Muse AI Connectors: The Next App Store Moment?

Greg Isenberg (0:00)

I think a gigantic opportunity has just opened up, and we need to talk about it. Meta has opened up Muse, its personal AI agent to developers. And you can now submit something called a connector, which gives Muse a way to use your service when someone asks for help. And I think this could be the App Store moment for AI. So if you're thinking about starting a business, or you already have one, it's worth understanding what just became possible, because billions of dollars are going to change hands. By the end of this video, you'll understand what Muse Connectors are, and where I'd look for business opportunities. We're going to walk through how you can build one using a coding agent and submit it to Meta. We'll also spend some time on how people actually find what you've built. Because let's be real, that's a big part of whether any of this turns into a business. I'll give you four Muse Connector Startup Ideas for free by the end of this video. If you're new here, my name is Greg Isenberg, and I'm the host of The Startup Ideas Podcast. I know a thing or two about social apps. In the past life, I was an advisor to TikTok, an advisor to Reddit, and now I build AI native businesses. If this episode gets 7,000 likes, comments, and subscribes, I'll drop a Muse Connector Guide 100 percent free with more ideas. I'll include the link in the pinned comment description if that happens, so go ahead and do that. All right, let's start the episode.

Think about what happened when Apple opened the App Store in 2008 Applehood built the phone. Now an outside developer could build something useful for the people who owned it and sell it through the store. Someone could build a photo editing app and charge for it.

Apple supplied a way to distribute the software and collect payment so that the developer could focus on making something people wanted to use. And it was a win-win scenario, by the way. Apple got a way better App Store and developers made money. By June 2010, less than two years after the store had opened, Applehood paid developers a billion dollars from paid apps and in-app purchases. So, this new market had formed around the phone, and outside businesses were earning a bunch of money from it. That's why I'm interested in this Muse announcement. Meta is building the Assistant, and other businesses could supply services that help it complete a customer's request. How big that market will become will depend on whether people actually use Muse for those jobs. But the opening for developers is now. And yes, I know someone in the comment section is saying, well, who knows if this is going to be a big app? No one really knows, but it is today as of recording the number one app in the App Store. When I'm thinking about the App Store analogy versus the App Store for AI analogy, there's another interesting wrinkle. So your service can become useful halfway through a bigger request. Let me explain what I mean by that. Take someone who's organizing a small event. They're going to need a venue, and later they realize they need maybe some equipment that they need to rent. A company that handles equipment rentals could become relevant at that moment.

Even though renting equipment wasn't what started the conversation, as a founder, as someone who's trying to build something, I would closely look at those moments. Someone is trying to accomplish something, and there's a step where they need access to a business that can actually deliver and money's changing hands. Meta's platform now has a submission process and a directory of approved connectors. There's a bunch of big companies in there now, and I think there's going to be a bunch of small and medium sized soon. Editors also can feature them. That gives something real to explore. I remember when I was launching apps in the early days, and I got featured, and I was getting like 40,000 downloads every single day from that feature. It was all free. With Muse AI Connectors, what we still need to learn is how people will find those services and how often they use them. But I wouldn't be surprised if the directory generated a bunch of customers. That's why being early could help you learn faster than other people in your category. So I would use that time to understand a customer's request and make my service work really well for it. And then who knows, you might get featured. But we're also, towards the end of the episode, are going to talk about a bunch of other techniques to get downloads, or not really downloads, to get usage to your connector that isn't reliant on Meta featuring you. So how does a Muse connector actually work? Say I tell Muse I need a podcast studio on a Tuesday afternoon for two hours, and my budget is $200.