🧠 Companies Are Hitting $100M ARR Faster Than Ever Before

Because of AI.

And that's not even mentioning names like Perplexity, Character AI, Synthesia, Descript and more. Business is all about speed right now. AI is changing how fast you can scale.

Here’s how I used it to save my own business this past month.

💥 Saving My Business with AI

I’ve been in VR and VC for 10 years. But the VR market sucks. So I built a new growth engine with AI.

Here’s what I learned:

• How to code 25 landing pages with Lovable AI
• Track leads with Supabase - automate inbound funnel
• Automate user flows with "Make.com"
• Use Zeely AI to design my ads for social on auto-pilot
• Pinpoint keywords with OpenAI API's paired with my custom GPT

🛠️ Tools I Used: Zeely AI • Lovable • Supabase • Make.com • chatGPT • EddieAI • and more

📊 My Results: 1.04% CTR @ $1.41 CPC (manual) vs 3.68% CTR @ $0.91 CPC (AI)

👇 That means 6X as many people clicked by AI created AD, and it cost me less than $1 per click with AI keywords..

Let's discuss this next week.

💥 Every Series A, Seed Needs AI Experimenting

Later that day, a founder friend calls me with a problem:

He said he can either hire a so-called "AI expert" for $25K/mo, or he can try to figure it out himself. But he knows what will happen, he'll hire this expert and then get almost no benefit. Wasted money. So he has to figure out AI internally.

Every great founder is trying to figure out how to implement AI. Which is causing a lot of confusing noise. The challenge is that there’s no signal. Nobody knows, yet. Our goal is to figure it out together. Our goal is to gather a group of seasoned operators who are trying to figure unanswered AI questions (Next Wednesday →). Our goal is for you to learn how to save money, improve your operations, and accelerate your growth by running AI business experiments.

I'll also be bringing in a Helpful Speaker to help us figure this out on Wednesday, as well as many other speakers during our upcoming conversations.

AI Convo Speaker Lineup for Q3 2025

• Recursive VC: Funded two unicorns
• Republic: #1 crowdfund platform
• Brandon Farwell (Partner at Xfund): Invested early in SpaceX, Robinhood
• Mercedes Bent (Venture partner at Lightspeed Ventures): Insanely accomplished across startups VC
• Alex (CEO of Restream): Incredible CEO, Product with billions of monthly streams

We're aiming to bring all of our founders to learn from these great CEOs and VCs about how their company is implementing AI, and how they think about investing into AI with this ever-changing category. And we run monthly experiments.

Join Our August AI Experiment?

🧠 What We’re Testing: AI Growth Funnels

Thesis: How to avoid spending $20K/month on bloated growth teams — and instead build a smarter, leaner funnel using AI.

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🔍 Core Testing Areas:

• AI/SEO Optimization
  ​ Can you rank with AI-generated clusters or AI-tuned content?
• LLM Funnel Optimization
  ​ Replace sales calls? Auto-nurture leads? Personalize onboarding?
• Reddit Optimization
  ​ Can you crack organic distribution using bots or stealth AI agents?
• Paid Marketing with AI
  ​ What’s the best stack to automate and scale paid ads?
• AI-Powered Content Creation
  ​ Can you replace your video team or content writer?
• Analytics + CAC/LTV Accuracy
  ​ How are you actually measuring growth?
• Landing Page Optimization
  ​ Can you 10x conversions with smarter UX, copy, or personalization?

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🧪 Tools We’re Using:

• SurferSEO – AI-powered content planning and optimization for ranking on Google
• Make.com – Workflow automation across marketing tools and CRMs
• Claude (Anthropic) – Long-context LLM for personalized lead nurturing + onboarding flows
• Replit Ghostwriter – AI code assistant for rapid landing page and funnel experimentation
• AdCreative.ai – Auto-generates paid ad creatives optimized for CTR
• Taplio – AI-powered LinkedIn content + scheduling + lead generation
• Supabase – Postgres-based backend for tracking events and funnel metrics
• PostHog – Product analytics and session recording to measure CAC/LTV precisely
• Typefully + GPT-4 – AI + human-powered content ideation and publishing engine (for Twitter/X & more)

AI Creates Operating Leverage

What happens when you implement the right AI tools within your company? And, what happens if you don’t implement AI within your company? I'll let you answer those for yourself. In the future, there will be a company with $1B in ARR, and only one human employee, but thousands of AI employees.

AI creates superpowers.

Let’s unlock them for you, your team, and your company.

-Don Stein

[RSVP for AI Growth Convo Next Wednesday →]