Andrew shares the AI tools that real startup founders are using every day — not hype, but the ones that actually help them work smarter.
From AI note-takers that surface your blind spots to automations that coach your team after meetings, these are the tools that top entrepreneurs rely on.

🔗 Tools mentioned:

• Granola App: https://www.granola.ai/

• Claude Console: https://console.anthropic.com/

• TextBlaze: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/text-blaze-templates-and/idgadaccgipmpannjkmfddolnnhmeklj?hl=en-US

• Wade’s Zap: https://agents.zapier.com/copy/f17868bc-cc23-433a-b211-af402f47e1b4

• Garry’s Script Prompt: https://l.thenextnewthing.ai/r/OD14YA

Which of these are you already using — or planning to try next?

🎧 Highlights:
[00:00:00] Intro – “Don’t start with SEO. Start with AEO.”
[00:00:36] Why this is the right time to focus on answer engine optimization
[00:01:30] Case study: Webflow drives 8% of signups from LLMs
[00:03:00] Onsite vs. offsite optimization — Reddit and YouTube matter most
[00:06:18] Why Help Center content outperforms traditional SEO pages
[00:13:30] Why AEO is ideal for small startups without big budgets
[00:16:39] “SEO is not dead” — and why Google’s share of search stays stable
[00:19:39] Myths: LLM.txt, robots.txt, and how misinformation spreads
[00:23:06] The scientific method for testing what actually works
[00:25:57] Affiliates and citations — how paid mentions impact LLM rankings
[00:27:27] How to find high-value questions to target
[00:31:12] 60+ AEO tools — and the new “content scoring” era
[00:35:06] How to build an AEO agency (and what services to offer)
[00:39:36] Marketing Graphite — why thought leadership still wins
[00:43:00] The AEO roadmap: what to do first, step by step
[00:47:00] The MasterClass SEO story
[00:48:18] Fires, gardens, and creative thinking in constraint

SEO is changing—and the next frontier is AEO: Answer Engine Optimization.

In this episode, Andrew Warner sits down with Ethan Smith, founder of Graphite, to break down how brands are already winning visibility on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude — before their competitors even realize what’s happening.

Ethan explains why SEO isn’t dead, but answer engines are the next big channel — and how to optimize your site, videos, and community presence so AI models actually cite your brand in their answers.

🎧 Highlights:

[00:00:00] Intro
[00:02:06] Alex & Arman’s founding story — from pivot to partnership
[00:03:09] Why engineers experience AI’s biggest leverage
[00:05:15] “Think of it as a high-quality AI-powered dev shop”
[00:06:36] The big vision: Building the McKinsey of AI
[00:09:09] Crossing the chasm: From pre-AI to post-AI
[00:13:03] Intelligence arbitrage vs. labor arbitrage
[00:15:00] Using AI to double productivity in dev work
[00:19:12] Why services with recurring revenue outperform “one-off” AI projects
[00:23:06] Real client examples: healthcare, billboards, SaaS
[00:26:06] Debate: Will AI transformation companies run out of work?
[00:29:15] Becoming the CEO’s “growth partner” in the AI era
[00:31:00] The trillion-dollar dev industry opportunity
[00:33:00] Live demos: Claude Code, multi-agent coding, and real-time automation
[00:50:00] Human-in-the-loop AI and the ethics of automation
[00:55:00] How Tenex thinks about pricing, margins, and scaling
[01:00:45] Building “Morning Brew for AI leaders”

In this episode, Andrew Warner, along with Jesse Pujji sits down with Alex Lieberman (Morning Brew) and Arman Hezarkhani, co-founders of Tenex, to unpack how their company is reshaping software development and consulting with AI.

They reveal how engineers are “living in the future,” how AI is collapsing the cost of production, and why most companies won’t have the resources to cross the chasm from pre-AI to post-AI. From building mobile apps in days instead of months to using AI agents that code and run business tasks autonomously, Tenex shows what AI transformation really looks like inside modern organizations.