Today we're going to take Perplexity Computer for a spin.
Now I haven't tried it, so together we're going to basically look at how can we use this, how can entrepreneurs use this to make money and be more productive.
We're actually going to ask it to tell us what are the top use cases to use and we're going to test it out and see if it's any good.
You've probably seen Perplexity Computer and you might have bookmarked it, but today we're actually going to see if it's super valuable.
So let's just get right into it.
I'm going to just say hey, I want to know the five best use cases, non-obvious for founders who want to make money and be more productive using perplexity computer.
What are the five... and use cases I need to be aware of that are super mind-blowing.
I'm actually going to share this live on YouTube and Spotify on the Startup Ideas podcast.
We are going to test it.
So just noticing, for the first time, you basically have these tasks on the left-hand side, and on the right-hand side is what's happening with the different agents.
So it says, let me load up the relevant skills to give you the best possible answer here.
Let me read the key reference files to make sure I'm giving you the most accurate picture of what a computer can do.
And it's running all these tacks in parallel, which is pretty cool.
You don't need to open up a bunch of different cloud code instances.
It's right there running in parallel.
So now it says, good.
Here are five non-obvious use cases that should surprise your audience.
These are built for founders who want to move faster and make more money.
Warm, outbound at scale.
So personalized prospect research and outreach in one shot.
So let's go ahead and try this.
I guess you can press copy right over here.
And I guess you want to start a task.
So here's a list of 30 companies I want to sell to.
For each one, find the founder, CEO on LinkedIn.
Research their company's recent news, funding, and pain points.
And then draft a hyper-personalized cold email referencing something specific about them.
Send each email via my connected Gmail.
So we're going to go ahead and do that.
So that's actually pretty cool.
You have your tasks over here.
You can go back and forth.
I think that's pretty clean.
Perplexity has always done a good job at doing pretty clean UI UX.
Sip a cold brew.
Let's keep it going.
All right, I'll tackle this step by step.
I need a few things to make this effective.
Again, running the tasks in parallel.
I see a couple things I need to address before we can execute on this.
Gmail's not connected yet.
I need to get this set up so I can send emails on your behalf.
I need some key details from you to make these emails actually convert.
This is cool.
Connecting your email.
There's definitely obviously some risk associated with that, but I'm going to go ahead and do that now.
So I've gone ahead and connected it.
So it's super cool that you can just do that pretty easily.
Gmail's connected.
I'm ready to roll.
As soon as you share the list of 30 companies, paste them in your reply.
What you're selling, your SaaS product podcast sponsorships, tone and CTA preferences.
Once I have those details, I'll research all 30 companies in parallel.
I'll find the right person at each and draft hyper-personalized emails and send them through your Gmail.
So I'm going to say...
I run the Startup Ideas podcast.
This is for podcast sponsorships.
I want you to research who advertises on TBPN and then I'll say take the top five companies And then you now know I'm selling pod sponsorships and Tone and CTA.
Well, Tone, I want to be friend to friend, clear, calm.
And CTA, do you want to set up a call with my team?
Let's go ahead and do that and see if it's able to find... who advertises on TBPN.
It says, I need to find the first companies to advertise on TBPN.
It actually doesn't know what, does it know what TBPN is?
Oh, it does.
So it first says the Bitcoin Podcast Network.
It's not called that.
I think it's called Technology Brothers Podcast Network.
But it still finds the right one over here, you can see.
Because you can see that it's finding a bunch of... Like TBPN signs with CAA, that's the right TBPN.
So it finds them.
So it had a little trip up over there.
And then it just says, it finds their five...
Ramp, Plaid, Figma.
And it's researching all five in parallel recent news, pain points and any specific I can reference in email.
So this is really interesting, right?
Because I don't know about you, but I actually don't do any cold email, really.
Unless it's to a cold DM of someone I look up to and I think is really interesting and cool, I'll just cold DM them.
But for closing leads, finding leads, stuff like that, I don't do cold DMs.
My approach is really building audiences and communities and having people reach out to me.
So this is cool that I can do this.
But what I've had issues with in terms of cold DMs in the past is it sounds lame.
It doesn't sound like me.
It's a lot of work to actually find the people.
And let's just see if this is any good.
It says, excellent research.
Let me find the right contact emails and draft the emails.
Let me also look up who handles sponsorship and partnerships at these companies, since emailing the CEO directly about a podcast sponsorship isn't always the best path.
This is what I'm talking about.
This is really cool.
Obviously Dylan Field, the founder of Figma, isn't going to open a cold DM, probably from my email, but like the podcast sponsorship people, might you know.
So it says good, I have this send underscore email tool ready.
So what's really cool is perplexity computer.
You're spinning up a computer.
It's like a virtual computer.
It has skills, it has tools and it can actually go and do things.
So let's see if this is any good.
Okay, so here are the five personalized emails, each referencing specific details from my research.
So it's actually crazy.
So it found Toby, the founder of Shopify's email.
That's really cool.
That in itself is really, really...
Really crazy, right?
So good on them for finding that.
But we did talk about how we shouldn't...
Let me check if these CEOs are reachable.
Oh, interesting.
So it's actually I wouldn't send it to CEOs personally.
So I guess that's something that, you know, we can adjust.
But actually, I mean, I would probably send it to CEOs and I would send it to the podcast people.
So let's just read the Toby email.
Hi, Toby.
Been watching Shopify's run lately.
Eleven point six billion in revenue.
I think it's more than that.
I think maybe not.
Actually, 30 percent growth.
And the AI catalog tools are generally impressive.
The MRI thing you did with Claude was wild.
So I don't know if you saw that.
He did like...
I think he analyzed an MRI result and built a tool around it, and it was wild.
So it went and checked his X account and what he's been posting.
I run the Startup Ideas podcast.
Our audience is founders and builders actively launching companies, many of them choosing their commerce stack right now.
We get about X downloads per episode and our listeners skew heavily towards early-stage founders who are making infrastructure decisions.
I noticed Shopify is already sponsoring TVPN, which makes a lot of sense or shows.
It's a similar demo, but a tighter focus on people who are literally in the process of starting companies feels like a natural fit.
This is, this is awesome.
And then there's another one to ramp.
Um, and there's another one to plaid and they have all these people's email addresses.
I don't know how they're getting them but um, assuming those are real email addresses, that's pretty, pretty cool.
I'm going to say, uh, And by the way, if I press send email, it would just send the email.
It's got connected to my email address.
I can go ahead and do that.
But what I'm going to do, I'm going to do one more thing and then we're going to get to the next use case.
I'm just curious if it can do this.
So I'm going to say CEO's emails are impressive, but realistically, these are busy people.
Let's try to get in front of the person in charge of podcast creator partnerships.
Doesn't that make more sense?
And then i'm gonna just give it a bonus question.
I'm gonna say by the way, is there something i'm not asking you here that could make me more money in this use case?
Just going to see what it says.
Sometimes, you know, we're trying to push it to the limit.
This is where we're reviewing ProFoxy computers.
So let's go and see.
You're absolutely right.
CEOs aren't reviewing sponsorship pitches.
The person who actually signs podcast deals is usually head of brand marketing partnerships.
And it goes and says, let's go find those people.
So it's going to go ahead and find them.
It also says what you're not asking but should be outreach to companies that sponsor TBPN's competitors too.
Right.
So if a company sponsors TBPN, they also sponsor My First Million, All In, Acquired, right?
Set up a recurring monitor.
I can check TBPN, All In, and other tech podcasts weekly for new sponsors.
The moment a new brand starts advertising a competitor's brand, you get a notification with their partnership contact.
So you're reaching out while their podcast budget is hot.
That is so smart and so cool that you can set it up.
That's, like you know, one of the reasons i think people like open claw and co-work now has some scheduled tasks is you can yeah, schedule a task.
So it's very cool that you can spin up a flexi computer and have these recurring monitors and go and do that and do things for you in the cloud.
Uh, follow-up sequences one email converts at maybe 10, 5 to 10 percent.
Maybe i can, or i can, schedule follow-ups three and seven days later with new angles if they don't reply.
Absolutely crazy.
Want me to do any of those after we get these five out the door duh um okay, so let's just see um, good findings.
Now i have solid leads.
Let me compile what uh, what i found.
So it's gone ahead and found them.
It's found wow, it's found their email addresses.
It's hey george, caught your 20 vc.
This is the vp of growth, of ramp, the caught your 20 vc episode, the bit about finding alpha and channels.
No one else is trying to really resonate.
No one else is trying really resonated direct mail becoming one of rand's biggest channels such a good example of that.
Like, these emails are amazing and they're so personalized.
Um, we're just gonna.
I am impressed here.
Uh, i'm going to.
I'm gonna say i'm just gonna copy this.
What you're asking not should be Yes, go do those things.
And after that, I promise we will get to the new use case.
But I will say, this is better than expected, a lot cleaner.
I like the UI.
I like that you can spin out multiple tasks at the same time.
It is $200 a month, so is that expensive or is that cheap?
I guess if you're using it like this, obviously this would pay for itself in this actual use case.
It's going and researching sponsors across competing pods.
It's setting up a weekly monitor that checks those pods for new sponsors and sends you a notification.
What I like about the Lindy AI Assistant and I'm going to do a video just completely on that is you can text it using iMessage.
I don't know if you can do that, But I do think that one of the cool things about OpenClaw has been that you can use iMessage, you can use Telegram, you can use Discord.
This is a nice UI, but I do like the idea that I can just text it on some of those other platforms.
Okay, so, oh wow.
So the email has been sent, which is scary because I kind of know some of these people.
But we'll see what happens.
I'll report back and tell if you see Ramp Plaid Figma Shopify app Lovin advertising on this podcast.
It hopefully came from that personalized email.
So I'll keep you posted on that.
What's happening now is it's updating a plan with expanded outreach.
It's identifying top five TBN sponsor companies and their CEOs and founders.
It's researching all five companies in parallel, finding the partnerships, Brand marketing contact at each.
It's researching sponsors across tech podcasts to build a bigger prospect list.
And it's doing follow-up sequences and weekly monitoring in parallel.
This is literally an email marketing person's old job.
Point blank.
And it's using Clode Sonnet 4.6.
I will say, I wish it didn't send those emails without me clicking send.
When I went up here, if we scroll up here, it was like, do you want to send these emails?
And I didn't click send.
I actually didn't think it was going to click the emails.
I'm all for it because I think it's fun to see if it converts.
But I would have loved to have double-checked that.
This is really cool.
It's researching all the sponsors.
Let's go ahead.
And while it's running here, let's go ahead and do some more use cases.
Automated competitive Intel the second second one here automated competitive Intel on autopilot recurring monitoring with push alerts every morning at 8 am.
Check these five competitors websites for pricing changes, new feature announcements and any new blog posts.
Also search X for any mentions of them.
If, If anything has changed since yesterday, send me a push notification with a summary.
And if nothing has changed, stay quiet.
Why is this mind-blowing?
This turns a computer into a persistent, competitive intelligence agent that runs every day without you touching it.
It browses their actual websites, compares it with what it found yesterday.
Okay, let's go and see if this works.
We're going to head and start a new task.
I'm going to go ahead and you can see what's cool.
You can also just dictate here, but you don't need to.
And I could see myself getting used to this.
I don't know about you, but I can definitely see myself getting used to this.
Which competitor should I monitor?
Okay, so let's just say, let's go with the podcast stuff.
So let's just say My First Million.
What other podcasts?
All In Podcast.
These are the top three and you figure out the other two.
My pod is called the startup ideas podcast and i'm greg eisenberg.
Okay let's yeah, let's get, let's get.
Perplexing computer to do some of the work.
Why do i have to do all that work?
So i'm just testing it a little bit.
Um, it says remembering greg's podcast and identity, so it's updating memory.
So that's really cool.
I'm loving this.
I'm just watching it cook.
It feels really good.
Based on my research, two strong competitors are 20VC and Acquired.
Both target the same entrepreneurial audience and frequently overlap with your listener base.
Now let's set up the daily 8 a.m. monitoring task.
I need to convert 8 a.m.
Eastern to UDC first.
It's going ahead and coding, which is really cool.
So it's going ahead and coding.
And it's a computer with access to 16 different models.
We saw before it was using Sonnet 4.6.
And it's supposed to be using the best model for the best task.
And it's just interesting.
It's interesting watching how it thinks.
So every morning I'll automatically check these five competitors, what I'm watching for, pricing response for the changes on their sites, new feature announcements or product launches, new blog posts or content, new episode drops, guest announcements, notable X activity and mentions.
If anything has changed, you'll get a push notification with a summary and links.
If nothing has changed, you won't hear from me.
First run is tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.
I picked a 20 BC and acquired as the two additional.
Yeah, we know that.
Okay, so I'm going to say...
That's cool.
But what would today's report look like?
I want to see it so I can get feedback.
So because you're not going to be there with me at 8 am, I just want you to see what it's capable of.
So Propexity Computer goes, good call.
Let me run the full check right now so you can see exactly what tomorrow's report would look like.
So if this works and you're a founder or you want to be a founder, you want to build something.
There is no reason why you shouldn't be having something like this going.
Right.
I wonder if you can.
I wonder like here.
So let's scroll up a bit.
My question is, so you're going to run this. but can you email it to me?
I'm going to ask that.
I would love for it to be emailed.
I don't necessarily want to go and check perplexity every morning at 8 am, but I'd much rather it just be sent to my email or communicated to me.
Like I said, what I liked about Lindy AI is you can use open clause, you can use iMessage.
It's using Sonnet 4.6 again.
It's looking at all the latest episodes of the podcast, doing research, compiling the reports.
Oh, that's cool.
You can go and click and see all the subtasks.
This reminds me a lot of Manus.
Manus does a really good job at that.
I actually think Manus is just underrated as a platform.
I really need to go back in there and do another episode on Manus.
But yeah, it's going ahead and doing that.
It's cooking, it's cooking, it's cooking.
I would open this.
Not because I want to do what competition is doing on any business I'm starting, but It does help get your creative juices flowing and you know I'm all about getting creative juices flowing.
I find it helpful even if you want to be the anti-version of them.
Sometimes a competitor will launch a new feature or do something, launch a brand campaign, and it's not about hey, I want to do what they want to do.
It's actually like, I want to be different than them.
A great example of that is OpenAI announced they're doing ads.
Anthropic announced they're not doing ads.
They're the anti-version of each other.
I think having a competitor analysis report, having agents go ahead and doing this for you, sending it to you, could be really cool, just to help you get those creative juices flowing and get the most out of your day that way.
If you can.
I think that's like a big part of what we know.
Why a lot of us want to use AI agents is like, if we can get unfair advantage in terms of information, help us frame that information, help to get the most out of that information then uh, you know we'll be, we'll be ahead.
So let's see what's happening here.
So it's actually saved, um, It saved it as an MD file into home slash user MFM.
Well, I guess the report for each of the different podcasts, the all in TVPN, the 20 VC.
And so it creates those files and then it's done.
And this is what so this is what the notification would look like.
A new episode drops today.
So it says new episode.
This is Harry Stebbings.
Anthropic wipes billions off the market.
It's the new episode.
Published a European micro funds report.
Confirmed as a speaker.
I mean, I'm just scrolling through this.
And like, it's interesting.
My first million, Ryan Smith, you know, from the Utah Jazz on there.
That's really cool.
Pat Walls, dumb iPhone apps making money.
That's cool.
Andrew Wilkinson, best worst business in 2016, very cool.
Sampar pivoting YouTube channel away from personal finance towards founder-led content.
His second video already hit 100,000 views.
That in itself is interesting, right?
No format or pricing changes to MFM.
This is interesting.
And then it says that's a format on quiet days, when nothing is meaningful change across all five.
You get no notification at all.
What do you think anything you'd want added, removed or formatted differently?
How are you going to send me this report?
So i like these reports, but like, how am i going to get them?
Right now it's a push notification through perplexity interesting.
So you have to download the app.
So what is the best way?
Yeah, I guess you could.
Could you send via email?
Is that even possible?
Can you send via iMessage?
I don't think it's going to be able to send via iMessage.
But, you know, a man can dream.
We can dream.
We all can dream.
Let me check what's messaging and email tools are available.
So it's going to go ahead and do that.
Email's ready to go.
Email's already connected.
I can send the full report to your inbox every morning. iMessage isn't available.
So anyways, it could send via email, which is really cool.
Okay, don't send emails for now.
All right, so let's go ahead and see what our hold email stuff is up to.
Wow, this is.
This is crazy man, oh my god.
So it's researching uh sponsors across competing pods.
It's setting up a weekly monitor, checks those pods for new sponsors, send you a notification with partnership contacts and it's scheduling the follow-up sequences at day three and day seven.
Who doesn't reply?
It's just doing it all.
It's found 96 sponsor prospects found.
This is crazy.
I bet you this can, I mean, this is something that could definitely work.
All right, let's go back and do another use case.
Investor pipeline research.
Deep dive 50 VCs before you fundraise.
Here are 50 VC firms.
I'm considering raising four for my Series A. For each one, find their most recent fund size.
Partner, blah, blah, blah.
Put it all into a spreadsheet.
Why it's interesting.
Computer runs batch research across 50 firms in parallel web search, social and X LinkedIn.
You get back a structured spreadsheet with everything.
I'm not that interested in raising money from VCs, but I am interested in seeing how this could work and how you can create spreadsheets.
So we're just going to test to see how this is able to do some research and throw things into spreadsheets.
So it says I need to clarify a few things before diving into this research.
So it says I need some details to make this actually targeted and useful.
Which company are you raising Series A for?
Let's just do... Let's pretend... Let's pretend I'm the CEO of... Well, I'll just say...
I'm the co-founder of idea browser.com.
The number one website for people to find great startup ideas, trends and how to build them with AI.
I'm at series a level.
So I'm just giving it the name of the company and And it's going to go ahead and hopefully create that spreadsheet.
While it's doing that, let's go ahead and see another use case.
Turn a podcast episode into a full content machine.
Whoa, that's cool.
So here's my latest podcast recording.
Transcribe it with speaker labels.
Write a 15-word blog post.
Pull out the five most tweetable quotes.
That's really interesting.
So it's cool that you can do that.
I'm not going to do that because I don't have an audio file handy.
But basically what you can do is you can set up a recurring workflow, I guess.
Every time you launch a new podcast, you can extend it to...
You know, blog posts, tweetable quotes, LinkedIn carousel.
And just like based on how this is working, it just feels like it would do a good job.
OK, so the status here, if you see the left, it shows that it needs something from me.
And now it's just asking, can you share the VC terms?
I don't know who would fund this.
You do the research on the best ones.
So we're just going to make it do a lot of the work.
And let's see.
Fair enough.
Let me find the best fit VCs for Idea Browser Series A.
I'll load the relevant skills and build a targeted list based on your profile.
AI-powered platform.
And yeah.
So it's going ahead and So this idea browser sits at the intersection of several hot sectors AI, power tools, creator economy, community platforms and I'm researching across those vectors.
So that's exactly how a human being would go and actually reach out to venture people.
Of course, if you know them...
You would just be like, I'm going to reach out to Jimmy because Jimmy works at this venture fund.
But if you don't, the way you would do it is you would say like okay, what are VC firms that are investing in this genre or type of company?
So it's going ahead and doing it.
For us, it's using Sonnet 4.6.
I just expanded this.
It says it's looking at Bessemer and Union Square Ventures.
It's researching.
It's just going through tons and tons of different articles saving the final curated 50 VC firms to Workspace.
Let's see here.
If you click files, what happens?
Okay, nothing here really. you know, these are all the connectors, I guess.
So this is where you can use.
Uh yeah, we've already connected Gmail calendar, but you can connect, you know Google, Google drive, one drive Dropbox Slack, um Ahrefs, you know uh, Cloudflare.
I'm just looking at the ones that are interesting to me.
Google Gemini HubSpot is really interesting.
Um, Yeah, because imagine your CRM, right?
Your CRM has all the data.
Whatever you use, even if you use Google Sheets as your CRM, if you have all the data and you can load it up into here and you have a computer that can go and access this, that's really cool.
PayPal, sending money, that's crazy.
Reddit, that's cool.
How do you find pain points and stuff like that?
You've got to get ideabrowser.com on here.
All right, waiting for your response.
So it's gone ahead and identify them.
Interesting.
This will search far and wide across the Internet to get you fund sizes sector recent, best and best, best part.
This will consume a significant amount of credits.
Do you want to proceed?
At least it asks.
At least it asks.
I'm not sure how many credits you get with your max plan.
So, you know, I've been using this for now like 30 minutes so far.
So good.
But.
We'll see, right?
I will say that even if this cost $200, this session, it would have been worth it for me.
Because again, you close a sponsorship and it works out, that's worth it.
Okay, so it's gone ahead and researching all in parallel.
Wow, this is crazy.
These are people I would reach out to if I was raising money.
This is really cool.
While it's doing this, let's go ahead and check our last use case, live market diligence on a deal.
A full investment memo from a single ticker.
Build me an investment research memo on Shopify.
Pull their latest financials earnings transcript highlights.
Compare their margins and growth to.
I will say I've been seeing on X a lot of people using perplexity computer with the use case of using it as a financial analyst.
I think it was...
I think it was Morgan Linton who built a Bloomberg terminal vibe code using perplexity computer, which is really cool.
It seems to be really primed for financial advice.
Wow, this is cool.
It says, I'll build a comprehensive investment research on Shopify.
Let me load the data visualization and research assistant skills.
So it's cool.
You don't have to like install the skills, right?
It's going ahead and doing that for you.
It knows.
So I do use perplexity and knows that I like, like value investors and Bill Ackman is a value investor.
So it's gone ahead and like brought that in.
So it looks at your old searches on perplexity.
And even though I've never used Perplexity Computer, it knows a little bit about me, which is interesting.
For people who use Perplexity, that context will already be loaded.
So it says, I have all the data I need.
Let me get the shop estimates and analyst research, then build the PDF.
I have plenty of data.
It's a little flex there, Perplexity Computer.
Let me now update the tasks and build a comprehensive PDF with charts.
Let me download the price history in CSV and build a complete PDF with charts using a subagent.
So what's cool about you know, when I'm learning?
What's cool about computers subagents skills, tools.
That's all built into this.
And people thought perplexity was dead.
Here we go.
The CSV downloaded as single lines.
Let me save the data properly from the content I already have.
All right, so you can see the status here, it's working.
While it's working, let's just ask it, do you have any more use cases people should try?
I'm live right now.
I'm just curious if it has any of them.
But this is something that you should totally do.
Just ask it for use cases.
Five more different angles we won't have time to do today, but just you know could be really interesting for you.
Steal your competitors.
Seo strategy auto generate a branded pitch deck from a loom video.
That's pretty cool.
Shadow cfo weekly financial sanity check on autopilot.
Amazing hiring sourcer find and rank 50 candidates a minute.
The deal room due diligence package on an acquisition target more.
I Give me a few more.
Those are all really interesting.
I think the hardest part of a lot of this is figuring out okay, which agents recurring flows should I have.
Reverse engineer any SaaS pricing page.
Wow, that's cool.
You instantly see exactly where you underpriced.
That's really cool.
Customer discovery on autopilot.
Free customer research.
Clone your best performing ad copy.
This is crazy.
So yeah, let's check in on this.
So, okay.
So here's, here's what we got.
It's got the name.
The fund of this is the VC, the VC list, the partner's name, recent tweets, recent interviews, the different sources.
That's crazy.
And it's building.
Yeah.
It's just building an Excel spreadsheet with all that data.
Literally building an Excel spreadsheet.
It's an analyst.
All right.
Safe to say this succeeded my expectations.
I don't know about you, but this is really cool.
Something I'm going to be playing more with.
I'm really interested in sort of the open clawification of the internet.
So this whole, this whole world where now you can spin up these machines with agents sub-agents, tools and skills, have it, access files and get them to do things for you.
I think a lot of us want to start these one-person 1 billion companies, want to start small teams or even a small team and building these small companies software companies, agent companies, SaaS companies.
And that's why I like playing with these tools.
And you know, I'm just I'm grateful that you know you come and you watch these videos, you listen, you like you comment.
And, you know, I'm sharing everything I'm learning in real time.
And I just find this just such an exciting moment in entrepreneurial history.
I've built and sold three startups, Advisor to TikTok and Reddit.
I've invested in a ton.
I've been doing this since I've been a kid.
I just find right now just to be so fun to tinker, have fun, build assets.
So I'm excited to see what you think of this perplexity computer and I'll be reviewing and checking out more of these in the future because I think it's an unfair advantage.
So hope this has been helpful, send it to a friend if it has been, and I'll see you next time on the Startup Ideas podcast.
Have a creative day, my friend.
