Startup Stories - Mixergy

Over a decade ago, Joe Apfelbaum was on the podcast, telling me how focusing on SEO helped him grow his agency. That was hard for the idea-a-minute founder. Now he’s back. And AI is enabling him to create more businesses. He broke down the 5 types of companies anyone could makeJoe Apfelbaum is the founder of Ajax Union, a digital marketing agency, and EvyAI, an AI-powered sales and social media...

On the surface, it looks like Ricardo Vice Santos is selling AI-created books for your kids. But he’s aiming for something much bigger: a world where TV, movies, and every other media will be customized to you, using AI. He’s starting with children’s books because that’s what people will buy and what AI can do well today. This is the story of how he’s building DreamStories and how you can build a...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 itEthan 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.More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreintRate this interview...

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...

“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...

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...