How Every's Team Used AI to Ship Its Biggest Launch Ever

Launching the Builder Pack

0:00We generated the largest subscription revenue increase in Everest's history last week. We did it by launching this thing called the Builder Pack. Basically, we partnered with a bunch of the AI tools we use every day, and subscribers to the Builder Pack get discounts and credits to those tools. So $1,000 in Codex credits, 12 months of free cursor access, all that kind of stuff. The Builder Pack is awesome, but I think the actual story behind it, like how we did it, why we did it, how it generated so much revenue, is really interesting. For this episode, I had the team who worked on the Builder Pack. Everything from conception all the way to the full executioner launch.

0:31Come to the show to share how we did it and what we learned. I hope you like it.

Introducing All Access

0:35Hello, everyone, and welcome to AI&I. This is a slightly different version of the pod today, where we've got myself, Yash, Austin, and Douglas here, and we're missing Daniel. We're going to be taking you on a journey today, introducing you to All Access and the Builder Pack. And this is a new tier at Every that we decided to launch recently. And we just want to talk about why we decided to build it,

1:05why it's important, how we use it, and what it means to be a builder today. All of which, all of us are builders and use these tools every day. So yeah, hopefully by the end of this, there'll be like one nugget that you can take out of this and use in your every day. So I guess like to introduce us or to introduce this pod, first I'm going to introduce All Access. We launched it Tuesday on the 14th.

1:37It was a big launch for us, big endeavor across the whole company. All Access is a new tier. At Every, it's a $625 annual plan that gives you access to the Builder Pack, which is 10 benefits, exclusive benefits from all AI companies that you know and love that enable you to go build and adopt some of these tools in ways that you may not have been able to before. And All Access includes a couple other things.

2:07It includes access to office hours that we're hosting that are exclusive to All Access members, unlimited use of Quora and Spiral. And we have a couple other things up our sleeve that we're going to be launching in the next few months as well.

2:23But we really want to talk about the Builder Pack because that's like probably the meat of All Access. And the Builder Pack is 10 soon-to-be-more exclusive benefits to AI tools that the Every Team uses every day so that you can get access to these tools and use them for free for a while and get comfortable with using them in your stack.

2:54It's early access, exclusive access to the Every Stack. This is the team that brought it to life.

Yash on His AI Stack

3:01All right, Yash, how do you use the Builder Pack? Yeah. Context. I'm Yash. I run one of the products. Yeah. Who are you? Who am I? Well, I ask myself that every day. But I run one of the products at Every called Sparkle. And I also work on the growth team now. A large part of my work is using Claude. I know at Every, we are like Codex stands, but I'm still very Claude. I've been using Claude for the last one year.

3:32And this involves like, I built out the entire product, like I think 15, rebuilt Sparkle 15 times using Claude and PostHog. So those are the tools I reach out for the most. And recently, I joined the growth team at Every. And growth meant a lot of A-B testing, a lot of segmentation and other stuff. And again, I started optimizing PostHog. But I find it really annoying to open like dashboards and set a lot of these things up.

4:04And that's where my setup with Claude helps a lot, where I have like custom skills built out. And essentially, my plan is in the next few weeks to automate the entire A-B testing pipeline. Like a lot of the work that I spent doing for the first one month at the growth team, I'm like, this is very boring because it's very straightforward. Like I should be working on interesting, more interesting problems. And I should not be clicking buttons and figuring out what's the right audience size and stuff like that.

4:36Like Claude is so much better at that. I have to prompt it. I have to figure out, okay, what's the right audience size? When should an experiment go from a 10% A-B testing cohort to 50%? Like why should I be doing that manually? I feel it's a lot of fake work. And we like to spend a lot of time observing these things, like setting up an experiment every time. It felt so boring to me. I'm like, the only way I can set up, do more experiments is automating the entire pipeline.

5:07So I spend a lot of time. So what's interesting to you is less actually the work. The work is no longer setting up the pipeline to be able to do it. It's actually what should I test? And then did it work? Great, implement it. What's the next test? Yeah, I should be like, I'm more interested in the ideas, like, oh, should we do a homepage takeover? Yeah. Who should we show that homepage takeover to versus actually setting that up is not that interesting. Like we have so many experiments live right now, which is like, when should we cut off the paywall?

5:40When should we show the paywall? Those are way more interesting. And those are also like more human psychology. And I can, I have more fun doing that. And I personally feel like a large part of our work at every is like, everyone is very secure in what they do. And so we are okay with automating our jobs. Like, I spent one month doing these things. And I'm like, okay, I'm done. Like, I want to do other things now. And if it was some other organization, I'm going to try to stretch this out for like a year.

6:14Like what I did. You want to move on to the next thing that you can tackle. Yeah, because that's fun. And that's why we are always at the edge of AI. Like, we are like, yeah, this is done, guys. Like, what's next? Like, what's more interesting? Okay, is there a better model for this? Yeah. So what in the Builder Pack do you use every day? Every day, it's Cursor. I use Cursor because they have cloud regions, which are really good. We did a lot, a bunch of Fable 5 optimizations.

6:45Because I was working on some other tasks. I did not want to mess with my setup. So cloud agents just spin off a cloud server and run there and get me the results back. And they have a really good open source model, which is really cheap, like QB Composer, which I love. So that's something I use. I use Framer a lot as well while I was building the Sparkle site. It has good MCP support. So I could change the headlines, experiment more directly without actually going into framework and setting.

7:21It's very annoying to me. Like, I'm setting a lot of these things up that I font size for mobile and stuff like that. And this is how you, like, I used to do this, like, 20 years back. Like, today I should not be spending my time on these things. And I would say CloudMax is my go-to. Like, I feel it's insane. Yeah, that's my stack. And Postalk. And Postalk, yeah. I use a lot of these products, but it's so cheap. Like, I feel that CloudMax subscription is really underrated.

7:51Like, I'd pay way more for it. Right. I couldn't work without it. Right. Anthropic. I hope no one from Anthropic is watching this. Get the deal, guys. Get the build-up back. I like the way Yasha is describing one potential approach to work, which is, like, there's this approach to being a general manager in the NBA, which is, like, just keep trading for future draft picks to be, like, we're on an eight-year time horizon for contention. And there is, for someone as, like, skilled as Yash at engineering, go-to-market engineering, growth,

8:25you can use these tools, this stack that he has, to, like, operate at the same level in, like, a set it and forget it mode. And kind of, I would be, like, well, Yash, like, I run the growth team. I look at what Yash is doing. I'd be, like, Yash has another experiment, and it, like, moves the needle by 2%. I guess he's on it. And, like, he knows how to set up that Claude code and post-hog loop. But the way that he works instead, which is exciting, is that after he does that, he looks at how can we win right now?

9:01How can I be creative and competitive to find the next thing? And how can I use these always-on, like, loop and architecture-based automations to make it so that Yash can do the thing that, like, lights him up, which is I can see Yash and Slack being like, oh, what if we, like, made a three-hour time-constrained discount specifically targeted to these users using this video, building this thing in Framer? And this kind of stuff has always been the case, right?

9:33Like, that work is the most fun way to work. It's how smart, creative people are able to differentiate themselves. But I think that the Builder Pack allows is that it allows someone like Yash to automate and defer a lot of the work to cloud agents he would have otherwise had to manually click in post-hog or manually code himself. And then he can go be creative on the space where he is an expertise.

10:03And then it also allows someone like me, who doesn't know what the fuck any of that stuff is, but kind of is naturally more of an ideas person, to give the model and the SaaS tools in the Builder Pack my outcomes and ideas. And then just, like, let it run, which is, like, the craziest part for me. Like, I let go... Can you tell that story of you had an idea for something, you went to bed, you woke up, you had four emails?

Automating Email Campaigns

10:30Yeah, so it wasn't even my idea. Like, we were... We did the Builder Pack launch on Tuesday. It was going really well. I'm on the West Coast. Most of the team is on the East Coast. As they were, like, getting ready to go to bed, Yash dropped a note in Slack saying, hey, we should send emails in the morning to a group of users who have shown some sort of checkout intent but not converted because we were running a early bird discount for the first 24 hours of launch.

11:07So it's like, we should probably hit them again with some sort of urgency-backed approach. And then Yash said, this isn't actually my idea. It's Dan's idea, but I'm sharing it. And then they all signed off. And I think it was maybe, like, 7 p.m. here. I had been in front of my computer all day. And I really wanted to go to the gym. And so I took a screenshot of the Slack because it was, like, a bunch of different Slack messages. Usually I would just, like, copy-paste the link to the Slack message and send it to Codex. I took a screenshot of the Slack. I dropped it in a Codex thread using 5.6 on Medium.

11:44It's, like, usually what I operate in. And I said, can you do this? And then I did Splash LFG, which is the harness in our compound engineering plug-in to tell an agent to take itself through a brainstorm, plan, work, review, compound loop, which is, like, to me, the ideal way to work with agents. And then I went to the gym. And I came back from the gym. And what I saw in Codex was that it worked for, honestly, not that long.

12:18Like, it probably finished by the time that I, like, changed into my workout clothes at the gym because it, like, didn't actually need to do that much. And it had created four different audience-based cohorts, like, targeted cohorts in kits based on, like, these people got to the checkout page. These people visited the BuilderPack website but didn't check out. These are our highest engaged for users. There's, like, four different types. It drafted specific emails for each of those audience types.

12:50It ran the text for the emails through the MCP for our AI-based writing app called Spiral. So it's using a writing style that we've approved. It looked through all of our previous sends in kit, both for our language style as well as what had driven click-throughs, what had driven opens. It grabbed a social share image that had driven click-throughs in a previous send and embedded it. And it had scheduled it for the next morning.

13:23And it's crazy because I wasn't, like, holy shit, that's so cool. I was, like, that's basically what it should do. Like, my brain is so cooked on this stuff now that I'm, like, this is literally exactly what I expected. I think it did something. I think it then posted it in all emails. Yeah, I have an automation in there. So we have a Slack channel called All Emails. If you're a subscriber to every, I'm sorry, we send you a lot of emails. I swear we're working on it. One step towards working on it is having a channel where, one, we build all of our email sends through Codex or Cloud Code and can have the agent push a Slack message saying, here's what's going to be sent to whom and why.

14:12And then they can get a review of, you know, should we actually send this to this audience at this time? So it sends that as well and the team can review it and know what's up. But I pulled up these four email sends and I made very light tweaks, partially because I was, like, oh, I think I can write, like, a slightly better headline and also partially because I'm still a control freak who doesn't want to turn over every single thing to AI. I was, like, let me, you know, let me, like, put a little bit of spice on this.

14:43But I maybe spent 10 minutes of extra work on it when I came back from the gym. And then we scheduled them and we let it rip. And in a couple hours the next morning, those emails alone had driven more than $25,000 in revenue. It had driven, like, multiple conversions. It suggested things we could do to retarget the audience that didn't convert. And, like, two nice things happened. Like, one, I got to go to the gym, which is great because otherwise I would have sat there building these emails.

15:17And, two, like, at the gym, not looking at my phone, not looking at Slack, I had other ideas for stuff we could do the next day, right? Like, disconnected from being in the weeds, I'm, like, working out and I'm, like, oh, yeah, we should, like, we should do this experiment and that experiment. Because I don't have to use my brain and my fingers to, like, click around in post-talk, which I love using. But I don't have to click around in post-talk to, like, find the exact right audience segment to target.

15:47So that's, it's just so crazy, like, to go from here's an idea to go do this idea using slash LFG to actually, like, executing on what it created, in this case, sending these emails, to generating $25,000 in revenue, which doesn't happen every time you do slash LFG. But, like, that is, you know, sort of a possibility to then compounding what you learned and also recommending, like, what to do next.

16:21It's just, like, remarkable that, you know, like, 5.6 soul is expensive. But, like, relative to the value that you got out of that, it's, like, nothing. And best of all, you went to the gym and, like, took care of yourself. And that's, it's just, like, remarkable that you can do that. You can, if you are really harnessing these tools well for work and for life, I use it as my trainer at the gym. It's, it can be very fulfilling and, like, so effective. Yeah, I feel it allows you to be, get better at things you want to really get better at.

16:59It frees up more time. Like, to give an example, like, when, like, Austin and I, like, people are always pitching growth ideas to us. Like, hey, do this, do this. And to be really honest, those are good ideas, but I don't want to spend, take away time from doing my main thing and spend time on that. And that entire thing should be automated because, A, the idea is good. We should not hire an engineer just to implement that particular idea. So, I feel we have these tool sets, like, if I have a workflow set up, hey, let's try this particular headline on our website.

17:32It should be, like, you should be, that should be automated. And I feel we can, that's the goal. Like, I have more time to do, like, deep work and be in my flow state and without really compromising these things. Like, building that loop is me being in the flow state versus, like, hey, try this, try this, try this. I think the thing we're, like, circling around is, like, this is the best way to build right now, which is to, you know, Kieran, our colleague, has described it this way, of you're at the top and bottom of the AI sandwich.

18:09You decide what the problem is, you frame the idea, and then you review the work. That's been the case for a while. But the exciting thing about this moment, the exciting thing about being able to use the tools in the Builder Pack is that you can go from idea to execution quickly, easily, reliably, and at, like, a very high level by being able to just, like, type or with monologue any speech-to-text tool like we use just to be able to say the idea and have it come out.

18:46And the thing that I really like about this, the way I like working, is that whether you're, you know, primarily a Claude user like Yash or a Codex user like me, the tools all now speak together really, really well and connect to each other really well.

Connecting Tools with Agents

19:03Notion is a great example of this. I have hated Notion for years because my brain doesn't work in that way of, like, I'm going to, like, organize this database, and I'm going to make sure that, like, the growth hub makes sense to other people. Yeah, yeah. Like, I think up until a year ago, Notion had too much of a, like, of a barrier to entry on, like, organization and maintenance that anytime I try to use Notion with a team, we've churned because no one's around to maintain it.

19:33And all of that maintenance has now been pushed off to Codex and Cloud Code. Once a week, I just ask Codex, and I'm like, hey, can you, like, reorganize our growth hub? And it does it perfectly. It's, like, amazing. Or it's like, hey, make sure this database is set up well.

19:46My favorite example of this is while I was doing this kind of, like, in-the-weeds Codex work, like, when I work with Codex, I'm, like, steering it and going back and forth with it. Claude, in-in-in-cloud code in the desktop app using Fable, I had the videos we're releasing attached to this launch all connected through Descript and the Descript MCP. And Fable is just running in a loop, building out the edits for all of those videos and reviewing its work and interacting with Underlord, the Descript AI tool.

20:25Because I'm not a video editor. Like, I'm actually really bad at it. But, like, sometimes that falls under my responsibilities. And that can run in a loop so that when I go to edit the video, by no means has Fable and Descript created a video that is publishable. But it has gotten me, like, 70% of the way there while I'm steering Codex, Cloud Code and Fable and Descript have gotten it there so that I can go and I'm, like, oh, I know what to do now. Like, I see the pieces. It, like, it does this crazy stuff where it takes the transcript, makes a storyboard, makes a script itself, and then, like, pieces the video together.

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Value in the Builder Pack

22:01And now, back to the episode. I think the thing that I love about the Builder Pack specifically is I feel like a lot of the time at Every, we're telling people, like, go build, go build. It's the best time in the world to build. There's no excuses. Be the builder you want to be. And that's great. But how? Well, one is how, which is, like, you should subscribe to Every, we will teach you how. But two is, this stuff is expensive. And the stack that you use, Austin, the stack that you use, Yash, Douglas, myself, it's very expensive.

22:37We spend a lot of money at Every on AI and credits. And last night we had an event in the office and a friend of mine's younger brother, I invited him to come. He's an engineer. And he, he's trying to figure out how to get a job as an engineer right now. Even though he is an engineer, he's really struggling to get a job. And he's not using AI at all. Yeah. And I introduced him to some people that were, like, telling them how they work.

23:07And then at the end of it, he was, like, super excited. And then he, these people were telling them, like, how much money their companies enable them to spend on AI. Some guy, you know, he was, like, a single engineer, spent 30 grand last month. And this guy, like, you know, I could see him, like, visually, like, gulp. Well, he was, like, how am I going to discover this technology when it's, like, prohibitively expensive? And I'm an individual. I'm not at a company right now. And the thing that I love about the Builder Pack is it is, you know, I think the codec, the OpenAI benefit is, like, a great example of this.

23:47Because you're getting three months free of OpenAI and codecs and $1,000 in overage credits. But the three months free includes, I don't know what the number is anymore, $5,000 of value. Like, these subscriptions, just like our, you know, our Anthropic benefit, they include so much spend inside of a small subscription. So, I mean, it's the same thing for basically OpenAI, Cursor, Gemini, and Anthropic, those offerings.

24:25Because they're model companies. So, okay, it's one month, excuse me. The one month offering. You can use the codecs credits. You can use the codecs credits for three months. Yeah. Yeah. It's so much value that, like, you then get to go experiment with this technology so that you can be the builder that you want to be. I use them all the time. My stack, I mean, the Builder Pack is basically everything that we use at Every.

24:56Personally, I'm in OpenAI, Anthropic. I'm more of, like, a consumer of PostHog than I am, like, a user of, like, their AI credits. You're always in Notion. I'm a big Notion user because I do, like, a lot of ops. Framer user, render, and I really like experimenting with the Flora MCP.

25:20So, I mean, I'm kind of all over the stack. Like, my biggest use is, like, obviously, like, the model companies and just, like, doing my work inside of Claude or Codex. I mean, ironically, a lot of these tools, almost all of these tools, if they aren't a model company themselves, I'm utilizing them through a model company. I'm never really ever going into their tool. Even Flora, which, like, has, like, a remarkable tool, I only ever use it through the MCP.

25:53Yeah, and it doesn't devalue those tools. It actually, like, to me, it incentivizes those, like, SaaS operators to be the very best at the thing they do. I think a lot of us went through a moment from, like, January to March where we were, like, let's go. We're building our own CRM. We're building our own, like, data dashboards. We're going to, like, do design all ourselves. And you start doing it, and you're like, man, this fucking sucks, right?

26:24And when you're able to sit there and be like, you know what? I really trust PostDog to both run and automate my analytics. I really trust Notion to have this, like, source of truth for the entire business. And even if I never opened it up, even if my pages and my databases look incomprehensible to a human, it doesn't really matter. Because when I'm sitting in Cloud Code or Codex, I can, which I do all the time, I'm like, hey, I need to make this plan. I need to do this thing.

26:57At Notion, at Slack, at PostDog, find the necessary information. That's one reason why this suite of tools is so powerful right now is that the leap from 5.5 to 5.6 came with this improvement in the model's ability to go find the context it needs to do work well and then to maintain that context through any amount of compaction that happens as it works over a long term.

27:29That happens through the way in which, if you looked at my prompts in Codex, you would be like, I think this guy doesn't know what the hell he's doing. Because I'm usually just like, hey, look at all this stuff, create a goal for yourself, and use compound engineering. And I'm like, go. It's like barely any thought or work. The thought or work comes from like, I've identified this as the thing to do. And I know that either I or my team have set up the harness that the agents can work inside of to be trusted.

28:03And I think to a lot of people, that sounds like tough. It sounds like a lot of work. But the reason that we've gotten there from every is we've done it incrementally, right? It's like we did one thing and it started to work okay. I've been trying to automate these marketing email sends for months. And it keeps getting a little bit better. And through compound engineering, the results keep compounding. So the project I work inside of keeps getting a better understanding of it. And it kind of goes back to like the best time to start doing this was, you know, a year ago.

28:38The second best time is right now. You can start this compounding flow right now with models that have really caught up to how quickly you can work yourself. Yeah, I'm curious to know, Douglas, what's your stack?

Douglas on Creative Direction

28:53Because you're the creative director behind this. And someone asked me, like, this branding is very different from every's branding. So, like, why is it green? I had, I'm like, okay, I'm going to ask that. How are you? Yeah. Yeah. Why is it green, Douglas? I think it's green partly because we haven't used green that much yet in our brand world. But, you know, I think what's interesting that all of you are describing and that I've learned in my, you know, short few months I've been here at Every is I think language is very interesting.

29:26And I find the way the model companies name themselves and their new models very interesting. And a lot of it is very literary. It's, you know, Codex is a book. There's haiku, sonnet, fable, right? These are all stories or forms of putting words together. But the term people use for agents is orchestration. And it feels a lot more like music to me. And I'm not super musical. But I think everyone in their job kind of played a few instruments. And it now feels like we can all take a step back without knowing how to play the rest of the instruments in the orchestra.

29:58We can conduct it, right? And as long as we understand what the piece needs to sound like. And then, you know, you take that and you compound it onto, you can be conducting a lot of different orchestras at the same time. And creative direction, I think, and kind of brand strategy is a lot of famous, you know, designers have described it as being like a maestro. And you have color, type, shapes, symbols, forms, words, you know, systems, photography, a lot of the time, illustration styles.

30:30And how do you kind of conduct all of these pieces together to sing a song that sounds beautiful? And I feel like this stack is that for working with AI. And it's applicable to a lot more than just the highly technical work, right? So I certainly use it for knowledge work. And to answer your question, I do like Flora, so I can talk more about Flora because I'm probably the deepest in Flora. But, you know, I've learned here, too, also, and I think Austin touched on this, like what to use Claude for, what to use Codex for.

31:05And being able to, I think, use both of them through, you know, I've also built out kind of a set of marketing skills that I can use with compound engineering that really helps shorten the timeline on something like research. When you're trying to come up with strategy, you need to have data that backs, you know, an insight or a hunch that you have. Do I think that the tools come up with the insight particularly well? Not always. Sometimes they do. But you can then give it the insight and say, prove this out. You know, what direction should we be taking this?

31:35Here's the competitive set. It's really good at competitive auditing, especially if you build a skill for it. And it can compound on that. And just, you can say, push more. I want pricing. I want language. I want what colors these brands use. And you take that, you can feed it into a system and have a really, really sharp strategic lens in like, you know, hours or less, as opposed to what used to be a several week long process, frankly, with humans researching. And then from there, if you have an eye towards what you want to create, using a tool like Flora is really helpful.

32:09Because, again, like similar to Austin, I feel I'm not a technical designer either. But I can, I've been mood boarding for 15 years. You can now like productize a mood board, especially if you have the right prompt. And you can use Claude to write the prompt for you. Put it into Flora, right? Or use the MCP as Brandon does. And have it take a set of reference images. I often have it analyze the images and kind of say, like, what am I, what am I doing here, you know? And it'll be interesting. It might say something like with BuilderPack, this is very high contrast.

32:43You know, to your note about Green, I think this is, in a way, our most explicitly technical kind of facing audience that we've been speaking to in terms of the BuilderPack. Like this is for people that are really ready to start experimenting with all these tools. And it feels a little bit more matrixy and digital than a lot of the more Greco-Roman and kind of heritage-driven elements of the EveryBrand. So, you know, all of those were decisions that these tools helped us kind of land on in terms of the aesthetic of everything.

33:16And also helped us design the website, right? So, it's pretty cool to be able to, it's a mind shift for me, a mindset shift of moving from playing the instrument to orchestrating. And when you learn how to, you know, get one group singing and playing, you move on to the next one and you can conduct lots of pieces at once. And that's what I find, you know, I'm just beginning to use, like, have everything plug into Notion, right? Super helpful. And to Austin's point, you can just be like, look in Notion, find this thing, do this for me, you know, compound, whatever it may be.

33:51And it has all the relevant context because it's been updated because someone else on the team has automated it to update itself. And I think the way you work as an organization also then just gets, like, you know, souped up to a crazy degree because we're all orchestrating at the same time. And it kind of pumps. So, yeah, it's been really exciting for me to work with these tools and apply them to, you know, it is the sandwich. You have to put a lot of work in at the beginning is what I found in terms of really doing some metacognition and figuring out, like, how do I think about this?

34:27What is my process, you know? And then once you've kind of codified that, these tools can run with it and you can ask them for help if you don't know why something happened, which I find, like, very revelatory. Yeah, it's remarkable when people are like, well, how do I use it? It's like, well, what are you trying to accomplish? And then they say that. And I'm like, great, just say that again. Yeah. I think a good final thing here is, like, if we're thinking we're speaking directly to people who either, like, just got access to the tools in the Builder Pack or, like, thinking about it, like, this has been a lot of kind of, like, higher level thinking about how to work with a few examples.

35:10Like, I think each of us saying, like, say you have access to all the stuff in the Builder Pack and you're like, what do I do now, right? Like, what would each of you recommend someone do, whether it's one specific thing to try or one, like, mentality approach to take if someone is, like, a brand new Builder? I think we can go around and do that.

Advice for New Builders

35:33If I had just got the Builder Pack and I'm just, like, getting my feet wet right now with building, I think the first thing I would do is, if you're, like, really early on, sometimes the hardest part about building is knowing what to build. And you can, like, just sit at your computer and be, like, looking for a problem is the worst way to find a problem. Going for a walk is also, like, not an effective way to, like, find a problem.

36:08You need to, like, that is a habit that you can build where you can, like, identify problems in your life well because usually we're just, like, so numb to those problems. So if I'm new to building and I'm new to the Builder Pack, the very first thing I would do is, like, pick something simple that I really, really love, like a product that I really love, and dupe it. I would just make it myself, the very, very simplified MVP version of that, and use basically as many parts of the Builder Pack as I possibly could.

36:40So, like, I would launch it on Render and use the Render Credits. I would plug in PostHog so that I could actually, like, maybe build in a loop or use some of PostHog's traditional products where I can just, like, actually track how I use it, how my friends use it. I would build it using Anthropic, using Claude, using Codex, using Cursor. I might actually use some AI in that product, you know, even if it's a product that doesn't include AI, I might figure out how to do that.

37:13I might use Flora to actually, like, create some unique icons or graphics. But I would just dupe something, because what I find when I dupe things, at least early on when I was duping, I would get started with the process of making it, and very quickly I'd be like, eh, I don't like that feature, I don't like that, you know, version of this thing. And I'm going to, very quickly it's not duping, it's like inspiration and you're off making your own thing. So I would, if I'm new to the Builder Pack, I would dupe something, and I would look through the Builder Pack and be like, which one of these things can I actually start using in this build?

37:53And not question yourself for a second, just start doing it. I mean, that's, like, the hardest part sometimes, is just, like, the first prompt. Yeah, I find that, like, one, I think everyone learns everything in different ways, but especially, like, learns how to become an AI builder in different ways. I think some people really want to, like, understand what's happening, and other people just want to, like, go and ship and learn from what doesn't work. Like, the thing that works best for me was, okay, I have, like, I actually have a lot of ideas for what I might want to do.

38:30Of the ideas I might want to do, let me pick the one that I'm the most excited about, which for me was this, like, movie app that's, like, Fandango for indie movies. I was like, this doesn't exist. If this worked, this would make my life a lot better. I would be so stoked, like, one thing that I think is a good prompt to yourself is, like, what would you be the most excited to text someone, like, hey, I made this, right? Like, what would make you feel really good to do that? And I would actually really encourage people to try to make, not to necessarily make, like, a complex app for the same complexity, but try to make something you don't think you can.

39:04And try to make an app to start because you're going to learn so much through that process. Like, in doing that process to make this, like, web app that is now live that a lot of my friends use every week now, I'd never done any of this stuff before. And then it's taking you through, like, oh, yeah, you need to connect render. You need to go through Google OAuth, like, whatever. Because it's a thing that you're so passionate and excited about and you want to get to the end, it quickly starts to feel like you're playing a video game and, like, trying to get to the next level.

39:38And I do think Brandon's point about, like, okay, to start, connect the agent, whether it's Cursor, Claude, or Codex, to the tools in the Builder Pack and any tools that you have access to, to be like, you can connect it all and be like, hey, you have all this stuff. The agent will figure out where to go. But I think driving towards that goal of, I'm going to make something great that I'm, like, excited to text a friend, like, hey, go try it. And along the way, you'll realize, like, oh, it actually works.

40:09That's crazy. It's so exciting that it works. But, like, the design looks like ass. Like, how do I make the design better? And, like, you can sit and work with that. You can read every for some inspiration for design. You can go use it to check stuff. But that would be my best recommendation. And that's worked really, really well for me. And then I've learned from seeing the V1 ship that the agent comes up with and being like, okay, that's not good enough. Let me figure out how to get it to a V2. I have a good specific one for marketers, writers, designers, creative technologists, product designers.

40:45I think to Brandon's point, I know your problem, and it's probably your portfolio. And this is a wonderful stack to rebuild your portfolio. And it's something that I think everybody kind of hates their portfolio site, but you need it. And you, to Austin's point, probably have a dream version of it in your head. You can use Brandon's duping kind of strategy here, too, if you see a site that you really like and you want to try and mimic it. Or you can come up with something from scratch and write the brief for what you're looking for there.

41:18Put in the references and give it to Codex or Claude, connect it to all of these different tools and, you know, take that on as a project. I think it's a really enriching thing to do because most people have so much work that you're not liking the way you've potentially merchandised it to the world. And maybe you want more interactivity or different types of visuals. You can use these tools to create something really, really striking that you feel good about.

41:49And that also potentially helps you get more work or a better job or whatever else it is you're looking for. And it kind of also proves out that you're AI native, right? So I think that's a great project for anyone that's creative or has even a personal, you know, side hustle or small business that they're running. Try and do something like that that's impactful right away because you can also get people responding to it. You know, to Austin's point, right, his app. Hey, his friends use it now, right? People can actually use this thing. They can see it. They can tell you how great it is. And that's very encouraging as you begin to work with AI, in my experience, at least.

42:23Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I feel to second that, like, or to close it out, what I would do is I would use Cursor with Render. And what I realized, my mind was blown when I used Cursor Cloud Agents with Kimi K2-5, which is an open source model which Cursor improved. I would say dupe something, use Cursor Cloud Agents, and use different models. I feel right now, if this is what you're going to be doing, you need to find your favorite model.

42:58And with Cloud Agents, you can have 10 agents running. And we have, like, the Pro Plus plan. This is above Pro. So you're good in terms of, like, spend and stuff like that. And I would use Render to deploy it and actually see which model you like working with. Like, I'm so picky about my models that even if a new model drops, I don't change to that because if I have some preference, I'll test it out. You need to have, like, we have evals for, like, you know, if a model is doing better or worse.

43:30You need to have your personal taste in terms of what you like and what you not dislike. And I feel Cloud Agents are a very underrated way to find out, like, what do you like to build? And just start to feel that out. Yeah.

What Comes Next

43:44Cool.

What Comes Next

43:45In terms of, like, what's next for All Access, I think we have some cool stuff coming. I mean, in the next few days, week, we're probably going to drop two more partners that are pretty sick. Yeah. Benefits. And I think that, like, something that's really compelling for our readers, I've found, is, like, now they have access to these benefits. You guys have access to these benefits.

44:16But, like, the guides on how to use each one are – people love that. So I think that, like, probably what we're going to do next is for each one of these benefits, you have, like, amazing value that you can go capture by using them. But how can we pair that with a guide that you can probably just plug into one of your agents that, like, leapfrogs you ahead with using whatever this net new technology is that you now have access to? So I think, like, guides, like, some cool camps for each one of these partners is going to be, like, probably something that we'll do.

44:54To be clear, I've never read one of our guides. I dropped the guide into Codex, and I say, like, use this to help build the next thing we're doing. And I would recommend everyone do the same. And, yeah, I think the best way to think about all access but also, like, how to best take advantage of an every membership is that we are going to keep adding partners to the builder pack that we're excited to use. When the year is up, because, you know, you get these as part of a yearly subscription, we're going to try to fill it up with more stuff that y'all are excited to use.

45:26And there's a lot more perks coming to get excited about that will help you build. Awesome. I think now we're handing it off to Dan's outro. So, Dan, take it away. Thanks, Dan. Thank you. Oh, my gosh, folks. You absolutely, positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI&I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard.

45:57But instead of gold, it's filled with pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs about chat GPT. Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights, and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat, craving for more. It's not just a show. It's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. So do yourself a favor. Hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely, hopelessly in love with you.

46:28Thank you.