Subscribe here | Unsubscribe here | Aug 7, 2025 | FIV #88

✅ Today’s Checklist:

• How to build your own app (a step-by-step guide)

• The AI stack that’s driving revenue for founders

• How to build a compelling, cinematic brand universe

QUICK LINKS

🤖 AI tips. A full step-by-step workflow for building your own app (no coding required).

🌱 Personal development. When to do what you love. An essay by Paul Graham.

🧠 AI education. A simple breakdown of AI agents (plus, 10 tools to build your own).

💼 Business. The real reason Adobe Photoshop is falling behind.

🔒 AI news. Privacy concerns: Google is indexing ChatGPT conversations.

The AI Stack That’s Actually Driving Revenue (Not Just Hype)

The AI space is the wild west right now.

Every week, there’s another tool promising to "revolutionize your workflow" or "automate 90% of your business." Cool. But I don’t care about automating busywork—I care about results.

Where’s the revenue? Where are the leads?

That’s the real test.

So I looked into founders in the trenches—bootstrapped, VC-backed, scrappy, and scaling—with one question in mind: What AI tools are actually driving growth?

The ones below? They kept coming up. They’re helping founders book more meetings, close more deals, and grow without adding headcount.

Real stories. Use cases. Tactical tips.

Let’s dig in.

1. HeyGen + GPT‑4 + Descript = Scalable Sales Machines

💡 Used by: B2B SaaS and service founders trying to get in front of decision-makers without spinning up a full-blown SDR team.

How it’s being used:

The team at Pyne AI, an AI agent for user onboarding, was sick of trial users ghosting. Instead of blasting out more emails into the void, they started sending short, personalized HeyGen videos—like a real human saying, “Hey, saw you signed up—here’s how we can actually help.”

They used GPT-4 to tailor the message, Descript to clean it up fast, and let the AI handle the heavy lifting. It didn’t just look good—it worked.

Conversions more than doubled. Retention tripled. The whole onboarding process felt less like a funnel and more like a relationship.

👉 Quick Founder Tip:

• Clone your best-performing cold email script

• Use HeyGen to generate a video with dynamic name and company tags

• Run it through Descript to polish captions and flow

• Send via Instantly with a warm CTA (ex: “Want a quick teardown of your site?”)

This stack’s like hiring a sales team—without actually hiring anyone.

2. Clay + OpenAI for Lead Gen That Doesn’t Suck

💡 Used by: Anyone tired of Zapier spaghetti or clunky CRMs.

Clay is what happens when Notion and Apollo have a smart AI baby. You plug in LinkedIn URLs, enrich with multiple data sources, and build a real-time, usable CRM. With Clay + OpenAI prompts you can generate hyper-specific cold outreach—stuff like:

“Email the Head of Ops at a DTC skincare brand who just posted a job for logistics.”

👉 Founder Tip:

• Use Clay to pull in job change signals, funding rounds, or press releases. Then write personalized 3-line intros with ChatGPT.

• Keep it human. Your first line should not be “Hope this finds you well.”

3. Setter AI for Inbound Demo Booking That Feels Magical

💡 Used by: Founders who hate being chained to their calendar but still want to convert website traffic.

Setter AI acts like a concierge AI rep. Instead of a lead form that goes into a black hole, it talks to visitors like a real SDR—qualifies them, books meetings, handles objections.

No dev work. No sales team.

Just a little AI magic on the homepage.

👉 Founder Tip: Train it with your sales scripts and objection-handling FAQ. Then test it as a visitor. If it sounds robotic or too salesy, adjust your tone. Aim for “helpful barista,” not “pushy car salesman.”

4. ChatGPT Custom GPTs + Perplexity for Newsletter and SEO Growth

💡 Used by: Content-first founders, creators, and solo marketers.

We all know content drives leads, but writing good content consistently is brutal.

Joanna Ericta, co-founder of The Assist—a newsletter with more than 200,000 active subscribers—uses ChatGPT (with her brand voice fine-tuned in a custom GPT) to draft blog posts.

You can take this a step further and feed your outputs through Perplexity for real-time data and outbound link suggestions. End result:

→ 4 SEO-optimized blog posts a week

→ 1 or more newsletters per week

👉 Founder Tip: Use ChatGPT for structure, but always add real voice, stories, and specificity. Then run your top posts as retargeting ads on LinkedIn or Meta. Turn readers into leads.

5. Tavus + Typeform = The Funnel of the Future

💡 Used by: Course creators, agencies, and consultants.

Imagine this: a lead opts in via Typeform, and instantly gets a personalized video in their inbox using Tavus, addressing them by name, recapping their pain points, and offering a free call. Wild.

👉 Founder Tip: Write 3–5 core pain-point scripts and let Tavus dynamically render based on form logic.

→ Bonus points if your CTA includes a case study link or free PDF guide to warm them up.

6. Zapier + Make + AI = Automate or Die

💡 Used by: Founders who want to clone themselves.

Everyone talks automation. But the smart ones chain AI into their automations. If you are an ecom founder, for example, you could set up a system where every product review triggered:

• GPT-4 summary

• Slack alert if negative

• Email to the customer with a discount code

• Auto update to the FAQ page if it was a common question

That’s how you win—by responding instantly, at scale.

👉 Founder Tip: Audit your time. Anything that’s repeatable? Automate it. Use Make for complex logic, Zapier for quick wins, and GPT to handle nuance like writing replies or drafting custom scripts.

Final Thought:

AI won’t save your business. But if used intentionally—to amplify what’s already working—it can absolutely help you scale faster, cleaner, and cheaper than before.

Pick one tool from this list. Try it this week. Measure results. Then build your stack from there. No shiny object syndrome—just smart, compounding growth.

Got your own favorite AI tools? Reply and tell me—I’ll include the best ones in a future edition.

Sean’s Pick of The Week

Founders Can Now Build a Cinematic Brand Universe

Fable just dropped Showrunner, and honestly—it feels like we’re looking at the future of media.

It’s being called the Netflix of AI for a reason: you can generate animated TV episodes with nothing but text prompts, then steer the story like a playable game.

Founders, this is proof that storytelling, brand building, and content creation are about to get radically democratized.

Imagine onboarding videos, investor updates, or even customer education as episodic shows—starring you.

Enjoy the newsletter? Please forward to a friend. It only takes 10 seconds.