13 Businesses for the Age of AI

Synopsis

Greg Isenberg outlines 13 business categories he thinks remain durable in the agentic AI era, including AI-native service firms, proprietary data sets, domain-specific harnesses, robotics, marketplaces, real assets, vertical agents, and security. The operating pattern is to own scarce assets such as distribution, data, physical locations, compute, energy, or trust while agents handle more of the delivery, with examples like Othership's sauna clubs and Osmo's window-cleaning robots. He notes ad clicks rising from about five cents in 2009 to $1-5 today as a reason to favor organic audiences.

Ideas in this episode

• Data-as-a-service startup

  Greg Isenberg lists proprietary data sets among 13 durable AI-era business categories, arguing founders should own scarce data while agents handle delivery and ad clicks have risen from about five cents in 2009 to $1-5 today.

• Vertical AI agents (specialty)

  Isenberg names vertical agents as one of 13 business categories built for the agentic AI era, sitting alongside proprietary data, domain harnesses, and robotics in a framework of owning scarce assets.