What AI Businesses Could Reach $10 Million?

TL;DR

AI business opportunities include interactive avatar shopping and personalized news agents that find, summarize, and discuss topics selected by each user. The broader list also covers personal finance advice, acquiring existing businesses with a private equity model, an email tool inspired by Cursor, AI-native social apps, and uncensored AI search.

Transcript

All right, my friend. I recorded one of my favorite types of episodes. My friend Howie started a company called Air Table. They're worth around $10 billion. So, he has seen it all. He knows what's going on in the world of AI and he has an amazing perspective. And for this episode, I asked him a very simple questions, which is if he were 21 again to... Read More

Key Insights

• Live shopping is an interactive form of commerce in which presenters describe products, share personal stories, and encourage viewers to purchase directly. The format is prominent in Asia, appears on TikTok and Temu, and has a United States example in Whatnot.
• AI avatars can make live shopping personal by giving individual customers one-on-one product conversations. The proposed presenter could be a virtual version of an influencer or celebrity, allowing shoppers to discuss relevant products while retaining the personality that makes live commerce engaging.
• HeyGen is described as an easy, self-service avatar product with pre-made avatars based on licensed human actors and an option for creating a custom avatar. Howie Liu discloses that he is an investor in the company and praises its team and usability.
• Airtable can orchestrate personalized avatar videos by storing recipients or topics in rows and running hosted scripts that call an AI product's API. Each row can request a programmatically generated HeyGen video, after which the resulting link can be sent or downloaded.
• Airtable uses its own web agents to research target customers and generate customized email pitches. The company is also experimenting with video, including an internal setup that can automatically produce an avatar video from content stored within an Airtable row.
• Personalized AI news is envisioned as an agent that learns a user's interests, finds relevant articles automatically, summarizes their information, and answers follow-up questions. The desired experience resembles consulting a well-read friend who can quickly explain any topic the user wants to explore.
• AI-generated newsletters can combine personalized content with creator-led distribution. A white-label platform could let creators launch branded newsletters while using AI to select and produce individualized material, avoiding the highly manual process previously considered by The Hustle.
• AI editorial voices can have recognizable personalities instead of producing only neutral, utilitarian summaries. The discussion suggests styles such as a sensational celebrity-gossip reporter, demonstrating how tone and characterization could differentiate news products and make recurring consumption more engaging.

Questions & Answers

Q: How could AI avatars be used for live shopping?

AI avatars could act as virtual product presenters and hold one-on-one conversations with individual shoppers. A presenter might represent a licensed actor, an influencer, or a celebrity and discuss products relevant to each customer. The concept preserves the personality, storytelling, and interaction associated with live shopping while using AI to provide personalized attention at a larger scale.

Q: What makes live shopping more engaging than a basic product listing?

Live shopping adds a human personality to commerce. Presenters do more than describe product features, since they can share memories, experiences, and opinions, such as a personal connection to a shoe or brand. Viewers can watch the presentation, interact with the experience, and purchase directly, making the content resemble entertainment platforms such as Twitch as well as conventional shopping.

Q: How can Airtable and HeyGen automate personalized videos?

A user can create an Airtable list containing recipients or video topics, then use Airtable's hosted scripting layer to call the HeyGen API. The script asks HeyGen to generate a video for each row with a selected avatar and customized content. HeyGen returns a video link that can be sent directly, downloaded, or attached elsewhere.

Q: How is Airtable experimenting with AI-generated outreach?

Airtable uses its own web agents to research different target customers and learn relevant information about them. That research supports customized email pitches for each prospect. The company is also experimenting with video and has an internal arrangement that can generate a HeyGen avatar video automatically from information stored in an Airtable row, including attendee lists or message topics.

Q: What is the proposed AI personalized news product?

The proposed product is an AI news aggregator that learns which topics matter to a particular reader, automatically finds relevant articles, and extracts their key information. It goes beyond presenting a list of summaries because the reader can converse with the agent, request more detail, and explore a topic as if consulting a friend who follows the news closely.

Q: Why could AI improve personalized newsletters?

Traditional personalization can require writers to produce many separate pieces, match those pieces to each subscriber's interests, and add relevant expert commentary. The Hustle previously considered this type of workflow but found it highly manual. AI could handle more of the selection and production process, allowing each reader's email to contain material aligned with stated interests.

Q: How could creators build branded AI newsletters?

A white-label AI platform could allow creators to launch their own branded newsletters and promote each publication to their audiences. The platform would provide the underlying AI-powered personalization and content workflow, while creators would contribute their brand and distribution. This structure could make launching a customized publication easier than manually assembling different news items for every reader.

Q: What seven AI business ideas are proposed?

The seven proposed areas are live shopping with AI avatars, personalized AI news, an AI personal finance advisor, a private equity model that uses AI when buying an existing business, a Cursor-style product for email, AI-native social applications, and uncensored AI search. The supplied discussion provides its greatest detail on avatar shopping and personalized news.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Howie Liu proposes seven AI business opportunities he might pursue if he were starting again in his twenties. The ideas span shopping, news, finance, business acquisition, email, social applications, and search. The discussion focuses on applying emerging AI capabilities to frequent activities where personalization, automation, or interactive assistance can improve the user experience.

• Live shopping with AI avatars could give every shopper a personalized conversation with a virtual presenter, potentially representing a licensed actor, creator, or celebrity. The concept combines the personality and storytelling of live commerce with automated, one-on-one product discussions. HeyGen is presented as an example of an accessible platform for creating avatars and programmatic videos.

• Personalized AI news could automatically identify articles matching a reader's interests, summarize their contents, and remain available for follow-up questions. The product could also support creator-branded newsletters and distinct editorial personalities. Its central advantage is replacing repeated manual searching and summarization with an interactive agent designed for frequent, personalized news consumption.