The Startup Ideas Podcast – "Making $$ with AI Marketing"

Host: Greg Isenberg
Date: March 30, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Greg Isenberg emphasizes the critical importance of distribution for AI-driven startups and software businesses. While AI tools make building products easier than ever, the real challenge—and competitive advantage—lies in capturing customer attention and growth through innovative marketing tactics. Greg shares seven actionable distribution strategies entrepreneurs can apply immediately to build and grow their SaaS, agency, or AI-driven ventures.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Distribution Is the New King: The Silicon Valley Hierarchy Flip

• Timestamps: 01:00–05:40
  Greg notes that while coding and product skills dominated the last tech era, marketers and distribution experts now hold the real power:

"The wealthiest people will be marketers over the next 10 years, but every YouTube tutorial is telling you how to Vibe code." — Greg Isenberg, 00:15

• He illustrates with Peter Levels’ success: high revenue, zero employees, and a massive audience leveraged through smart distribution (not just product).
• Building a product in isolation (“If you build it, they will come”) rarely works; instead, start with audience building and distribution.

2. Strategy 1: MCP Servers – Let AI Sell For You

• Timestamps: 05:40–10:20
• MCP servers are like "plugins" for AI assistants (e.g., OpenAI, Claude) that can deliver your product to users through AI’s interface.
• Example: Friends using MCP for fintech saw 150+ installations in 30 days, $0 ad spend.
• Action Steps:
  • Identify what core question your product answers.
  • Build an MCP server that delivers that answer via AI.
  • Publish to MCP registries (e.g. Smithery, McPT open tools).
  • No ad spend — "the AI assistant becomes your sales team."

"Building an MCP server in 2026 is in a lot of ways like building for mobile in 2010." — Greg, 07:50

3. Strategy 2: Programmatic SEO – 10,000 Pages in a Weekend

• Timestamps: 10:20–15:30
• Generate thousands of SEO pages based on templated, high-quality content using AI and structured data (e.g. with Firecrawl).
• Math: 10,000 pages x 30 visitors/month = 300k monthly visits; small conversion rates add up.
• Start with a keyword pattern (e.g., "Best CRM for dentists"), gather datasets, create a template, generate unique AI content, review for quality, and scale.

"You can start with just a few pages... once you get it to there, then you can start scaling to more pages." — Greg, 13:40

4. Strategy 3: Free Tool as Top-of-Funnel

• Timestamps: 15:30–20:40
• Build a free tool/calculator/analyzer as a marketing hook (e.g. Ahrefs' backlink checker).
• The tool provides immediate value, captures user data, is shareable, drives virality, and naturally upsells to a paid product.
• AI makes it feasible to create a new tool almost every week.

"You can vibe code a free tool in a day, ship it by lunch and it markets itself forever." — Greg, 19:00

5. Strategy 4: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) – Be the Source AI Cites

• Timestamps: 20:40–25:00
• Optimize for AI-driven answer engines (like ChatGPT, Perplexity) so your content is cited in AI answers.
• Steps: List top questions in your niche, write definitive answers, add schema/FAQ markup, publish on an authority domain, monitor citations.
• Early movers in AEO will own their niches much like early SEO pioneers did.

"If AEO in 2026 is where SEO was in 2010, first movers will own these niches for years." — Greg, 22:52

6. Strategy 5: Make Your Product’s Output Shareable

• Timestamps: 25:00–29:35
• Create viral artifacts—e.g., Spotify Wrapped, GitHub contribution graphs, Duolingo streaks—that people want to share as a badge of achievement.
• Works for both B2C and (less obviously, but still effectively) for B2B.

"Ask: What does my user want to brag about? And then make that thing beautiful and shareable." — Greg, 26:14

7. Strategy 6: Acquire a Niche Newsletter for Direct Audience Access

• Timestamps: 29:35–33:25
• Buying a newsletter (5,000–50,000 subscribers) in your target niche gives you instant distribution, trust, and a direct marketing channel.
• Smaller newsletters can be affordable ($5,000–$20,000) and are often under-monetized.
• Direct email beats unreliable social media reach.

"All of a sudden you own a direct channel to your exact audience... Unlike places like social media that could suppress your reach." — Greg, 32:04

8. Strategy 7: AI Content Repurposing Engine (Pillar Content to Multi-Channel Presence)

• Timestamps: 33:25–38:40
• Record one piece of pillar content (podcast, essay, video), then use AI tools to break it into tweets, LinkedIn posts, videos, newsletters, quote graphics, and more.
• Broadens reach with minimal extra effort and greatly increases brand touchpoints.

"If you do this every week, I think in three months you have more content than your competitors." — Greg, 37:20

Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Distribution is the new moat... Product is really important, but it is commoditized, and code is fully commoditized." — Greg, 38:45
• "I've given you seven distribution weapons... Pick two of them. Start this week. Don't just vibe code." — Greg, 39:20
• "It hurts me that people don't have the ideas around distribution." — Greg, 00:48
• "I really do believe the tool is the marketing." — Greg, 18:56

Quick Reference: The Seven Distribution Weapons (and Getting Started)

| Strategy | What To Do This Week | Timestamp | |---------------------------|---------------------------------------------|------------------| | MCP Server | Build for AI plugins/LLMs, answer one Q | 07:14–10:20 | | Programmatic SEO | Make 100+ AI-crafted SEO pages; iterate | 13:10–15:30 | | Free Tool Tactic | Ideate and ship a free tool, use as funnel | 19:00–20:40 | | Answer Engine Optimization| Publish direct FAQ-style content, add schema| 22:20–25:00 | | Viral Artifacts | Design output users will proudly share | 25:40–29:35 | | Acquire Newsletter | Find, approach, and buy a niche newsletter | 30:10–33:25 | | Repurposing Engine | Turn one content piece into seven formats | 34:25–38:40 |

Conclusion

Greg Isenberg drives home the new truth for AI and SaaS builders: distribution, not just product quality, is the key to startup success. This episode arms builders and marketers with practical, immediately deployable strategies to escape the "vibe coding" trap and start driving real growth and revenue.

“Don’t just vibe code. I want to see you get customers, make money, grow from there, reinvest, have fun.”
— Greg Isenberg, 39:30