the use cases, those are all rational. Um, so I think an emotional passion for
08:56like a bigger picture, um, just to be a builder plus, um, the rational conviction for solving a
09:05concrete problems that you know very well, those are the necessities for becoming a founder.
09:11My guest Young built a tool that creators love. And if you're interested in turning content into
09:17a career in 2026, or taking your creator career to the next level, take a look at this new ultimate
09:24content creator toolkit from HubSpot in partnership with TikTok. It's packed with resources that help
09:30you cut through the noise, what tools you actually need, AI prompts that save hours, and most importantly,
09:36how to connect your content to real revenue, not just views. My favorite section is the TikTok
09:42breakout, and I love how actionable it is. TikTok Ads Manager doesn't just help you launch ads,
09:47it shows you what's already working. I wish I had this tool 10 years ago. You can peek at top
09:53performing ads, see which products are blowing up, track trending sounds and hashtags, and even use
09:58TikTok's own AI tools to make your videos stand out. And it's not just about views, it's about turning
10:04attention into signups, customers, and recurring income. TikTok users are actually way more likely
10:10to sign up, buy, or take action compared to other platforms. And with the HubSpot integration, you
10:15can literally see which videos are converting into leads and clients inside your CRM. This toolkit was
10:21created by HubSpot in partnership with TikTok, and I'm partnering with them in this video to share it with
10:26you. So you're learning directly from the people who see the data every day. Download the toolkit for
10:31free in the description below. Honestly, if you're serious about growing as a creator, this is where
10:36you start. Let's talk about your new Agent Opus, because I heard this presentation where you compared
10:43where your tool is doing now to human editors. And yes, human editors are slightly better, but
10:50when it comes to someone who's just starting out multiple channels, Agent Opus becomes invaluable
10:55because it just takes all the content, creates, I guess, all those channels. Can you explain how it works?
11:00We currently have two products, right? The Opus Clip product is like a very refined workflow or
11:07agentic workflow that follows a rigid plan and then execute it. The Agent Opus on the other side is more
11:18agentic. There is no preset workflow. And the interaction for users is that you can just drop your
11:24drop your idea, your story or some links or some assets and instruct the agent to do whatever you want
11:35them to create. So the agent is more, is playing the role like a director, right? It's not a video
11:42editor. It's not a video creator. It's not a video generator. It's not a designer. It is a director.
11:47I think about, you know, how director works in those movie studios. They are like a true leader,
11:56managing and collaborating with multiple different functions. Like there are designers, producers,
12:03artists, researchers, and script writers, scene writers, right? There are so many sub-agents in
12:10agent Opus all reporting to the central director agent. So I think that's the magic part of it.
12:20Because when, well, everyone says I'm using AI, I'm building AI, but I think building a team of AI
12:28AI is another level of challenge, but it also unlocks another level of superpower. So when, when we saw that
12:38agent, the agent Opus, the central director agent, you know, designing a plan and also orchestrate among
12:46the other eight to nine agent, it is a truly end-to-end autonomous experience where the input is just some
12:56article or pieces of news, while the output consists like, you know, well-written script,
13:03polished voiceovers, photorealistic avatars, real-world assets sourced from the entire internet and also YouTube,
13:13plus AI-generated scenes, animations, infographics along the video. So it's a true multi-agent,
13:23multi-modal agent workflow. And so I can drop my LinkedIn post, right? Which is a written post and
13:30you'll be able to create a video out of it. Yeah, exactly. So can you show the new AI feature?
13:38Because this is something that we're doing a lot. We're trying to repurpose whatever is going viral
13:43on LinkedIn. This is so funny. I posted myself sitting in the garage on a call because my kids were
13:48going crazy upstairs and I just couldn't take the call upstairs. And I'm like in this messy garage
13:52and freezing. And it got 120,000 impressions. And ideally, I want it to become, you know, something
14:01else I can post. So for sure. So copy link, right? Yeah, you copy and paste. You can just say like,
14:06create a video of this LinkedIn post. Should I add more prompts? Like, make it a viral reel? Or it should,
14:19or is like pre-prompted? Yeah, it's pre-prompted, but you can always, always add,
14:25or you can add some thought on it. Up to you. So for voice, you want to also create your own voice,
14:32but let's just like use a, use our default all voice. What is the hook?
14:38Hook is that you will have different hook templates, like the fast cuts, article highlight. Right now,
14:47it's kind of slow. So probably takes about like 30 to 60 minutes. Oh, 30 to 60 minutes. Yeah,
14:53we're optimizing the speed. Hopefully you can get to like 20 minutes in two months. I'm going to show
14:59you the result. Work and home lives blend together now more than ever. A constant zigzag between
15:05professional calls and family chaos. Okay. So with all of this, what will happen to creators in three
15:11years? So like in general, creator economy, how do you see it evolving with all the agentic tools?
15:15I think the entry barrier to create something is going to dissolve so that everyone has the superpower
15:24to become a creator. That's a brutal fact. And it makes the competition much more challenging,
15:32to be honest. But the good thing is that everyone now don't have to think about, you know, what tool
15:37do I need to use or what techniques, what expertise do I need to learn? But now you can focus on figuring
15:44out what is your uniqueness? How should you stand out? Right? What is your unique narrative of your story?
15:51What is your unique messaging? What is your unique tone? What sets you apart? So just focus on yourself,
15:58focus on your own storytelling. And in one or two years, no more than three years, AI can just
16:05deliver the job for you. They're doing actually the dirty work for you, but you're going to be the
16:09real creative one. But it's crazy. The competition is going to be insane. It is. Do you think there's
16:15less and less time to build a personal brand? Because what happens if in three years,
16:19everyone has access to tools, everyone tells a story, and then we don't have enough eyes to
16:24consume all the content? Do you ever worry about it? I don't worry that too much. Because think about
16:29like, 10 years ago, five years ago, when you want to build a personal brand, I mean, most of the time
16:34you're, you're wasting is to, you know, edit the video scene by scene, right? It's to design,
16:40design, design your colors, design, everything like page by page. I think that's how you waste
16:46the time. So the analogy is that, is that if you have to spend five months, um, building your personal,
16:53personal branding from zero to one, but nowadays it's like, you just need a couple of weeks.
16:58Yeah. My like thing, because I started 10 years ago and I remember editing all the videos.
17:03Yeah. Something that set me apart was the willingness to do that. So my content was super
17:08mediocre, but because I took the chance of like, you know, spending six hours there at a video,
17:13I got my followers. It's impossible today. Like if my content is mediocre, it's not going to be noticed.
17:18That's the thing, right? So your story either has to be extraordinary or, or that's it. Do you think we
17:26still have this opportunity to showcase our personal brands or because there are so many,
17:31we're getting saturated? The good storyteller, um, or the, the real unique people can still,
17:38um, have the advantage. Uh, think about, um, you know, carriage versus cars, right?
17:43A hundred years ago, very few people have cars. Uh, so it become a privilege to be, you know,
17:48one of the fastest people in the world. Nowadays, everyone are able to, to drive a car,
17:53almost everyone are able to drive a car. Um, but there are still formula one drivers.
17:58There are still, you know, WDC drivers who are, you know, way faster than the ordinary people.
18:03So I think it's probably, you know, 10 years ago, you showed your willingness to become,
18:08to build your personal branding by, um, spending extra time, um, writing content, um, polishing your
18:15website, editing the videos. But I think in the future, you, people who want to stand out should
18:23still probably spend the same amount of time on something else, not using the tools, not, you
18:30know, building by yourself, but the time should be spent on thinking it through how you should stand
18:37out. So I think time spent probably the same, but the actual work are completely different,
18:43which is more human actually. Yeah. Yeah. I like that reply. I like that car analogy,
18:47actually. Thank you. So let's imagine, uh, you have to start a company again. Now walk me through
18:55the first 30 days. What will you do? If I have to start a company again, the first thing is always
19:02to figure out with what is a real painful job to be done. Um, I want to, so I, I'm the prototype of
19:09founder who don't start everything from technology, but from, um, users from the market. Um,
19:16um, I have to segment my market, um, to a very clear, very vertical niche that I can clearly
19:25understand that their existing workflow, their existing pain points, um, their existing
19:30alternative solutions. And then, so I think probably I would, I would have to spend, you know, the first
19:36couple of weeks, um, two or three weeks understanding the real use case, um, the very specific ICP. Um,
19:44and the second thing is to just engineer a, you know, prototype or proof of concept. I can do that
19:51very easily with all the web coding tools right now. Right. What's your favorite?
19:54Uh, well, I'm a heavy, um, cursor user. Um, but I tried many other different tools, but cursor is my
20:02go-to go-to tool. Yeah. Cause I came from engineering background. So it's, um, yeah, I'm more familiar with
20:07the IDE. The step two is actually just, um, a couple of days should be good enough, uh, to have a proof of
20:14concept. Uh, and then I go back to share that with, uh, the early users, um, the ICPs to get, you know,
20:20their feedback, uh, the feedback should not only about, do you like the product, but also like,
20:26what kind of problems are, am I solving for you? And what is the value you perceive, which means how much
20:32money you are willing to pay for it? Um, right. So that, that process probably is the majority of
20:38the early 30 days, but I think on the other side, I'm also, I also need to think it through about
20:45what kind of proprietary data can I possess along the way? And will that data set grow as the product
20:53grow as the user grow? Right. Um, we don't have to build toward a moat, um, or a very clear plan of
21:02different stability, but I think we need to have that idea at least well thought in the first early
21:09days. Um, cause you have, you can't avoid it, right? When you really launch the product. And so
21:15it's better to have something in mind, have some idea in mind. Like what makes you stand out
21:20in the market and what makes people come back? Yeah. And if you ask this question,
21:24especially nowadays, especially we are entering 2026. We're switching between apps like crazy.
21:30Yeah. Like there's new shiny app, you install it, you're like, oh, I love it now. But the next day
21:34something else comes out and it's so easy unless you have history with a certain app, right?
21:38Yeah, exactly. So the last thing I think we should consider is the distribution channel.
21:43Um, I think the competition is totally different. Yeah. Two years ago, two years ago,
21:49you can easily say you are the chat to BT of ABC, right? It's so easy to go viral at that time.
21:54Nowadays, like everyone knows AI, everyone has used AI. Um, so figure out a distribution channel
22:01will help you better refine your user experience, your onboarding, and also, um, your target ICP as well.
22:08So basically you start with expertise. It looks like you need to understand at least one niche to
22:14be able to build something. Not like, oh, this market looks good. I'm going to try and build something
22:18for it. No, you need to be deep in that market and understand the problem.
22:21Exactly. Because you asked me a question, uh, the assumption is today, right?
22:25AI has been there for like more than three years. The LLM has been there for more than three years,
22:29right? It's because if you asked me like three years ago, um, the answer was,
22:34will be much simpler. But now it is.
22:36Just build with AI.
22:36Yeah.
22:37Yeah.
22:38But now when, you know, LLMs are advancing so fast and large companies are releasing better
22:44and better products. Do you think there are any niches or problems that are not worth solving
22:49anymore just because big companies can take over in like a week?
22:53I think two major types of problems that a founder should avoid. Um, the first one is that you are
22:59just building a feature for an existing type of ICP ideal customer profile within an existing workflow
23:08built by the incumbents. So basically what that means is that, um, the incumbents can easily build
23:16a feature that, you know, bundles everything. Right. And probably you won't have your own
23:22distribution channel. For example, I think like if you want to build a note taker, think it through,
23:27right? You'd probably find another direction because it's super easy for zoom or, you know,
23:32Google meet to have that feature in their existing workflow, because you're targeting basically the same
23:37ICP, same market, same, almost, you know, same or adjacent use cases attached to a big workflow,
23:44a big platform. I think every AI founder should be somehow AGI peeled, which means that you can
23:51predict or you should be confident to make some predictions about what the foundation models can
23:59release in the next few weeks or months, right? If they are already doing, you know, some job 80%
24:06very well, 90% very well. I think it's, you know, in their second, in their next few release,
24:11they can probably do that job like 99% well, or even a hundred percent. Right. So, um, run that test
24:19in your internal strategic discussions. If you're just becoming a rapper with some prompts, then
24:26probably you don't have to write any prompts in the second release, in the next release of Gemini or
24:32ChatGPT. You need to focus on solving like a vertical business problem, um, by like integrating
24:40the workflow end to end, right? You need to own the workflow end to end so that, you know, AI is part
24:47of the workflow, but it's not all right. Instead, like if you build a rapper with some prompt engineering,
24:53AI is almost the end to end workflow itself. Can you also walk me through, um, the process of coming
24:58up with pricing for an AI tool? How do you decide on, because I know you have lower tier, but then
25:03you also have like a 20K check for, um, bigger companies. How do you come up with the price?
25:09Pricing is, uh, it's a real science. So a couple of factors we, uh, considered in the first place,
25:16for example, first, what is your value creation? How to measure your value creation, right? Um,
25:22before using your product, what would your users do to achieve the goal, uh, to get the job to be done?
25:29Uh, they probably, you know, spend their own time, which there is a price for their own time,
25:34right? They probably outsource it to some vendors or, um, yeah, they pay humans to get the job done,
25:40or they may like use some like OG tools, uh, by some professional guys, like in our use case,
25:48professional editors to get the job done. So in our industry, like editing a clip, editing, uh,
25:56like a viral ready high quality clip, one minute clip often takes about one hour or at least 30 minutes.
26:04And the price, the market price is about 25 to $50. So that's the value creation we're benchmarking
26:13against. The second thing is about your unit economy, um, because you have inference cost. Um,
26:19and that can, even that can go down in the future, but, um, it's still very pricey in the early days.
26:26And also for videos, another elephant in the room for the cost is the storage. The storage can
26:34be just 5% in the early days, but it can become like 50% of your total costs after three or five
26:42years. So the unit economy, you want to make sure it's healthy, it's sustainable. Third one, I was,
26:48I would say just do as many experiments as possible. We actually sent out like thousands of service in
26:54the first few months and we tweaked our pricing logic again and again, well, in the early days,
27:00right. You don't want to change drastically in the late stage, but in the early stage,
27:05um, we, we did a lot of survey customer interview to understand how much they are willing to pay.
27:10Um, because even you have a clear value creation and a well-calculated unit economy,
27:17can users still perceive that, right? Is your metric clear enough for a user to understand the value
27:22creation, you know, to buy in your value creation? That is still relying on your market messaging.
27:30And also your, um, metric setup, like most of the products are using a metric of usage
27:36instead of seat. I think that makes sense, especially for solo printers. Um, but the
27:41experiment really tell it tells us what price to go because you don't have to set up a price that
27:47everyone are happy with. You probably have a assumption or hypothesis of what kind of customers
27:54you want to target to, right? All you need to do is to make sure those ICPs are okay, are happy with
28:00the price. You probably have to say no to like 70% of the early stage users, but you should be to
28:08only focus on your ICP in the early days. And then maybe you can develop other, you know, pressing or
28:14even product, uh, capabilities for the rest of the users. Yeah. The, the importance of saying no,
28:20right. Yeah. All the time. When you said you do customer interviews, how many interviews do you
28:24need to do in order to land on some kind of a decision? I think the number of customer interviews
28:29are not the key. Um, but how you do it is more important. Um, I think we did about 20 to 30, um,
28:36for on average for one single, um, critical product decisions, but we set the distribution of the,
28:44those 20 to 30, um, customers in a, in a very, um, messy way where like, okay, four marketers,
28:52you know, five creators, and also they're in different industries. They're, they come with
28:58different, um, you know, purchasing power coming from different geographic locations, backgrounds. You want
29:03to make sure they are representative enough to help you make a decision. You don't need a lot,
29:09but you need to have a clear, concise set of, um, testers. Yeah. You want to make sure you get like
29:16a full picture of the market. That's really helpful for the research and validation phase. Now, once
29:21you're in building mode, what about the AI skills? What is the number one AI skill everyone should be
29:27working on right now? The number one AI skill, uh, should actually go for first principle. It doesn't
29:34matter like if you're using AI for, um, you know, design your poster, um, you know, vibe code your
29:41prototype. I think everyone should trade AI as your thinking partner or even thought partner,
29:48which means that when you are having a problem of understanding your users, when you are having
29:53problem of managing your teams, when you're having problems of, um, figuring out your pricing or,
30:00you know, all the critical decisions in your lifetime, uh, when you are a founder, I think
30:05traditionally you will just go reach out to your coach or some more senior people, uh, or people with
30:11relevant experience, right. To ask for their advice. But I think in this era of AI, you should run through
30:16it with your, with, you know, Gemini or ChatGPT, they are actually a very, very senior, very omnipotent
30:25thinking partner. Um, just, you know, instead of like asking one line of questions, um, through as
30:32many contexts as possible, um, and also, you know, do like more than 20 rounds of back and forth, um,
30:38communications, you will be mind-blowingly enlightened through these conversations. So nowadays,
30:45that's how I practice myself. Is there a certain daily practice that you have? I talked to Mustafa
30:51Suleyman on this podcast. Uh, he's a CEO of Microsoft AI and he shared that every single day
30:57he would talk to co-pilot and just tell co-pilot about what the day has been like and the decision
31:04that he's made and how those decisions made him feel. So that when in three months he has something
31:10like a similar problem, he still talks to the same threat in co-pilot and co-pilot be like,
31:14Oh, when you made that decision three months ago, you actually regret it. So this time,
31:18listen to this. Is there something similar that you have?
31:20Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because I think the current chatbot memory is so powerful that,
31:27uh, so what I, um, like monthly, one of my monthly ritual is that I ask ChatGPT about,
31:33um, you know, what are my major decisions in the past month? Um, you know, give me some comment,
31:41um, feedback. But that means you shared every single decision. Yeah, I shared everything.
31:45Yeah. How does it, like every night you just said, like, these are the decisions I made or?
31:49Yeah. Sometimes I, you know, talk to the AI in that way. And sometimes I would just, um, um, forward my
31:57decision, just, um, like I captured like a screenshots of our group discussion. Um, I dropped a link of my,
32:06the document of a, of a PRD of a spec, uh, that kind of thing too. Yeah. I, I, I kind of forced myself to
32:13document it. Yeah. To document it. I love it. So you said Gemini is the best part or? Yeah. I'm, um,
32:19I'm, I'm, I'm not having you using both Gemini and ChatGPT. Okay. Yeah. But I think recently I
32:24realized they really memorize almost everything I talked to them. So now I can start a new question.
32:31Like what is the biggest mistake I've made in the past six months? Uh, what is one thing you,
32:37you want to suggest to me, uh, if you could three months ago, I think this becomes super powerful
32:44right now. I love these questions. Everyone go, go to your favorite app and ask those questions.
32:50I'm going to do this right after the interview. Yeah. It's a good, like end of the year practice
32:54to see what's, what's going on. Love it. Absolutely. Do you have any top three AI business ideas you
32:59would start if you hadn't had Opus Club? It's hard to name like three ideas. Um, cause I'm not
33:06an investor at, you know, I don't meet as many founders as possible. Um, but I think the general
33:12first principle, uh, for now, right. The question is to start a business like in 2026. Yeah. As we
33:21discussed, the market is becoming super competitive and there are like for most of the markets or
33:27industries, uh, there are like more than 20, 50 AI tools out there already. Um, so the first principle
33:34I would say is to find a really niche business. Oftentimes many people don't really understand
33:40what is a niche. For example, is restaurant business a niche? No. Is Chinese restaurant
33:46a niche? No. Is, um, Canon is Chinese restaurant business a niche? Still no. Um, you have to drill down.
33:55Uh, there are so many different types of Canon is food. Um, and even for one specific vertical,
34:02um, are you gonna target to be like the, um, the Chanel of Canada's restaurant or the Zara of,
34:08or Uniqlo of, of Canada's restaurant, right? So a different pricing will match to different, um,
34:14markets, different ICPs as well. So pick a really, really, really small niche that you cannot further
34:20segment it to start with. Um, that's, that's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. You have to ruthlessly, um,
34:27segment your niche. The second thing is ideally pick something that's boring because the non-boring,
34:33the cool ones are definitely 10X or even a more a hundred X more competitive. You probably don't
34:40want to work in those areas. That's why I mentioned earlier that the passion for building the passion
34:46for problem solving is more important because your passion for a specific business is most likely not a
34:53viable business, right? So you need to have a passion to do something for a boring industry,
34:59but you solve a really big problem. And furthermore, ideally there are a lot of existing services.
35:07I think we are actually, you know, changing from, we're redefining the term SaaS and previously it was
35:13like software as a service. Nowadays it's becoming service as a software. So in that specific market niche,
35:20boring market niche, are there existing services, um, done by like agencies, um, by freelancers,
35:28um, or some internal tools or some hacky solutions, imperfect hacky solutions. Um, that is your
35:35opportunity to tackle. Um, so go through some boring tasks, go through some niche tasks,
35:41and go through some service tasks. Um, so these are my first principles to find a new business in 2026.
35:48That's great. That's great. That's great. That's amazing. Okay. And for young viewers who are watching,
35:53what is one principle that you wish you understood when you were 20 that would save you years?
36:00Damn. It's like me talking to your internal Gemini chat GPT.
36:06I really wish I can travel back to my twenties, but, um, I think the first principle is to
36:12be as disciplined as possible. Um, I've been following, um, Cristiano Ronaldo
36:19and LeBron James for two decades. They are at their forties and they're still one of the best
36:26players in their fields. The reasons are they are super disciplined in their early twenties.
36:33Uh, you can't change your behavior when you are over 30 or 40. It's, it's just impossible. Um, but if
36:39you're like in your early twenties or even younger, um, make sure that you use time effectively, make
36:47sure you can plan things accordingly, make sure you push yourself to, to your boundary, make sure you are
36:54okay with, you know, suffers. Um, you can recover fast. Um, make sure you have clear mission and you are well
37:04aligned with your mission. You work toward a mission every day. I think, you know, I can list a few
37:09different behaviors, but the key principle is to be super disciplined if you want to be a successful
37:16founder, uh, later on and also be disciplined to your own health, right? Like how many hours you
37:20should log to sleep, um, what you should eat or not, um, what kind of exercise you should do, you should do
37:27every day. Like I stuck, uh, I, I saw many people started to develop these, um, patterns, these behaviors
37:34in their thirties, but not in their early twenties. It's hard in your thirties. I love that. And also
37:40that brings you to say no to different things and it's also a great skill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is
37:46something I've been hearing a lot when I'm talking to people who are building something amazing.
37:51Yeah. Discipline. Uh, I think Priscilla Chan just shared that she only has work
37:57and family parties don't exist in her life. Not existing anymore. Yeah. And this is what
38:02you hear a lot from successful people here in the U S they work like crazy. Yeah. I'm trying to learn
38:08like, I think I'm disciplined, but like that level of discipline. Oh my God. Yeah, exactly. Because
38:13with the super high level of discipline, you can just like the master set, right? You can segment your,
38:20your time into, you know, buckets of five minutes. You can easily, you can easily get super focused
38:26and also switch context to focus on something else. That is the ultimate result of discipline.
38:33I saw many people like find really hard to switch context to focus for a longer time.
38:39That is because you are lacking the discipline from day one.
38:42This is something I'll be teaching my kids. Thank you so much. It was amazing.
38:47Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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