Artificial Insights: How to Build an AI Business
🤖 Twice a month, join Daniel as he speaks to CTOs, CAIOs, PMs (and many more acronyms!) with diverse experiences, from working at large companies like Google to founding their own companies. 💡 AI isn’t just a buzzword or a way to make fast cash. It’s a transformative technology that will define our generation. Learn how AI is changing the future of work and business. ❓Find out: “What can AI do?” “How is work changing because of AI?” “How can we get into AI?” “What will people pay for in AI?” And especially, "What does it mean to be human in the age of AI?"
Episodes
When talking to investors, Carlos Almeida repeatedly heard the question, "What is the moat?". In this short, he explains why AI businesses can't succeed if they only focus on what the AI is capable of.
The models are already out there. Many are open source. So how do you build something defensible?
Carlos points to three layers where product builders can create lasting value:
- Human-in-the-loop control interfaces
- Disambiguation of m...
Many teams want AI to take over tasks, but Carlos Almeida thinks that automation comes later. Before you hand over the work, you need to understand it, control it, and measure it.
Carlos is the CEO and co-founder of Optave, where they’re building AI copilots and autopilots for customer support. In this conversation, he shares why the real work isn’t in generating responses, but in building the systems around them: the guardrails, es...
In this short, Mike Kirkup shares his experiences being on the frontlines of different tech revolutions. This AI revolution? It feels different.
Why?
Because everyone's working on it. Everyone's using it (or it's getting there). And it's forcing business leaders to question entire business functions and how they do things.
🔗 Resources & Links
- 🎧 Listen to the full interview with Mike: https://rss.com/podcasts/manaryhaus/206150...
At EnPowered, Mike Kirkup ended up running the financing arm, manually collecting and validating documents... until he couldn’t take it anymore.
The internal tooling he built became Arlo, a product now used by lenders to automate and augment document workflows with AI.
In this episode, Daniel and Mike talk about what makes using AI different from old school automation. Yes, Arlo automates mundane tasks, but it also asks follow-up q...
Why do we keep getting AI wrong?
It’s not because it’s too intelligent. It’s because we’re bad at extrapolating what intelligence makes possible.
In this bonus short, Daniel shares a conversation with Chyngyz Dzhumanazarov, co-founder and CEO of Kodif, who draws a striking parallel: when electricity was invented, no one predicted it would lead to television, or that actors would build careers from it.
People worried about job loss in ...
Will AI make human support teams obsolete? Kodif's answer: No, but humans will be managing and teaching AI agents. Kodif is building systems where AI agents resolve tickets, write help docs, and surface insights, all under the guidance of real people.
In this episode, Daniel sits down with Chyngyz Dzhumanazarov, CEO and Co-Founder of Kodif, and the first person from Kyrgyzstan to earn an MBA from Stanford. Chyngyz shares how Kodif a...
When Tair Asim helped build Sage, an AI-powered networking tool for builders, the team had the tech working... but building something usable is not the same as building something people will use.
In this clip, Tair reflects on what made Sage successful inside the buildspace community, and what he learned about trust, traction, and what early users need.
He shares how the product changed from a long onboarding process that only worked...
What happens when you combine brand, community, and AI, not just to automate tasks, but to create real human connection?
In this episode, Daniel sits down with Tair Asim, creator of Sage, the AI-powered networking tool that helped thousands of builders connect through natural language, and Head of Product at Sync, where he’s now leading vertical integration in AI-powered video editing.
Tair shares lessons from both worlds: why Sage w...
When's the right time to partner with sales and marketing? Alex's journey was to build and validate a prototype with a small group of customers, then bring in distribution experts. If you can build it, you can validate it! But what got you here might not get you there.
Are you more comfortable asking your colleagues a question, or ChatGPT? GovAI found that people preferred using AI over connecting with each other to ask questions. They liked the ease, speed, and anonymity compared to asking each other.
In this episode, Daniel sat down with Alex Millar, co-founder of GovAI and former co-founder of Bonfire, which he scaled and sold for $108M after working with hundreds of public sector teams. Now he...
When deciding what product to pursue and build a business around, it turns out you can't just ask ChatGPT for advice. Join Daniel and Bijan in this bonus short as they discuss how Merchkit got to where it is now, and what it really means to iterate and innovate.
Key takeaways:
- ✅ Start with a large market: the more potential customers, the more ideas you can try before running out of people to try them with.
- ✅ Generative AI will di...
AI is moving fast. Too fast to just pick a tool and hope it works long-term. The companies that get it right aren’t just buying software—they’re building relationships with the right AI partners.
In this episode, Daniel sat down with Bijan Vaez, CEO of Merchkit, 3x founder, and former co-founder of EventMobi, where he helped scale event technology to millions of users. He’s seen mobile, SaaS, and AI revolutions firsthand—and now he...
Join Jennifer and Daniel in this bonus clip as they discuss how AI anxiety is changing the world in big ways.
Key takeaways about AI Anxiety:
- 🕴️It makes business leaders rush into solutions without understanding consequences (and sometimes the problems they think they're solving)
- 👩🔧 It makes professionals lose hope for their future (especially young professionals and first time job seekers)
Is AI about to replace your job—or is it your biggest opportunity? In this special episode, Daniel sits down with Jennifer Moss, a globally recognized expert on workplace culture, leadership, and mental health, to tackle one of the biggest concerns of our time: How will AI reshape our work, and what should we do about it?
Jennifer brings stories from all walks of life and insights from the largest studies that help whether you're wo...
The magic of AI is that it no longer requires learning a new language, like how to program. AI moves computers from data machines to cognitive companions. The best part? There's never been a better time to start using it.
Is AI just another tool, or is it transforming into something much bigger? In this episode, Daniel Manary sits down with Atif Khan, Chief AI Officer at MessagePoint, to explore what it really means to be an AI-first company, how AI is evolving into a cognitive companion, and why the future of AI lies in multi-agent systems rather than single-task automation.
With over 25 years of experience in AI and data science, Atif has led the d...
Are we setting students up for failure by banning AI in schools? In this bonus short, Patrick Belliveau delivers a passionate critique of the education system’s outdated approach to technology.
Is it too late to get into AI? What if you have no technical skills? Patrick shares his story of coming from sales to accidentally building an AI business, starting with an emotionally supportive cancer survivor bot that he created because he wanted it to exist.
Is AI only for the highly technical and venture-backed? Not according to Patrick Belliveau. In this energizing and candid conversation, Daniel sits down with Patrick—managin...
Welcome to Artificial Insights, the podcast where we learn to build AI people need and use by interviewing product leaders who have launched AI products.
We look back on the past season and share our favorite highlights with an extra special guest! Thanks for a wonderful first season of Artificial Insights. Stay tuned for season two. We have big plans and ideas! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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