8 AI-Proof Businesses I'd build in 2027

In this solo episode, I lay out how I think about building an AI-proof business now that anyone can press a few buttons and spin up a company in seconds. Layoffs keep coming, people copy products pixel for pixel, and I still see more opportunity than ever. I walk through eight categories: atoms, permission, attention, timing, belonging, liquidity, unique data, and outcomes. I share examples like Hampton, final.com, and Cars & Bids, say how I'd rank the categories, and show how to mix them. If you're an employee looking at a startup or a founder worried about getting copied, this episode gives you a map for building something with value when AI makes software, content, and answers almost free. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:17 – Atoms: Physical Businesses 02:26 – Permission: Licenses, Regulation, and Partnerships 04:10 – Attention: Building a Media Machine 06:28 – Timing: Spotting Trends Early 08:24 – Belonging: Paid Communities and IRL Events 10:59 – Liquidity: Marketplaces 14:38 – Unique Data: Data Brokers and Curated Directories 18:31 – Outcomes: Customers Paying for Results 20:44 – Closing Thoughts Key Points Physical businesses hold up against overnight clones, and I expect their valuations to rise as tech money moves in. Licenses, regulation, and preferred-vendor deals are permission that a copycat has a hard time getting on day one. Media is underrated, and AI lets you run a content machine around a micro niche. A first mover's product may be easy to copy, while the data, brand, and trust it collects stay AI-proof. Marketplaces rank among the stickiest businesses of all time, and agents let a team of one to five run one. I rank physical and licensed businesses near the top and outcomes at the bottom, and you can mix categories. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  We need to talk about how in an AI world, you can basically build any business, press a button and boom, right? So for anyone who's kind of a little bit anxious about what that world looks like, right, and who want to basically build an asset, who want to create income for themselves, who want to build a business, scale a business, have that whole experience. What do AI-proof businesses actually look at? So by the end of this episode, I'm going to cover all of that. And I just want to get your brains thinking about where the world is going. How do you think about AI-proof businesses? What does that even mean? And just get your gears turning on it because let's be honest, pretty much everyone has a little bit of anxiety around how to create

• 0:45Greg Isenberg?

  an AI-proof business right now. Even when you're speaking to incumbents, companies that have billions of dollars of revenue, they're kind of like, oh, my God, you know, is, you know, big frontier lab going to come after me? So today's episode is just going to be thinking about how you should be thinking about this. So this is for anyone who's interested in building a business, 2027 and beyond. Let's go.

• 1:17Greg Isenberg?

  We'll start actually with, you know, Adams businesses. So what do I mean by Adams? You have pixel businesses, the software businesses, then you have Adams. These are physical businesses. And when you think about a physical business, you know, coffee shop, you know, you got to come in, people want coffee or, you know, a plumber, your toilet gets clogged, AI is not going to be able to fix that leak. These are the sorts of businesses that aren't going anywhere. And you can actually make the argument that these businesses' valuations are going to go up from here because you're going to have a lot of that AI tech money trying to get in here once they see

• 2:01Greg Isenberg?

  the moat and the opportunity. So I think you're starting to see a little bit of that. There's just, I don't know about you, I just see tons of content around boring businesses. People are trying to get into it, physical. You know, it's harder to do physical businesses, but there's, you know, those, those physical businesses, AI can't clone overnight. The second is businesses that require some permission. What do I mean by that? I mean licenses, I mean regulation. And I also mean if you have the ability, you know, if you're likable or you have connections

• 2:43Greg Isenberg?

  or you can, you know, use Grokbot or whatever to actually get you in front of the right people to go and create a deal with a larger company to help, and they help sell your product, that is a partnership that can't be copied on day one. So what do I mean by that? Maybe you have an agency and you partner with Salesforce and you're one of their preferred vendors or you're, you know, preferred vendor of Microsoft or it doesn't even need to be that big, just a preferred vendor of a medium-sized company, ideally a large-sized company, but a medium to large-sized company. That is something that people can clone. Licenses, what do I mean by that? I mean that there's some businesses that you need a license to operate.

• 3:27Greg Isenberg?

  There's some businesses that are regulated and not everyone could go and do that. You know, what's an example? You know, if you want to own, I think like a bookkeeping firm, like you have to in some countries have been educated a certain way. If you want to be, if you want to own a law firm in some countries, you actually have to be a lawyer. So maybe you partner with a lawyer and you handle the marketing and growth side and the AI side, and they handle running the law firm. These are the sorts of things to help, you know, I'm just trying to get your creative juices this entire episode flowing so that you can start thinking about, okay, if I am going to start a new business, how do I make it as AI-proof as possible? Attention.

• 4:12Greg Isenberg?

  Somehow, attention is underrated right now. People follow people. And in a world where AI exists, you know, if you have the right systems there, they could make your organic content, like you can go and create more organic content. I was one of those people that, you know, hated short-form video. I mean, I like to consume it, but I hated it from like a creation standpoint. Never liked doing it. I hated the editing around it. Now I have Opus 5.5 as my editor and I can go and create short-form on the fly when it worked for me in my schedule. And I've actually been quite enjoying it. And just over the last like week, I've gotten

• 4:56Greg Isenberg?

  like literally hundreds of thousands of views on that content, which is, which is really cool and people saying it's valuable. So there is literally no excuse to, in 2026, 2027, to create a machine that is creating media. And I believe that media is somehow underrated right now. I'm talking about newsletters, I'm talking about, you know, meme pages, I'm talking about, you know, founder-led content. We all know that distribution is king and, you know, I'm not talking about just creating one page. I'm talking about creating a media company. And I think that those businesses are going to do tremendous over the next few years.

• 5:41Greg Isenberg?

  And to a certain extent, they're somewhat AI-proof. You know, of course, there's some versions of, of media that, you know, could be replaceable, but the idea is if you're going to create, if, if your goal is to create a good media company, you know, you are trying to create an irreplaceable, trustworthy brand that people come to for your niche. So I think the way to think about attention is what is your micro niche? What is your niche? How do you create a machine around it? You know, how do you, how do you use AI to amplify you? And you don't necessarily need to be the face, you know, necessarily need to do founder-led content,

• 6:24Greg Isenberg?

  but it does help when you have a human being in front doing it.

• 6:29Greg Isenberg?

  The next is timing. So timing, what did I mean by this? I just basically mean that you're seeing more and more trends for different micro niches and niches now than ever. And I think that there's an opportunity to use something like ideabrowser.com, use something like a Grokbot, use something like a Claude Duo, any personal agent platform that, you know, you want to use to go and monitor for trends in your niches, in your micro niches and go and build something as the first mover advantage. Sometimes I am shocked when you're early on a trend, how few people have actually gone and built something for these people.

• 7:12Greg Isenberg?

  What, okay, what am I talking about with building? You know, it could be a software product. It could be a physical product. It could be, you know, media company. It could be, you know, an Adam, an Adams here, a physical thing. We're going to talk about other things too, like marketplaces and data and stuff like that. It can be one of those. But the point I'm trying to make around trends is being a first mover advantage allows you to collect data, to collect insights around a particular micro niche or niche. And from that, you know, from that, your, your initial product might not be AI-proof, right? It might not be an AI-proof idea. In fact, it might be the least AI-proof. But what it is AI-proof is the data and the brand and the people

• 7:56Greg Isenberg?

  that you, you know, you end up collecting into this, that trust that you build, that brand loyalty that you build. And I think there's a ton of opportunity to go and look at trends. And I think, I just believe that, you know, everyone should be doing this. Everyone should be thinking about, or not thinking, everyone should be creating machines, systems around finding trends, acting on trends in ones that they, you know, believe that they can add value to. To me, this is a no-brainer. Belonging. Now more than ever, you know, people are as connected as ever, but they're feeling as disconnected than ever. People want to be with people and there's tremendous opportunities

• 8:38Greg Isenberg?

  to build AI-proof businesses around that sense of belonging. That could be something like paid communities. That's something like a circle or a school or, you know, just a weekly virtual event where you're keeping people accountable. You know, when you think about belonging, you're thinking about a goal that this community has and shared interests that they have. So they want to, you know, they want to hit that goal around that shared interest, fast, with someone else, with that accountability, having fun, entertainment. So there's so many niches and micro niches where there's an opportunity to charge people to help them go and do that.

• 9:22Greg Isenberg?

  So that could be IRL, that could be, you know, you can just do a full IRL experience. My friend Sam Parr, you know, has his company Hampton, which is, you know, not affiliated but at all. But what they do is, like, you know, from what I understand, like meetups around, around North America for entrepreneurs, sort of like AAA for entrepreneurs that do at least, let's say, $3 million a year in revenue. And I think that's really cool. And that's like an, you know, a really big, you know, opportunity. What is the Hampton for XYZ, right? So, you know, what is that paid community that people would be willing to spend hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars?

• 10:06Greg Isenberg?

  And then you, as the host, are helping them, well, you're helping curate the group, and you're also helping them move along their journey. So virtual and also IRL events, there's just so much opportunity in IRL events. We just threw an IRL event, was it last week, in Nashville, bringing around founders who are interested in deploying agents to build their businesses. And it was, you know, there's just, we had like so much demand, we didn't really know even how to meet it. I think there's tons of demand for this sorts of things.

• 10:49Greg Isenberg?

  The hard part for you is going to be thinking about, what is the niche? What is the goal? How can you actually produce a really good experience? And what is the price point that makes it a no brainer? The next category is around liquidity. You know, I often hear people say, Greg, software is done, like, it's over. Don't even consider thinking about building anything in software. And, you know, one example I always give to people is marketplaces. You know, marketplaces, there's so much still opportunity to build marketplaces. And what is a marketplace? Actually, before I get into it, a marketplace is just a fancy word for saying a place

• 11:31Greg Isenberg?

  where there's supply and demand, and you're connecting that supply and demand. On this website, on this app, a friend of mine launched a marketplace last week, I think. It's called FinalLap.com. And basically, what it is, is I think like high-end collectible cars. Like, every week, you come to the site and you can bid on this like high-end collectible cars thing, and they curate the cars, and there's like a lot of hype around it. And I think he has a big audience on Instagram, so he uses his Instagram audience to market it.

• 12:10Greg Isenberg?

  And it's just an example of like a little bit of a new mechanic around car sales, collectibles. You know, so there's that niche there. And all of a sudden, there's a new marketplace for this sorts of thing. And I think what's really cool about marketplaces is they are one of the most sticky businesses of all time. If you're able to get people, you know, get the attention and bring that attention into a marketplace, you've got a really good business there. I mean, in the car space, we all know cars and bids sold for a ton of money, many millions of dollars.

• 12:53Greg Isenberg?

  There's so many examples of marketplaces that have gotten acquired for ridiculous amounts and ridiculous sums of money. Why? Because, again, we all know that it's so hard to go and create. Now, I think there's an opportunity to go and actually find creators, find media companies, and then build their marketplaces for them, partner with them. Or, you know, you end up just incubating the attention yourself, and then you go and build the liquidity. So I think there's a lot of opportunity here, a lot of unmet demand. Hard part here is about thinking about, what is a new mechanic that doesn't exist currently? What is a new niche or micro niche that just, it doesn't need to be new, actually, just,

• 13:33Greg Isenberg?

  what is an underserved niche or micro niche that is just screaming that they need a marketplace? So I like this one a lot. Also, what's cool about the marketplace and liquidity space here is you can go and use a Grokbot, a Claude Code, one of these personal agent platforms to go and actually run a lot of the tough parts of running a marketplace. So it's just really cool that, you know, in the past, running a marketplace was pretty intense from a management perspective, support tickets, just you have a lot of people and everything needs to be perfect.

• 14:15Greg Isenberg?

  But with AI now and personal agents, we've gotten to the point where you actually don't really need a big team. You know, you can create a team of one, two, three, four, five people, and it could support a marketplace that does many millions in GMV. So like this one a lot. Unique data. So, you know, this has gone viral of the last few months, just, you know, you see data brokers making millions of dollars a week. And I'll just give a high level, just like, what is that? What is that business? The business is basically, on one hand, and maybe I'll do a whole breakdown on a separate

• 15:00Greg Isenberg?

  episode, if people are interested. But basically, on one side, you have unique data around something. You know, initially, it was coding, like, a lot of these platforms, like, I think Mercor and Micro One and things like that, they needed, they were getting data, coding data, and they were selling it to the big models. Now, the big models just are hungry for these new types of data that they don't have access to. So the game is, what is that data? And then how can you sell it to them? That's basically the game.

• 15:44Greg Isenberg?

  There's still a tremendous amount of opportunity there, and that's what I'd call a data-rich business. Another data-rich business is, actually, if you have access to some amount of data that isn't easily accessible, you can go and have a curated directory of some sort that people will pay for. And I think you're going to see a just huge explosion of curated websites and apps over the next few years. Why do I think that? In a world where LLMs basically give you infinite content, social feeds basically give

• 16:24Greg Isenberg?

  you infinite content, you're going to want to go and access curated databases of content that you believe is high quality. I'll give you the example that comes to mind, just like off the cuff. You know, Google reviews or Yelp reviews, just reviews of restaurants in general, have gotten to a place where, I don't know if you've noticed this, it's either like five-star reviews or one-star reviews. And then, like, it's a three on five, right? Because you've got some fives and ones, or a four and five. And it's just very polarizing with reviews.

• 17:05Greg Isenberg?

  And also, I think a lot of people have gamed the review sections on places like Yelp and stuff. So I think that, you know, for me, it would be really cool to pop into a website or an app and really give me new restaurant recommendations from, you know, that were actually high, high, high-quality reviews that weren't just like love it or hate it. Yes, that's an example of a consumer business. Consumer businesses have more risks, less likely to work, but just, I'm using it as an example to share that, like, there's probably some reviews that are high quality, and there's probably a way to like curate that into a database, and someone might be

• 17:50Greg Isenberg?

  willing to pay something to access that. I think there's a ton of opportunity in enterprise. I think there's a ton of opportunity in prosumer. I think there's a ton of opportunity in the SMB space. I think that there's some consumer opportunities as well. But overall, the game here is, you know, how do you create, you know, because we're talking about AI-proof startups, what does that look like? How do you curate data that someone else can't get? And that's, and then you either sell it as a website or app to people, monthly or whatever, or you sell it to the labs, or you do both.

• 18:32Greg Isenberg?

  Lastly, I think you're starting to see this, but it's like so early, customers paying for results. So I believe that there's going to be more and more automated AI services. What do I mean by that? Basically, where you have a bunch of agents going and doing the work. You know, the example I've given in the past on the pod is how do you create a creative agency that is fully automated by different creative models? So it creates logos on the fly or landing pages on the fly. The unfair advantage that you can have is around context, is around data, is around the system that you've created.

• 19:15Greg Isenberg?

  If you can create the best system for a particular output, then there's some amount of moat or some amount of defense that you can have against that. Now, in the whole, you know, if I was ranking these, I wouldn't put the outcomes one as like the best one. It's probably the least best. I think physical stuff, license and regulation stuff, huge. You know, I think, I don't want to rank them all, but I would say at the bottom would probably be outcomes. This is, oh yeah, and I'll end on this one here, just to finish my thought here. Automated AI services, I just feel like, you know, you don't see this very often, and there's an opportunity.

• 20:00Greg Isenberg?

  You know, the example I gave on the podcast before is like, how do you look at platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, see what people want to pay for, and then create a, essentially, a machine that goes and bids on some of this work? There's a ton of opportunity there, and I think agents are going to fulfill a lot of that work. The way to make it AI-proof is if you have the best possible agents. And the way to make the best possible agents is if you feed them with the best possible data, the best possible insights, the best possible inspiration, and you have something, like we talked about, around permission, like you have a deal with a particular company that no one else can have and stuff like that.

• 20:44Greg Isenberg?

  This is basically the map of how to think about a world where, when AI makes software and content and answers pretty much free, how do you build something with value? Is it the most, is it everything in here? No. This is just some of the main ones, the main categories to get your creative juices flowing. I think there's, I'll end with, I think there's a ton of opportunity. You do have to be creative. You do have to think about how many, you know, do you want to mix some of these? Do you want some attention stuff with some belonging stuff? Do you want some permission stuff with some liquidity stuff? Do you want some outcome stuff with some unique data? So there is a bit of a mixing. It's not like you just go into one category and that's it.

• 21:28Greg Isenberg?

  But I do believe that I wouldn't look at the world and be like, it's done, and we can't create startup ideas, and we can't create assets. In fact, sometimes, when there's the most amount of chaos, creates the most amount of opportunity. Thank you for listening. Hope it's been helpful. If you want more of this stuff in your feed, like, comment, and subscribe. I'm here to get your creative juices flowing, here to help you navigate this crazy world we live in with ideas that could help you build a business. So thank you for watching the Startup Ideas Podcast, and I'll see you next time.