Zapier used to be the software that connected all your other software. But it’s AI has become so powerful that people are using it to build software companies. Founder Wade Foster joined me to talk about and show how they’re building on it.

Wade Foster is the co-founder and CEO of Zapier, the automation platform used by over 350,000 customers to connect more than 8,000 apps. He started Zapier in 2011 with just $1.2M in seed funding and grew it into a profitable company generating hundreds of millions in revenue. Today, Wade is leading Zapier’s evolution into AI-powered automation and agent-based workflows that help businesses move faster with fewer people.

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Helen Hastings wanted to create better accounting software. To figure out what to build, she had humans do the work. This is the story of how she created Quanta, the accounting software that’s taking on QuickBooks with a more modern human+software approach.

Helen Hastings is the founder and CEO of Quanta, an AI-powered accounting platform built for modern software and services companies. Before Quanta, she was a software engineer at Affirm, where she specialized in building financial ledgers and systems of record. She’s also worked at Google and NerdWallet, bringing deep fintech and infrastructure experience to one of accounting’s hardest problems.

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Ben Tossell used to listen to Mixergy interviews as he hunted for a big idea to launch. Then he nailed it. MakerPad, an educational company for people who wanted to build using no code. It did so well that he sold it for life-changing money. Then he started coding. Because of AI. This is his story.

Ben Tossell is the founder of Makerpad, the no-code education platform he sold to Zapier. Today he’s the Head of Developer Relations at Factory, where he helps shape the AI coding agent used by developers worldwide. When he’s not working, he’s hanging with his twins.

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Pepper is creating content for clients like Shopify, Adobe and Instacart. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of posts & videos. And this is content that leads to sales. In this interview, founder Anirudh Singla tell us how they do it by using AI and humans.

Anirudh Singla is the founder and CEO of Pepper, a global content marketing platform that blends AI and human creativity to produce content at scale. What began as his side hustle on Upwork has grown into a company serving Fortune 500s —recently crossing $10M in annual recurring revenue. Pepper now operates across writing, design, video, and localization, helping brands drive measurable growth through AI-powered content systems.

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Ethan Smith runs Graphite, the SEO & AEO company that helps brands like Webflow show up on Google’s page one and ChatGPT’s first answer. This is how he does it

Ethan Smith is the founder and CEO of Graphite, a growth and SEO firm that’s now pioneering Answer Engine Optimization—helping brands rank inside AI-generated responses.

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Coming into this interview I wasn’t even sure what “AI Transformation” was, let alone why so many companies pay for it. Here’s the deal: Tenex, the company founded by Alex Lieberman & Arman Hezarkhani, goes into companies hunting for ways to save or making them money using AI. Once they find that, it becomes a no brainer for companies to hire them to build it. But Tenex does more than AI Transformation. They also run a dev shop where their developers use AI to build super fast for clients.

Alex Lieberman and Arman Hezarkhani are the co-founders of Tenex, a company blending high-performance engineering with AI transformation consulting. Their model aligns incentives around output rather than time, helping enterprises and startups build software faster and integrate AI across people, processes, and tools. Together, they’re building what they call the “McKinsey for AI”—a hybrid of dev shop, consultancy, and innovation lab helping companies thrive in the post-AI era.

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“Why did you launch yet another voice dictation app?” I asked Dan Shipper, founder of Every. I thought he’d tell me that there was some kind of research that showed people needed another one. Nah. It came down to his team’s taste and personal preference. They just wanted something different. So a single creator on the team built it. AI makes it easier for more people to create apps. So what’s the differentiator? From what I got in this interview — over and over — it’s the creator’s taste.

Dan Shipper is the founder and CEO of Every, a hybrid media and software company creating AI-powered tools for productivity and creativity. The company publishes one of the most widely read newsletters on technology and builds products like Monologue (AI dictation), Spiral (AI ghostwriting), and Cora (AI email assistant).

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I’ve been talking with founders who used AI to build companies, but aren’t getting enough customers. I found the perfect person to show them how to grow. Neil Patel has been on the cutting edge of AI marketing. He’s going to show us what’s working for his customers and his company. At the end of the conversation, you’ll see the exact process his company, NP Digital, is using AI to scrape yellow pages, create custom offers, and get clients.

Neil Patel is the co-founder of NP Digital, a global marketing agency serving clients such as Intuit, Canon, and Cartier. He’s also the creator of the SEO platform Ubersuggest and a leading authority on digital growth, named a top marketer by Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. Through his work, Neil helps businesses combine AI, data, and marketing strategy to drive measurable revenue.

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AI changed everything. During their time at Y Combinator, startups typically grew revenue weekly by 2-4%. Now? 10-20%! PER WEEK. YC President Garry Tan told me the reason is simple: AI transformed software from a “nice to have” into an urgent necessity. “Before it was like, ‘Yeah, I know I need to replace my software.’…Today it’s becoming, ‘Oh. I see a demo. It’s really impressive… I need it right now. When can you start?'”

Garry Tan is President and CEO of Y Combinator, the world’s most successful startup accelerator. He previously co-founded Posterous, which was acquired by Twitter. Beyond the startup world, he’s a YouTuber with an eye for great design and understanding that three-act narratives aren’t just for movies.

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How can Read.ai keep growing when 1) there are loads of meeting note taking apps, and 2) platforms like Zoom keep adding note-taking features? That’s what I asked its founder David Shim

David Shim is the founder and CEO of Read.ai, the fastest-growing AI meeting assistant with millions of users worldwide. Previously, he was CEO of Foursquare following its acquisition of his location analytics company, Placed, which had earlier been acquired by Snap. Today, David is building Read into the central hub where businesses capture, analyze, and act on every meeting, email, and message.

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I keep seeing AI agencies pop up everywhere, offering to AI-ify businesses. But what are they AI’ing? How are they doing it? Seems too general and unfocused to work. Still, they do. I wanted to understand how, so I interviewed Rob Howard, who teaches agency owners how to sell and deliver AI services.

Rob Howard is the founder of Howard Development & Consulting (HDC.net) and the creator of Innovating with AI, a program that has helped over 1,000 people start and grow AI consulting businesses. With a background in software development and WordPress, Rob has built and shipped projects for clients for more than 20 years. Today, he’s focused on teaching others how to combine no-code tools, automation, and AI to create profitable, sustainable agencies.

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Pavel Doležal built Keboola to $15 million per year. How he did it: 1. Start with consulting, so clients tell you what they need 2. Build software that makes companies’ chaotic data accessible. NO agents yet. 3. Create agents that take action. That’s the hardest part. At the end of this interview, Pavel tells you how YOU should start an AI company and about the three successful companies that followed his advice.

Pavel Doležal is the co-founder and CEO of Keboola, a cloud-based data platform used by over 21,000 companies worldwide. Before Keboola, he helped build Atlas, one of Eastern Europe’s leading internet portals, and went on to found several data-focused companies. Today, Pavel leads a global team making it easier for businesses to integrate, analyze, and automate their data—with clients ranging from fast-growing startups to global enterprises.

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Ever wish someone would text you every day to make sure you stuck to your goals? That’s exactly what Adam Gilbert built — first for fitness, now for business. He’s the founder of My Body Tutor and DoneDaily, two remote coaching services powered by daily accountability. I invited him to share how he turned simple check-ins into a multi-million dollar company.

Adam Gilbert was a personal trainer who was frustrated by seeing clients not follow through on the diet and exercise programs they committed to.

So he offered to be their accountability buddy by text. The service he created, My Body Tutor, was profitable from its first month and continues to generate millions 18 years later.

His latest company, DoneDaily, offers a similar accountability and coaching program for entrepreneurs.

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How is Close doing so well in the CRM space against such big competitors? The answer: focus. Instead of chasing enterprise clients or trying to build a CRM that does everything from web hosting to calendaring, Steli Efti focused on sales teams at small and mid-sized businesses. And he built a product with a tight set of features focused on more client conversations and less data entry.

Steli Efti is the co-founder and CEO of Close, a CRM platform designed to eliminate manual data entry and make sales more human and efficient. Before launching Close, he co-founded Elastic Sales (a sales-as-a-service agency) and SwipeGood (a charitable micro-donation startup)

Fun fact—he once said he spent six years following up twice a year to finally buy the domain close.com.

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Have you noticed how AI search results are now linking to websites? Today’s guest runs an SEO agency that helps his clients’ sites show up in those chat responses. I invited Chirag Kulkarni founder of Taco to talk about how he’s doing it and how he built his agency.

Chirag Kulkarni is the founder and CEO of Taco, an AI-powered SEO firm helping brands dominate emerging search platforms. Chirag and his team are building Taco into the go-to partner for companies navigating the shift from Google to generative search.

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After closing a company that failed, Tim Huelskamp decided to keep it simple. He launched an email newsletter that briefed smart people about the day’s top news. Today his company, 1440, has over 4 million subscribers and generates over $20 million in annual revenue

Tim Huelskamp is the co-founder of 1440, the fact-focused daily newsletter. Tim and his team are building 1440 into a trusted source for intellectually curious readers who want an inch-deep, mile-wide view of the world.

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Before I partnered with Jesse Pujji, we were buddy-buddy. Texting all the time. When we got started, we got excited about the world of possibilities for our company. Now? Something is missing. I asked him about it. And about where he put his money, why he’s not launching more companies now, what he’s building with AI, and more.

Jesse Pujji is the founder of Gateway X, the venture studio. Jesse & Andrew are building Bootstrapped Giants, a resource for ambitious, unfunded founders.

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When Kasey Grelle heard that private equity companies paid marketing agencies to evaluate companies they wanted to buy, she spotted a business opportunity. That realization became Aux Insights, the firm that’s become “the office of the CMO” for private equity companies. Listen to how they got clients & built their business.

Kasey is a former reporter who founded Aux Insights, a global advisory firm that acts as the office of the CMO for private equity firms, specializing in digital growth strategy and marketing diligence. When she’s not scaling businesses, she’s up before dawn at 4 AM, savoring the quiet magic of early morning work before the chaos of her three-kid household kicks in.

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Hiring has been a huge issue for me. And in a past interview with Cameron Herold, I brought it up because he’s the founder of the COO Alliance, the world’s leading network for the second in command. I don’t get embarrassed by a lot of stuff. If you heard my interviews, you hear me get pretty frank about my flaws, my mistakes. But this issue is something I was embarrassed about. I think if I don’t hire somebody to be the second in command at Mixergy, I am probably going to collapse. So, that’s what today is about. It’s not so much an interview as it is a coaching call with the guy who knows hiring better than anyone else. You’ll get to hear what I learned and my hope is that you benefit from it too.

Cameron Herold is the founder of the COO Alliance, the world’s leading network for the second in command.

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A topic we don’t talk about on Mixergy is how to actually manage a company. I remember when I was in NYU as an undergrad I loved all my business classes, but management just didn’t feel like me. I always thought of the guys in Dilbert but entrepreneurs were the ones who were creating, the ones who were doing. Mixergy’s grown and I’ve been running it, but I have to be honest, I’m not doing a great job of running it. So earlier in the year, the Mixergy team said, “Andrew, go get a COO.” They kept challenging me. One of things that they told me to do was to talk to Cameron Herold. Cameron Herold was Chief Operating Officer at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? He is also the founder of the COO Alliance, the world’s only organization for those who are second in command.

Cameron Herold was Chief Operating Officer at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? He is also the founder of the COO Alliance, the world’s only organization for those who are second in command.

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