I challenged Manus AI to find $1M+ AI Startup Ideas - It Actually Delivered

0:00can Manis AI build you a million-dollar business within 18 months let's find out now I've been playing a little bit with Manis but I wanted to just sort of get to know it more learn more in public so uh this episode uh is basically you coming along with me to learn if Manis could give us an idea to make us a million dollars in 18 months um and I want to lean towards a AI [Music] idea you know if you've been a long listener of the Pod you know I've built and sold three bentback businesses before the age of 30 um I spend most of my time thinking about ideas and I want

0:50to see if Manis could actually uh do something worthwhile and I'll be honest with you if I think the idea sucks um but I think uh the reason I care about actually playing with this is if it could figure out what trends matter and if it could figure out what you know problems that we should go after um this is going to be huge um and if it can't then it can't um I have played with math before and came into some challenges so let's see if it's changed uh and let's just go right right to it so um Manis okay we are here let's give

1:32it a task so um I want to create a business that's going to make me $1 million and call it 18 months I think that YC's latest batch why combinator's latest batch is really interesting I bet that there are other AI agent or AI startups that are more Niche that could be created that uh isn't in this batch I also love looking at Reddit to find trends for business ideas to create I want you to act as my AI co-founder for this process in fact I'm actually live recording this actually it's not live I'm recording this whole process on my pod startup ideas podcast so don't mess it

2:47up best case is you give me entire plan maybe an MVP design Min product product of the business of my dreams that'll actually work and let's just see what the hell happens next so says I'll help you create a business plan that could potentially reach a million dollars in 18 months I understand you're interested in AI startups particularly more Niche opportunities than what's in the YC's latest batch and you'd like to like me to act as your AI co-founder let me start work on this right away uh for your podcast I'll research YC's latest batch look for Niche AI opportunity analyze Reddit Trends and develop and develop a comprehensive

3:38business plan with MVP design so the Reddit Trends you know if you've listened to the to the channel before like I'm obsessed with looking at Reddit as a way to figure out if there's startup ideas um so I'm really curious to see if Manis uh has the ability to go through Reddit and just comb through and give us uh you know give us some great ideas of subreddits that could be um that we yeah we could just surface some some great ideas from subreddit so uh if you're watching my screen right now you can see that Manis is actually using a browser and it's check it's at

4:15ycombinator

4:21docomo so what I don't like about this is you know I want recent oh okay so it says it's re it's researching YC's latest batch so it's it's actually going through the website and it's looking what's new what's old so that's really really cool I was I was thinking that it was it was going to just take all the old ones but it it's great that it's only looking at the new ones so just uh let me make this can I make this bigger oh interesting so there is a button that if you wanted you can take control of Manis and you can actually use mantis's

4:55computer really cool so what I've noticed about Manis is if you want to do a a prompt like this it's going to take 10 to 15 minutes so just so you know like it's not going to take a minute or 30 seconds like this generally takes 10 to 15 minutes but you know we'll see if it's worth it okay so now it's looking at AI assisted startups funded by w y combinator YC 2025 okay so while it's browsing and figuring stuff out I want to show you um a few use cases of Manis and and it'll just get your creative juices flowing so when I log into Manis

5:38I noticed that they included basically these use cases of how to use Manis so for example um oh list of YC companies let's check this out so if you're looking if you look at my screen basically it's it's showing a prior prompt so this is 18 days ago visit the official YC website and compile all Enterprise information under the w25 winter 2025 uh B2B tag into a clear well structured table be be sure to find all of it so what it what it is doing is it's what you know it's basically taking all this unstructured data making it structured um and this is super helpful information because like let's say you

6:24want to reach out and do c DMS for example or honestly this would have been useful to to use this you can download this as a PDF and actually upload it to um to our prompt around and we might we you know we might end up using this we might want to actually use this in the end but basically like using this and uploading it to our I you know million doll 18month idea so really cool that you can take unstructured data and make it structured data let's see a few other use cases of Manis while we're while we're waiting for our business plan to finish

7:01see if anything I know trip to Japan like you know chat TBT could do that I'm looking for really really interesting stuff Nvidia earnings report analysis like using Manis as a financial analyst that's pretty interesting because like that will help people make money so what is it's doing so you upload four fin annual reports to Manis and it's analyzing it it's exam examining the revenue composition for each year and creating a comprehensive table as well as analyzing the changes in nvidia's cost structure um cool so it's analyzing here this is something that an analyst would do right like um at a big Bank you know at JP Morgan you're paying

7:52people hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this and and look you know look what's happening this is crazy okay so it's showing the revenue by reportable segments it it and a pretty n like clean table um and then it does an analysis on it right so um the compute and networking has has grown has shown EXT extraordinary growth 215% increase graphics data center gaming it goes into each category and I guess how can you use this to make uh trading decisions well you you can then prompt it and be like um you know historically speaking you know is this stock expensive or cheap so I think that's an interesting

8:38use case for sure let's do two more use cases before we check out what's happening with uh our business idea contract reviews an interesting one um I'm like afraid to send things to my lawyer because I'm like every time I send him something I get a bill for like $1,500 so um of course you're not supposed to make Manis or chat jpt your lawyer but let's be real a lot of us are already doing that um so you upload uh a contract example please review this contract or you upload a contract please review this contract thoroughly identify all errors and provide both the revision history and corrected

9:22version wow so you can actually do an analysis of any error so you know what it's says here Mana says after reviewing the sales and purchase agreement between Tech Vision Dynamics and Midwest Industrial I've identified several errors and inconsistencies and it's just what are you noticing about Manis is it feels like just a little more horsepower than chat GPT a little more horsepower than perplexity a little more horsepower than Cloe so um it's because of this like multi-agent browsing uh sort of capabilities I think um I mean I'm again I'm I'm going through this for the first time with you all and learning it just feels like that's the case I

10:11also really like that it has like here's all the documents for review like it feels like I'm actually working with an AI Co coworker okay should we do one more let's do one more okay so so this prompt is please convert my API input and output Excel file to a word doc API documentation so basically crazy that uh you can use Manis on a con on a conversion basis um so basically I mean not not the most sexy uh prompt but the fact that you can actually use it for conversion um that's pretty damn cool okay we're going to do one more because that one was just boring but is you know

11:04use boring but useful let's do one more we'll put it in the oh WTF podcast editing oh let's do two more from W WTF and then we'll go back to the business please cut the podcast audio into a two-minute highlight reel of key quotes select sentences with clear viewpoints of interesting content ensuring smooth transition so basically you can up this is crazy you can upload a wave file and it's going to create a two-minute High highlight reel from it so it's analyzing the audio to identify key quotes clear viewpoints and interesting content then extracting complete sentences that flow well together let let me get started on this

11:43right away whoa this is this is this is wild this is take you know I got to take a sip of this uh this non-alcoholic beer okay so it's basically showing you the quotes and all the different time stamps um and you know the most interesting stuff so I think that's really cool and then at the bottom you have uh you know the the the actual uh audio file and the transcript for you so that's really cool all right now no more waiting let's go check and see how our how our business is doing were they able to find Trends um okay here's where we're at so interesting patterns I've

12:22observed many YC startups are focusing on vertical specific AI Solutions and legal Healthcare finance and Retail this is music to my ears why because I wanted to I know I know this I know this but you know I wanted it to tell me this I wanted it to pick up that pattern and I I find that in a lot of uh the other AI products I haven't I haven't gotten that from them AI agents and automations are a maing a major Trend with companies building specialized assistance for specific workflows significant investment in AI infrastructure and tools help others deploy AI General AI applications are being applied to video

13:02production app development and document processing several startups are focusing on making AI accessible through no Code and low code Solutions I'm now go I'm moving on to analyze the broader AI startup landscape Beyond YC's portfolio would you like me to focus on any particular aspect of the AI landscape as I continue my research um so I didn't say yes so let's just see what happened so two minutes ago uh Manis has completed the analysis of you know the broader analysis they've got some key findings number one vertical specific AI Solutions number two agents and automation okay so okay so I've identified several promising Market opportunities AI

13:47Solutions tailored for Industries with limited AI penetration okay this is interesting making powerful AI tools accessible for small mediumsized businesses services that help in AI integrate into their workflow so these are good these are really good I've I've seen portions of that this on other AI uh on like the chat gpts of the world so I really I really want to see if they're you know if they can go deeper here so right now it's I'm I'm now moving on to spe specify Niche AI opportunities not currently covered by YC startups which will help us pinpoint potential gaps in the market for our business concept after that I'll research Reddit Trends

14:31thank God excited about that to identify emerging consumer need and pain points would you like me to focus on any particular aspect of these as I continue my research so um I'm gon to say Manis you don't need to just do consumer it could be B2 b2o when you're on Reddit I want you to focus on Trends and pain points that exist within subreddits the best businesses do well because of the um Tailwinds of a trend so I'm particularly interested in building businesses based on Trends so the other cool thing about Manis is when you when you use something like chat GPT um or Cloe when

15:35you when you type it you have the llm is thinking and if you want to just a you know say like say something else you have to stop the prompt but what's really cool about manace is you can it's it's multi-agent right so it's it's doing its things and it's able to listen to you and multitask basically um okay so Mana says I understand completely we're going to focus on B2B and B Toc and it's starting to research now to identify trending topics recurring pain points and emerging needs across various communities now one thing I've noticed is you do you do have to tell Manis this stuff right so I know just I

16:23know that Reddit is a good source of this of of this information I know that the alpha exists within Reddit a lot of people don't know that so I I will say that you can't rely on Manis to to basically say hey build me a million dollar business and just like say go wild you do have to do the right prompts here okay so I'm looking at a document that Manis has created Niche AI opportunities analysis 2025 um so it says here's some key Niche opportunities so AI co-founder for specialized Industries why it's a niche opportunity while General AI you know assistance exists there's a gap for

17:03deeply specialized AI Partners so that's really cool current YC startups focus on general assistance or narrow task automation not comprehensive business Partnerships okay and then it tells you an implementation approach start with specific vertical train on specific data provide comprehensive support across marketing $50 to $100 for basic uh features okay I mean these are these are interesting uh ideas silent refactoring as a service for legacy systems too technical for me two technical number three let's see um this is interesting so personalize information chains for professionals and highly regulated Industries using AI to curate summarize and deliver relevant content about regulatory change and compliance requirements this is like a

17:55really good this is a really good idea so you you basically focus on professionals and regulated Industries healthcare for informational overload um and you just create a media company um around it this is yeah this is this is good that's a really good one I like this I I like that one because like the why you know when you're building a business you have to ask yourself why now why should this business you know exist now and the why now is a lot of these um well few it's actually a few reasons one is you don't want to open up like a magazine or a journal if you're in a

18:43regulated industry like you want an email or text about things you know things that you should know about um and uh so there's that like changing of how people consume media uh these these industries are more and more complex um and the why now most important why now is the AI allows you to wa you know to to track everything right so you can do this what used to cost a lot of money to to go in uh you know hire a team specialized team uh who understands all these regulatory changes now you can just use something like Manis to actually go and figure all these stuff

19:23this stuff out so that's like my that's my favorite idea um from this it's cool it does it does do an evaluation of opportunities against the YC portfolio I think that's really interesting and then it gives you a recommendation for the highest potential opportunity and it says the AI powered micro Consulting for SMB is the most promised promising so I didn't even go through that one but it says IT addresses a clear Market need has a straightforward path to monetization um I actually think the most interesting one is Niche specific AI information aggregation for regulated Industries um so me and Manis we're you know we don't agree all

20:18the time but I'm happy it gave me multiple ideas now let's see where we're at with the Reddit analysis I've completed my analysis of Reddit Chens for potential business ideas is okay cool key insights so it gave it gave five key insights and then it says the most Pro promising opportunity that continues to emerge from our research is AI powered micro Consulting for smbs an AI solution that provides expert level Consulting for small to mediumsized businesses at a fraction of traditional cost um addresses a clear Market need across multiple Reddit discussions has a clear clear path to monitor ation leverage existing AI technology and offers natural expansion

21:03opportunities across business functions and industries rides the Tailwind of increasing AI adoption by small business I mean this is obviously not a bad idea it's it's a good idea and and the truth is it's e it's the easiest to get going right like in that sense you know small to mediumsized businesses want to understand what is happening with um you know AI Technologies specific to their Industries um and if you can help them figure that out uh you know you do pretty you you would do pretty well okay so it it gives us a text file um which we can check out and this is the text file of the trends

21:51the pain points and business opportunities um so you can see AI automation for small businesses so it's giving all the trends it's giving the pain points it's giving the opportunities this is interesting but I think that what I would do if I were you or me honestly is I would I would try to figure out okay like I believe you Manis but what makes you say and maybe we should ask it um like what makes you say that this is a key Trend so I'm gonna ask it so Manis I believe believe you with what you're saying with these key Reddit Trends but I need to know if these Trends are

22:45supported by data keyword um you know or I'll say like Google Trend like data or you know subreddit growth data what sort of data can you give me to make sure this is legit I mean I'm asking the tough questions here you know I think um when I read this like it makes a lot of sense um but I I need to know I think one of the reasons why I like some other tools like Google Trends is I mean when I go on Google Trends or HS or whatever or or Gummy Search or any of these tools um I could see some data to support some of these Trends so it you

23:41know it's abstracting what Manis is doing is abstracting away the data for me I like to see the data I don't know about you I like to see the data so if this can figure out you know with some Google Trends data and subred growth data and just metrics I would would be like this would be a gold mine um and while that's figuring that out three minutes ago Mana says I've developed a comprehensive business concept for smart console AI an AI powered micro Consulting platform for smbs that can do a million in a revenue within 18 months addresses a clear Market Gap small business need expert Consulting

24:26but can't afford traditional services that cost $150 to $500 an hour AI powered Consulting agents specialized in key business functions at a fraction of the cost $49 to $500 a month it's kind of interesting right like you saw this with uh the commoditization of service businesses you know design pickle for example I think they were selling I don't know $40 million a year $80 million a year some large amount uh of Revenue we probably can ask Manis where they were saying okay it's $0000 a month unlimited design and I assume that that's going to happen in in this space as well like you'll be someone is going to create the

25:08design pickle but for you know Ai and agents so if you can do that um there's there's a path to a million dollars that's for sure maybe even more okay so I've compiled Manis has compiled the data to validate the Reddit Trends so it's looking at McKenzie Salesforce US Census Bureau like no I don't care about that stuff like I actually care about Google Trend stuff and subreddit stuff okay so here we go R small business 47% growth in subscribers I AI like that's not helpful to me AI agents 32,000 yes that's interesting to me um but I I I need more I need more I I I

26:01I think um I don't know about you but I feel like I feel like I'm still hungry for more data around the trends and I'm going to say that I feel like I'm still hungry for more data around the trends give me Google Trends like data um and give me insight as to which keywords are most interesting to build the business around and let's see what Mana says you know I think the most interesting data here is just like the subreddit growth stuff um I mean it it's it is interesting to see Google Trend shows industry specific AI chch searches growing 2.5 faster than generic business

26:57AI search searches searches I know so it's like so tell me tell me more about that right and maybe this isn't a manness issue it's just you you know again it's a prompting issue um you're as you know I guess you're only as good as the prompts that you're going to do I will say though I am loving I don't know about you but I am loving the fact that we've got a browser going we've got multiple browsers going things are happening um and I do feel like I'm making progress on this

27:34idea so what happens when we click here so you can when you click over here you can see the different the task Pro uh progress so we're at eight on 10 so it says uh we basically you know we're in the comprehensive keyword Trend analysis then we have design minimal viable MVP strategy prevent comp comprehensive business proposal to user I feel like what's missing from this Manis is I like to see I've never seen Manis design a landing page I don't know if it can do it I'd like to see you design a landing page that you think is the highest you think has a lot of

28:26taste and will will get people talking about the business I don't want your average website people forget about those can you design something for me and be my AI product designer do you do that and let's see so Manis is typing absolutely I'd be happy to design a landing page with a unique eye-catching aesthetic so which is what's interesting here is that you know traditionally you'd go to VZ if you want like an AI product designer now is vanis able to create something beautiful better than VZ worse than vzer as good as vzer who knows um that's what we're we're going to look for but you can do you see here that uh

29:32Manis is using terminal right now um and building a landing page like this is

29:49crazy madis design is gathering keyword Trend data to inform MVP design implementation strategy for smart conso

30:07AI what happens if I click use man as's computer like I don't I just want to click it and see what happens okay select an application to use so you can go into VSS code or the browser interesting so what's happening here on screen is Manis is is building the landing page I'm actually surprised that it's not giving us the designs before building it it's just building it but let's see maybe they'll maybe they'll build something nice I I don't know so I just clicked it said knowledge suggestions five pending I had no idea what that meant so I clicked it it says suggested sorry suggested knowledge

30:56knowledge enables manace toar Le your preferences and task specific best practices Manis will automatically recall relevant knowledge when needed interesting so this is just to make things go faster I guess and and more efficient you can say you know you when researching Reddit for business ideas and validating Trends with data here's what the content user wants Trend and identification so you could make you know for example in the P before when I was unhappy with uh the trend data we could uh change that for future prompts which is pretty cool okay so we see let's see what uh Manis is up to so it's it's still creating the file

31:49uh I I will say I do love that you can just watch what's happening live this is a greater Trend that's happening across all most AI products with v0 for example you can see what's happening live um perplexity chat abbt so um we're starting to see some of the the copy uh you can see expert Consulting with the expert price honestly pretty pretty pretty awesome tagline pretty awesome tagline

32:32healthc care services Construction And Trades this is cool because it's it you know it's going into the niche ideas that it gathered from Reddit and and some of the YC

32:49companies okay so it looks like right now it's designing again it's designing it it's taking a while three minute almost four minutes I mean if we would go into v0 it would take a minute so you know I I hope it's I hope it's maybe it would take two minutes but you know I hope it's nice I hope it's nice so wallets wallets uh figuring out the landing page uh it did come up with a business concept validation executive summary so this is kind of like a one-pager um so it talks about you know the idea providing expert level Consulting the target market a million dollars recurring Revenue that's cool um

33:44the competitive landscape the tools that uh you you'll use to create this um the validation from Reddit and market research for example cost barriers quote unquote as a small business owner I'd love to get expert advice but can't justify $200 Consultants from our small business really this is really cool this is my favorite part that I've seen wow need for so it's taking what it's seen it's taking literal comments from subreddits and validating your idea generic AI tools don't understand my industry specific challenges from our entrepreneur information Overlord there's too much business advice out there I need something that cuts through the noise with actional steps uh implementation challenges I

34:31know what I should be doing but I need help with the how again from from a subredit small business this is really cool it gives you the business model um I think that if I was actually building this business I would try to like go back and forth with it and be like well why are you charging $49 a month like what makes you why 49 like I think pushing back on Manis is helpful we learned that from the the Google Trends data the customer acquisition strategy let's see what they say content marketing paid in Social again this this is like yes I agree this is probably

35:10what you do but tell me exactly how to do these things like give me the actual tactics for how to do these things core platform features AI Consulting agents I think the other thing to note here is this is too big of minimal viable product to start with when you're building a startup you want you want a minimal vile product that you can that is you know attainable like you're not going to do this from day one marketing consultant operations consultant Financial Consultant strategy consultant you might do that over time but I think the most interesting thing here is being Niche so I I wish that

35:54that wouldn't have happened and you would have to push push back here okay it gives you the text do text stack the competitive advantages and the go to market okay gives you risk conclusion um overall I don't know 7.8 on 10 7.7 on 10 is like pretty good one pager and I guess my only like I said the only thing that matters uh that you really need to do is you you kind of have to push it a little bit more okay so it seems like it's done seems like it's done so we're going to scroll scroll down and okay so it's designed a eye-catching landing page with an

36:37animated hero section interactive business okay can I look at it so it's just in a zip file I can't I can't preview it it's kind of lame man is okay let me open up this zip file by the way downloading from like a Chinese website zip file with code be do be careful all right I'm gonna do it I'm doing this for the uh I'm doing this for the startup ideas podcast Channel I'm doing this you know I'm opening it up making sure hopefully it works okay yo this is crazy this actually is be it actually it's it's a beautiful nice website this is this is actually the fact that it has a

37:30free assessment like a lead magnet wow this is legit amaz like amazing what happens if you put put okay late checkout cig Gmail okay retail and e-commerce my top business uh challenge growing Revenue what happens okay interesting so then it a business assessment I think that's really interesting they did a pretty good job and then at the end finally it presents the business complete business proposal um and uh let's see would you like me to elaborate let's see oh it's basically just what we talked about so that's the business proposal so okay I don't know about you but that was pretty impressive we got like multiple good ideas

38:28multiple Trends on the positive side I think that if you just continue pushing it uh on the trend side I think that um you know that's what this game is about right if in a world where anyone could create software you saw how easy it is to create software figuring out what is the brand what is the landing page what is the product and what is the trend how do you build something that's in a growing trend is going to be I mean that's going to help you actually build a business not just build a product so uh I think uh that on the positive side

39:06Manis you know you you you did pretty good here on the negative side you do have to know the right questions to ask I wish it would just kind of I wish you can just one prompt your way into into winning and and at this point you can't um I think you need to have taste you have to know the right questions to ask and and that's kind of the state where we're in I think that you know you with with Manis you have an AI co-founder you have someone who can go and build things research things it does it really does feel like an AI employee but it's kind

39:47of like when you have a you know junior is employee um you do have to manage them Mentor them and get them to be smart and that's what this is so I feel like here's a business idea it's like H helping how do you get Manis from being like a junior a junior analyst to a senior IC and I think uh that's what this is that's what it's missing uh currently that's that's where I'm at with this uh I wanted to just do this publicly because I you know I'm learning just like you're learning um Manis today is still uh still invite only I don't have any invite um codes yet um and um I

40:33know people in the comment section are going to be like this is a Chinese company I have no affiliation with Manis um I just think it's cool and it could be a tool to um to help you build your business I mean we're seeing it and like okay maybe I shouldn't have downloaded the HDML and run it locally on my computer but [Music] um you know if I was actually launching this I probably would want a developer just to look at the code um and I wouldn't be giving it sensitive information like you know I wouldn't be storing any payment information and stuff like that so um hope hope you've enjoyed this uh

41:18if you have please let me know in the comment section I literally read every single comment um you can like this video um what that do is it'll give you more episodes like this um and in your feed and uh let me know uh let me know what you think um cheers to you hope you enjoyed this sip episode startup ideas podcast and I'll see you on the next one