Shows / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes
AI for Founders is where 47,000+ founders learn to build and scale with AI. Hosted by Ryan Estes, a Denver investor, creator, and founder, the show breaks down real strategies from top operators and AI visionaries. AI-ready data, zero-dependency workflows, founder-led distribution, and the tools driving revenue for today’s fastest-growing companies. If you’re a technical or non-technical founder who wants to work smarter, scale faster, and stay competitive, this podcast is your weekly unfair…
Episodes
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesTurn Spreadsheets Into Apps Without a Single Prompt: AI Workflows for Founders With Gainable | Rickard Hansson
How many tabs are in the one spreadsheet that secretly runs your company? Seventy-two? Rickard Hansson is betting that spreadsheet is about to become an app…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesAI film workflows: how Pablo Starr makes movies from 30-year-old scripts with no studio
A CGI artist once looked at Pablo Starr’s screenplay and told him he’d need someone like Steven Spielberg to greenlight it. Every minute of his evolved…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesThe Humane AI Playbook for Founders Building Consumer AI | Rafi Moshe, StoriedLife
Your grandfather has told the same three stories at every holiday dinner for twenty years. Nobody has ever asked him the follow-up question. Rafi Moshe built…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesHow Gelu Sulugiuc Built AI Workflows That Beat Bloomberg by 47 Seconds | Financial News Systems
Forty-seven seconds. That’s how far ahead Gelu Sulugiuc’s machines finished when IBM dropped disappointing numbers: a clean headline with revenue against the…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesFrom AI Aware to AI Native: The 5-Rung Ladder Every Founder Must Climb to Automate Their Business - Joe Esteves - Maine Pointe
What if the most valuable thing your highly paid experts do has nothing to do with their computers? That question kept Joe Esteves up at night. As CEO of Maine…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesAI Relationship Coach That Sends You Back to Real Life - Lior Illouz - Bonds
Lior Illouz once walked fifteen meters, turned around, and walked fifteen meters back. He did it for four hours a day, four days straight, without speaking to…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesWhy AI art takes more effort, not less, and the founder content workflow that proves it
Jason Katz can make a 12-minute YouTube video, from research to final cut, in under an hour of his own time. The secret isn't the software he built. It's that…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesI built a $120K business in 60 minutes with Claude Code (live, no edits)
What if the business you're saving for retirement could go live before your coffee gets cold? In this episode of AI for Founders, Ryan Estes skips the…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesHe quit venture capital to build an AI workforce for patients: Eric Marton, Agentic Healthcare
Eric Marton spent 25 years learning exactly how broken American healthcare is, from the inside, at the top. Health system executive. Private equity. Partner at…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesScaling a hardware startup with zero VC intros | Kostas Koukoravas
Kostas Koukoravas came out of lockdown about ten kilos heavier, having taken up baking like half the planet. So he did what a former Microsoft product manager…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes97% of lawsuits never see a courtroom: Mo Tregenza's AI workflows for settling founder disputes fast
Did you know that winning a lawsuit can be a worse bet than a Vegas table? Morgan "Mo" Duffy Tregenza thinks so, and she has the courtroom miles to back it up…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes"The agent did it" won't hold up in court: Santosh Kaveti on AI agent accountability for founders
Congress wants a roll call of your AI agents. Could you produce one by Friday? In early September, Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Mike Lawler introduced the Stop…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesHiring is an operations problem, not an HR problem: Shar Broumand on automating recruitment
Ryan Estes has a confession. He is terrible at hiring. Not incompetent. Worse. He is charmed. Put him in a room with a candidate and forty-five minutes later…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes15 beagles, 4 cancers, 94% accuracy: my favorite AI workflow in health tech
Thirteen days from now, the FDA convenes a panel that has never convened before. On September 23, 2026, the Molecular and Clinical Genetics Panel sits down to…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesHow to automate a board of advisors for $29 a month
Nobody warns you that traction is the lonely part. Broke and scared has company. Everybody has been broke and scared. What nobody prepares you for is the 11 PM…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesWhy your AI-designed brand is invisible, and the 3-step fix
Everyone got the same tools. Almost nobody got taste. Jacqueline Schmidt grew up two subway stops from tigers. The Bronx Zoo was her backyard. Her favorite…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesThe 10-minute morning routine that replaced an entire project management stack
Five days. Twelve-hour build sessions. One founder describing himself as delirious. Jason Katz opens this one by announcing he has AI psychosis, and he is only…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes8.3 billion faces, zero infrastructure: the AI likeness market nobody is serving
Sixty percent of the faces training AI were never asked Katrien Grobler woke up on the 29th of December and saw a word written above her bed. Not…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesInsure Your AI Agent. This PhD Built the Policy
Insurance for AI agents: what happens when the machine screws up In January 2026, something happened that almost nobody in tech noticed and everybody in tech…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesChronic Insomnia. Almost None Get Treated. Colin Lawlor On The Sleep Data Gap
Everything you believe about hustle culture is quietly destroying your brain Colin Lawlor called in from Berlin at nine at night, three days after leaving San…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesThe consent economy
Every time you unlock your phone, somebody makes money. It just isn't you. Forty to sixty hours a week. That is what the average person spends on a smartphone…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesFrom Apple to Animals: The Pivot That Built a 6 Continent AI Company in 30 Months
Everybody says the problem with veterinary medicine is burnout. Yannick Bloem thinks the problem is paperwork. A veterinarian finishes a full day of consults…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesPsychedelics Might Be The Most Important Founder Technology Of This Decade
Niko Skievaski has been raising venture money since 2013. He co-founded Redox, the healthcare interoperability company that became one of the largest data…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesTwo Purple Belts on Scaling Startups With AI, Stoicism, and Cold Plunges
In the beginning, the seeds are everywhere and nothing is talking to each other. That is the exact feeling Jason Katz describes at the top of this What It Do…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesThe $9 Billion Warning Every Founder Scaling Past $1M Needs To Hear
Brett Hurt has sold companies to IBM, taken one public on NASDAQ, and watched ServiceNow absorb his last one. He is telling you, on the record, that none of it…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesFrom $80M To $1B: The Scaling Lesson That Now Applies To Every AI Workflow
Your best people just got twice as fast. Congratulations. You have a problem. Ross Barnes has seen this movie from the projection booth. Twenty-five years in…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesHe Sells Oxygen Systems Nationwide: The Zero-Funding Hardware Playbook
Necessity Built the Company. Gratitude Kept It Alive. Brad Pitzele was collecting diagnoses faster than he could treat them. Autoimmune arthritis first. Then…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesYour Doctor Gets 18 Minutes. Netflix Gets 1,095 Hours. This CEO Is Fixing The Gap
The Other 8,760 Hours You see the person responsible for your health for somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes, once or twice a year. Netflix gets three hours a…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesVibe Coding Your MVP Is a Time Bomb: AI Workflows for Founders Who Want to Ship Twice
The Smartest Model on the Planet Will Still Build You a House With No Foundation Mike Vitez has been shipping software since before the word "agentic" meant…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesThe $0 Fix That Makes Claude 10x Smarter For Your Business
Rob Collie spent 30 years inside the machine, and AI still scared him He was there in 1996, a fresh Vanderbilt grad walking into Microsoft. He led the business…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesTokenomics Will Wreck Your Margins: The AI Model Routing Workflow That Cuts Spend 50%
Tarun Raisoni built a data center company to roughly $400 million in trailing sales without taking a dollar of outside capital, sold it to a Fortune 500 for…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesTokens Go to Zero, Energy Goes to Zero: What Do You Build When Intelligence Is Free?
Every animal on earth runs on four drives. Humans have a fifth. The question is whether AI feeds it or buries it under a pile of chat windows. That is the cold…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes$7,500 AI Team Replacing an Entire Growth Department
Your Website Is About to Become a Line Item Matt Hassett spent seven years making byloftie.com beautiful. Now he is fairly sure that beauty is depreciating…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesYour AI Agents Are Burning You Out: The Sustainable AI Workflows Founders Actually Need
Fourteen terminal instances. Fifty-two tabs across three browsers. Six customers, a dozen half-finished workflows, and a Friday morning where your brain simply…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesAI Agents Just Unlocked $7 Trillion in Invoices Nobody Could Finance
Trust is the most expensive thing in business, and nobody bills you for it until it is gone. Four nine-figure receivables frauds hit the industry in a single…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesHow This AI Hospitality Agent Is Transforming Guest Communication Across 60 Hotels
It is midnight in a mountain town. You have been driving for nine hours, your kids are asleep in the back, and the hotel lobby is empty except for a bell on…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesThe $50 Million Exit Trap Nobody Warns Founders About
The happiest day of your founder life might be the emptiest. The wire hits, the champagne pops, and 90 days later the divorce papers get filed, the workouts…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesHe Predicted the Lithium Boom in 2016. Everyone Called Him Crazy.
When China cut off rare earth exports, the American car industry came within two weeks of shutting down. Two weeks. That is not a hypothetical, that is the…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesSoccer League With ZERO Human Players
Somewhere on a server right now, a striker who does not exist is deciding whether to cut left or right. Nobody scripted the choice. Not even the man who built…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesStop Making AI Human: The Contrarian Take Every Founder Needs
Your website is lying to you. Right now, while you read this, visitors are hitting a broken form, bailing on a checkout button they can barely see, and…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes$250K and 3 Months to Build What Used to Cost $2 Million and 18 Months
A 6-person team just built in 3 months what took 18 months and $2 million the last time around. That's not a productivity story. That's a story about the…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesWhat It Do: The 90% Rule - Why Finishing Is the Least Fun Part of Building Anything
Jason Katz popped his LCL three weeks ago scrambling out of a leg entanglement, and honestly, that injury is the whole episode in miniature. You get excited…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesHe Buys Companies, Keeps Every Employee, Then Deploys Nobel-Nominated AI
Most founders think the endgame is IPO or bust. Todd Furniss built a company that offers a third door: sell to someone who keeps your entire team, hands…
- AI for Founders with Ryan Estes
800,000 Lives, 210 Engineers, One Bet: Inside Collective Health's AI Push
The same artificial intelligence saved one insurer a billion dollars and cost another two billion. Same tool. Opposite outcomes. The only variable was who the…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesWhat It Do: First-Time Founders Build Product. He Built a Distribution Robot.
Two founders sit down on a Friday with the World Cup playing in the background, and within ten minutes one of them casually reveals he has built a version of…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesAI Heart Health Assistant Trusted by 150+ Leading Organizations
Your blood pressure spikes the moment the cuff goes on. You're sitting on crinkly paper in a cold exam room, and the number on the screen may say more about…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesThe Self-Driving Car Of Men's Fashion
A stranger gives you ten seconds. Before you open your mouth, before the pitch, before the handshake, they have already read your shirt and filed you away…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes40,000 Models, One API Key, And A $25M Bet On Open Source
Every month your inference bill climbs, and you tell yourself it is the cost of doing business. What if it is actually a tax on what you do not know? In this…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesHe Analyzed Millions of Calls. The Move That Closed Deals Was a Laugh.
There is thirty billion dollars a year in lost rent sitting in empty units across America, and that vacancy quietly erases roughly half a trillion dollars of…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesAI Law Firm: The Logan Brown Playbook
Time kills deals. So does the fine print you never read. James Charles sold the fastest-moving makeup palette in history, did a reported $100 million in…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesAmerica Spends $5 Trillion On Health. This Is Where It Leaks.
The real villain in American healthcare is not the insurance company. It is the hold music. The United States burns an estimated $350 billion a year on…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes"We're AI-First!" No You're Not. Here's the Test.
A CEO told Justin Watt his company was ready for AI. "We've got our data architecture together," he said, giddy. Justin asked to see it. The guy pulled up an…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesAgent Memory Is the Next Great Moat
What if the dumbest thing your startup does this year is hire? In Zurich, a six-person company is serving Fortune 500 clients with a rule that sounds like…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesWhat it do!? The Jujitsu Secret That Scales Companies Without Force
Two purple belts walk back onto the mat after years away, and the guy who is slow, mindful, and refuses to break a sweat starts sweeping and submitting the…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesThe $18 Billion Backdoor: How One Aussie Founder Plans to Eat LinkedIn Alive
The inbox is dead, and the people who keep emailing it the hardest are the ones killing it fastest. David Connors has watched this happen up close. He sold his…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesStop Getting Paid for Hours. Start Getting Paid for Outcomes.
She didn't get maternity leave. So she rewired the entire way she worked, and accidentally redrew the map of what her career was worth. In 2020, Ashley Gross…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes35x More Profitable Than Marketing | JP Grace from Endear
The salesperson of the future never forgets you. The only question is whether that feels like care or surveillance. JP Grace has worked the floor. Publix bag…
AI for Founders with Ryan Estes"Intensity Is a Bulldozer" The Leadership Trait Everyone Praises and Nobody Survives
The wall you built to protect yourself is the same wall your team can't get past. Most founder advice is about adding. Add a growth loop. Add a framework. Add…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesWhat It Do: 6 Parameters That Separate Cinematic AI From Total Slop
Everyone thinks the magic is in the prompt. It is not. The magic is in everything you build around the prompt. That is the thread running through this build in…
AI for Founders with Ryan EstesShip A Full App In 5 Minutes, Not 5 Weekends
Every founder has a graveyard. Half-finished apps, abandoned prototypes, that "killer tool" you vibe-coded over a weekend and never touched again. Mariam…