The Next $100B Market: Selling To AI Agents

**Greg Isenberg** (0:00)
There's a really big shift happening right now on the internet, and I don't think people are talking about it. You know, for the longest time, the user of the internet were human beings. They were us, right? We would create websites, we create apps, and the end user was human beings. And that's no longer the case. The agents, the AI agents are becoming the customer. So in today's episode, I'm going to give you a clear primer on what is changing on the internet and how you could actually make money, build products, and what you really need to know about this agentic era of the internet. I haven't seen anyone really post and do a de facto episode on it, so I figured I'd do it.
So I tweeted this, and I think this will resonate with you. I said, build startups for agents. Over the next 10 years, you're going to have a market of billions of customers, aka agents, with millions of wallets that want to use your services. Go look at every SaaS tool you use, Notion, Slack, Stripe, et cetera. Now ask, what is the version of this that's built purely for agents? Agent Native Payments, Agent Native Communication, Agent Native Memory. Every single category gets rebuilt for agents. We're entering the machine-to-machine economy and almost nobody is building for it yet. So I tweeted this a few months ago and I started seeing more and more stuff come out. So let's actually go through what is happening, what is the shift so that we really understand it. So the old web was humans searching, reading, comparing, clicking, and buying. And it was your website, your beautiful website that was built to win the attention. But in the agent web, it's not for humans, right? It's agents discovering, evaluating, invoking tools, paying, renewing. So your company has to be machine usable. The way I think about it is, the human customer wants persuasion, but the agent customer wants structured capability, permission, and trust. So how should we start, how should we think about the agent buying journey? What does that even look like? I know it's weird even to say it, right? But it's important that we map it out so that we truly understand who the agent is, what are their desires, and what are the incentives that are going to get them to do things. Because if we figure that out, the people who figure that out are going to have companies that do a tremendous amount of revenue and value. And by the way, for people thinking, who are these agents, right? Well, everyone is going to have personal agents in their pocket, on the web, and they're also going to have business agents. You're starting to see this with Codex, Claude Code, OpenClaw, Hermes. I think it's pretty inevitable that agents are going to be everywhere, and that's going to outnumber humans. So let's go back to the agent buying journey here. So for finding, find a payroll tool for 40 contractors. Then, agents are going to basically do finding. Agents are going to be doing evaluating, like reading docs, pricing, APIs, reviews. Agents are going to be looking for trust. They're going to be checking policy. They're going to be checking limits. They're going to be asking their identity. Agents are going to be transacting. They're going to be paying. They're going to be booking. They're going to be signing. They're going to be subscribing. Agents are going to be using tools. They're going to be filing tickets. They're going to be changing settings. And agents are going to be recommending what other tools they should use. So they're going to be telling other agents what worked. And that's honestly the weirdest part about it all. We saw a glimpse of this with Moltbook. If you remember, Moltbook got acquired by Facebook, but it was a social network for agents. I think that was just the tip of the iceberg. You're going to see more and more social products that are specifically for agents. So the opportunity here is every step as missing infrastructure, because the old internet assumed a person was doing the work, or we're now in a new era. So what do agents need that humans do not? That's the obvious question to ask next, right? So they need identity. So who is this agent acting for? They need tools, right? What actions can it safely invoke? It needs an inbox. So where could it reply? OTPs, docs, and threadlands. Where does that all land? Memory. What does it know about my preferences and rules? Wallet. What can it spend and who approves it? So it's kind of similar, by the way, to an employee, right? As your employee gains trust, you might give them a credit card, and then you might increase that limit and stuff like that. And then receipts, what did it see decide, change and buy? So let's actually talk through some really concrete examples, because I think this will drive the point home to you.