Startup Stories - Mixergy

When a new user signs up, most companies add them to a standard drip campaign. Ryan Carson found a better alternative: his AI agent sends customized drip messages to every new registrant. It helps his company close more business. It’s just one way he uses AI to act as his VP of marketing. In this interview, he breaks down how he automated his marketing. Ryan Carson is a three-time founder and longtime SaaS entrepreneur. He’s currently the founder of Untangle, an AI-powered platform designed to help people navigate divorce with clarity and less conflict. With over 25 years of startup experience, Ryan now focuses on building highly specialized AI agents that combine software, automation, and real-world business workflows. Sponsored byZapier More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

When YouTube kicked Pat Walls’ Starter Story channel off the platform, he spent a weekend getting Claude Code to build him a replacement. I wanted to see how it was done, so he walked me through it step-by-step. Turns out it was a mistake and he’s back on YouTube, but the site he made was so good that it’s his company’s new homebase. Pat Walls is the founder of Starter Story, a media and education company that helps entrepreneurs learn how real businesses get built. Starter Story generates over $2M a year through subscriptions, courses, and content, and its YouTube channel reaches millions of viewers each month. A former software engineer turned creator, Pat is known for experimenting publicly with new tools—most recently using AI to rebuild his own video platform when YouTube put his business at risk. Sponsored byZapier More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

My friend created an AI engineering firm and every time I see him, he tells me how much his business is growing. So I asked him to tell me all about it in this interview. This is the story of how Tarun Thummala created PressW, the Austin-based AI dev shop. Tarun Thummala is the founder and CEO of PressW, an AI engineering firm that builds custom automation systems for real businesses in regulated, document-heavy industries. Instead of selling generic “AI transformation,” Tarun focuses on delivering specific workflow outcomes—often automating 90–95% of manual processes. Today, PressW generates over $2M in annual revenue by combining deep technical execution with a service-first approach to AI. Sponsored byZapier More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

Yevgeniy Matsay was a real estate broker who hated making cold calls. So he built an AI automation to do it for him. It worked so well that he created an agency that created cold calling automations for other brokers. Today he’s turning his automation service into Rozera, a cold calling SaaS for real estate brokers. Yevgeniy Matsay and Aidan Richards are the co-founders of Rezora, an AI-powered outbound calling platform built for real estate brokers. Yevgeniy is a former real estate agent with a background in computer science and cybersecurity, while Aiden leads sales, marketing, and operations. Together, they’re building AI voice agents designed specifically for real sales conversations—not generic chatbots—starting with real estate and expanding to other industries. Sponsored byZapier More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

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 make Joe Apfelbaum is the founder of Ajax Union, a digital marketing agency, and EvyAI, an AI-powered sales and social media assistant used by thousands of businesses worldwide. A longtime Mixergy guest, Joe previously grew Ajax Union into an Inc. 500 company before rebuilding it with AI-first systems after COVID. Today, he focuses on creating scalable AI services, software, and education products that help entrepreneurs grow without growing headcount. More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

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 similar company. Ricardo is the founder of DreamStories, a company creating AI-powered, personalized children’s books tailored to individual families. Previously, he worked in consumer media and was an early team member at Spotify, where he developed a deep understanding of long-tail content and personalization. Drawing on that experience, Ricardo is now building toward a future where books, videos, and even movies are generated uniquely for each person. More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

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 2011 with just $1.2M in seed funding and grew it into a profitable company generating hundreds of millions in revenue. Today, Wade is leading Zapier’s evolution into AI-powered automation and agent-based workflows that help businesses move faster with fewer people. More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

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 Quanta, she was a software engineer at Affirm, where she specialized in building financial ledgers and systems of record. She’s also worked at Google and NerdWallet, bringing deep fintech and infrastructure experience to one of accounting’s hardest problems. More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

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 the Head of Developer Relations at Factory, where he helps shape the AI coding agent used by developers worldwide. When he’s not working, he’s hanging with his twins. More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

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 content at scale. What began as his side hustle on Upwork has grown into a company serving Fortune 500s —recently crossing $10M in annual recurring revenue. Pepper now operates across writing, design, video, and localization, helping brands drive measurable growth through AI-powered content systems. More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint