$1.3B AI CEO: "You ONLY Need 2 People and 90 Days to Build a $1M Business" | Higgsfield Founder

1. 0:00 – 1:10

   Intro

   1. AMAlex Mashrabov0:00

      A lot of businesses can really scale to tens of millions of dollars today profitably with AI.

   2. MMMarina Mogilko0:05

      This is Alex, founder of Higgsfield, an AI company that hit a two hundred million annual recurring revenue in just nine months, faster than Slack or Zoom. And what he told me about starting a business today completely blew my mind, and you can copy his strategy, too.

   3. AMAlex Mashrabov0:21

      Focus on bringing, like, the first dollar by day thirty of product development and maybe one million ARR by day ninety.

   4. MMMarina Mogilko0:29

      That's a lot.

   5. AMAlex Mashrabov0:30

      I just think it's the next industrial revolution. It's probably more powerful than the internet. For many, many young people, AI become social elevator.

   6. MMMarina Mogilko0:37

      For someone who still has fear, like, "This is moving so fast. I don't know how I can start," can you give them one piece of advice?

   7. AMAlex Mashrabov0:43

      First, I would start from-

   8. MMMarina Mogilko0:47

      I have an amazing guest today. I am so excited to learn from you. Let's get very practical right away. You built Higgsfield and achieved two hundred million dollars in revenue in nine months. Let's imagine every... I don't want this to happen, but let's imagine a scenario when you have to start from scratch tomorrow and you have ninety days to launch a business idea.

2. 1:10 – 2:14

   An AI startup starts with a team of two

   1. MMMarina Mogilko1:10

      From what you've learned with your experience at Higgsfield, what would you do?

   2. AMAlex Mashrabov1:13

      I think it all starts with maybe a team of two, someone who is builder who can go within w- twenty-four hours from idea to a product. And now it all becomes possible. There are so many, uh, databases. There are so many payment systems and so on which simplify creation of MVP. And then someone, as I call it, go-to-market person who has this natural empathy maybe or understanding of the sort of target distribution, whom they're selling to, and who can come up with interesting kinda new content formats w- which can resonate with the target audience on social media. And I think this is a very different skill set from the, like, marketing roles of the previous decades.

   3. MMMarina Mogilko1:58

      And how many times should they be ready to iterate? How many ideas?

   4. AMAlex Mashrabov2:03

      For example, for us last year, we were iterating every day. So it was six, uh, days a week. And, um, every day we were putting new product release

3. 2:14 – 3:40

   The entire industry resets every month

   1. AMAlex Mashrabov2:14

      as we were trying to find workflows and use cases which have high frequency and which matter for our target audience. And then once the technology gets there, it's important to develop sort of the workflow which is easy enough but gives enough configuration as well. This dilemma of the perfect interface is still not solved frankly. So, uh, this is another reason why we embrace daily iteration. And on top of all of that, every month the whole industry resets. They completely push the boundaries in terms of the capabilities. There are probably f- let's say five leading research labs, and each lab is pushing massive updates every quarter. So at some months we have even two major updates. And it typically requires to substantially rebuild the whole product around those models. So it's exciting time today 'cause product builders like ourselves at Higgsfield, w- we, we just try to evolve the product so that it highlights the best possibilities of these models to our customers. But that's a constant race.

   2. MMMarina Mogilko3:22

      Yeah, it sounds like a very challenging race. And I think you mentioned that last year was one of the hardest for you when-

   3. AMAlex Mashrabov3:28

      Yeah

   4. MMMarina Mogilko3:28

      ... a lot of things were not working. Can you talk to me about that one thing that actually worked?

   5. AMAlex Mashrabov3:32

      In, uh, 2024, we really started from the mobile apps. And things were not working

4. 3:40 – 7:46

   8 interviews that changed everything

   1. AMAlex Mashrabov3:40

      well 'cause retention for mobile apps is relatively low. Things drastically changed for Higgsfield when we started to constantly iterate with creatives. And we just asked them very simple question like, "Did you see this video? This was a cool AI-generated video." And they said, "Oh, no. How is this possible? What's the cost?" And we say, "It actually cost maybe less than five hundred dollars to make this video." And then we ask, "Did you actually try these models? What's your experience with AI?" Um, and obviously everyone tried AI back by then. Even by m- maybe February last year, everyone tried AI, but everyone had some issues with that. Back then we realized that the core limitation was around camera control. Like, lots of creative directors, they really wanna control, um, all the camera effects, uh, camera angle, and so on. Back then there was no system to, to achieve that. So that, uh, the initial traction of Higgsfield.ai came from these camera controls-

   2. MMMarina Mogilko4:42

      Mm

   3. AMAlex Mashrabov4:42

      ... which we implemented on engineering side based on the feedback from creatives.

   4. MMMarina Mogilko4:46

      So how many interviews did you have to conduct to come up with this feature?

   5. AMAlex Mashrabov4:49

      This a very good question, but it kind of puts me in, on a weak spot frankly 'cause we interviewed eight people. Eight out of eight said the same thing. And we talk from Hollywood-level, uh, movie directors to, like, regional, [chuckles] producers of commercials. Everyone had the same feedback.

   6. MMMarina Mogilko5:07

      And how did you select those people? Were they customers already, or you just wanted to talk to people in the industry?

   7. AMAlex Mashrabov5:11

      Actually, this was probably a challenge as we wanted to talk to people who we don't have a very close relationship to just get unfiltered opinion. But the feedback was very consistent. Everyone was missing these camera controls. So that's what we delivered March last year. Then in April we delivered a library of visual effects. And then I think in June industry completely changed. We saw the emergence of AI native marketing agencies. So essentially those agencies, they completely go end to end with AI. And very often they try to bypass incumbent tooling, like for example, Adobe or something else, and go end to end with AI. On the one side they are very limited 'cause AI capabilities back in June were a little limitedOn the other hand, they drastically improve their margin profile, and they kinda show their clients that they can build ads within days. A lots of brands actually wanna have constant content flow on their socials, and they wanna embrace AI. And then from June to December last year, this, um, this new industry of AI native agencies completely exploded.

   8. MMMarina Mogilko6:30

      But basically, you said the, the start of your growth was the multi-angled, uh, camera view, and it came from talking to people in the industry.

   9. AMAlex Mashrabov6:39

      Of course.

   10. MMMarina Mogilko6:39

       I love that. And also, the number eight is actually very consistent from what I'm getting, uh, talking to other founders. It's normally like 12 to 20, but it's not too many interviews 'cause I feel like a lot of people think they need to talk to thousands of people to figure out the problem, but it's actually, like, around 10 interviews.

   11. AMAlex Mashrabov6:55

       Yeah, absolutely. So eight people who actually helped us to shape the product, and then I think we hired four of them-

   12. MMMarina Mogilko7:01

       Oh, you also hired

   13. AMAlex Mashrabov7:02

       ... full-time. Yes.

   14. MMMarina Mogilko7:03

       Nice.

   15. AMAlex Mashrabov7:03

       So now we have this feedback loop within the team.

   16. MMMarina Mogilko7:05

       That's awesome.

   17. AMAlex Mashrabov7:06

       And that's how we realized that probably the best products in creative AI is going to be built in symbios- uh, like, in collaboration between engineers and between cre-creators. So today, roughly half of our... maybe 40% of the team are, um, engineers, and maybe 40% are creators.

   18. MMMarina Mogilko7:25

       Like you said, two founders, right? One is technical, one knows the consumer.

   19. AMAlex Mashrabov7:29

       Yes.

   20. MMMarina Mogilko7:29

       It's basically reflected in your team.

   21. AMAlex Mashrabov7:31

       Yes.

   22. MMMarina Mogilko7:31

       Okay, let's, let's get back to that tough year because I feel like for a lot of people, that's what they're scared of. So when you were building this and nothing was really working-

   23. AMAlex Mashrabov7:39

       Yes

   24. MMMarina Mogilko7:39

       ... and then Google releases the new view model, did you ever think about giving up on that particular market and

5. 7:46 – 13:28

   You need to hear this if you’re afraid to start

   1. MMMarina Mogilko7:46

      starting something else because this was getting so crowded?

   2. AMAlex Mashrabov7:48

      I think we were committed to figure this out. There are two reasons why we had the conviction. First is that prior to that, I was at Snapchat. I was running Gen AI there, and I saw the uprise of TikTok and CapCut. CapCut became top five apps in the world, and, um, it's unprecedented as it's not a messenger, it's not a social media, and this was a strong signal for me that the needs of social media creators are simply unmet in the markets. And the second reason why we had conviction, we constantly heard that creators feel a burnout from sort of feeling pressure to record multiple videos a day for socials with their own face. MrBeast, he spoke very openly about that. But that's... I think the, the... that has been a primary challenge for the whole industry over the last four or five years. And then what was surprising to me is that advertisers have the same problem. Most of the advertisers talk about, like, maybe mid-market brands. They can be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing, and they don't have any production team.

   3. MMMarina Mogilko9:03

      So you chose the right part of the market. This is what I'm hearing. So I feel like for every entrepreneur who's watching, uh, when you see a big opportunity in the market, you also have to spot who's paying the most, not just go after each user, right?

   4. AMAlex Mashrabov9:16

      Absolutely. We live in a very interesting, um, era where all the powerful companies try to give AI to everyone. Literally Meta, xAI, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, ByteDance, and many, many more. Think each of those companies wanna give AI to all its customers really. That's why startups have to have more nuanced view of the world and have to have more nuanced set of customers. And I think, um, startups today are sort of incentivized to stay cash flow positive and build real business from day zero. This is what I see across Higgsfield and the other top application AI companies. So I think this also creates a very interesting dynamic that the target audience should be maybe tens of millions of users who are willing to spend hopefully couple thousand dollars a month. So it is not for everyone, but the delivered value should be so strong, so the product should be so good so that it kinda sells itself.

   5. MMMarina Mogilko10:27

      I love that, and I love that you have a concrete number, $2,000.

   6. AMAlex Mashrabov10:31

      Yeah, $2,000. Uh, I'm not sure, like, with Higgsfield, for example, this is the core metric which we are tracking. Like, uh, how much of the value we believe we provide, which is more, like, through the user interviews, but also how much w-we charge, uh, users annually. So this is one key metric, and we are not chasing just, um, monthly active users, for example, 'cause the monthly active users number can be inflated through some viral effect. Monthly active user doesn't really speak to the frequency of the usage and the value delivered. So that's why for us, um, really, daily active users and average ACV, a-average contract value, those two metrics are the most important ones.

   7. MMMarina Mogilko11:14

      One of the reasons I was so excited to sit down with Alex is that our team has actually been using Higgsfield for a while now. My producers and editors absolutely love that all the top AI models are in one place, Nana Banana, C Dance, Kling, Veo, Sora, and I love that they don't need 10 different subscriptions. And it's kind of incredible. Alex just told us that last year they were shipping a new product release six days a week, and now everyone knows them, but they haven't slowed down. They keep launching new features, and one of the latest ones is SOUL 2.0. SOUL 2.0 is Higgsfield's own image model, and it's not like anything else out there. Most AI image generations, you type a prompt, you get something that looksFine. SOUL was built specifically for creative work, fashion, editorial, content. It actually understands aesthetics. You give it a reference photo and it doesn't just copy it, it reads the lighting, the grain, the mood, the era, like a creative director would. There are three models. SOUL, that's the core model. You prompt, you get a beautiful image with real aesthetic awareness. SOUL Reference, you upload a reference and it generates new images that match the vibe, not just the composition. Same visual DNA, different shots. And SOUL ID, you upload 10 or more photos of yourself. It learns your face structure, skin tone, expressions. Then it generates you in any style. Y2K, editorial, film photography, Polaroid, 20 different presets at launch. And here's what actually got me. You can specify the camera medium, say, shot on Kodak Portra or disposable camera, and it changes the grain, the color science, everything. It doesn't slap on a filter. It actually shifts the entire feel of the image. And the same thing works with color. They just added hex colors so you can pull the exact palette from any photo and apply it straight to your generations. If you want to try SOUL 2.0, I'll leave the link in the description. And now let's get back to Alex. Can you, uh, give advice to people who are watching who haven't started yet, but they haven't started because they think a large company's gonna take over? How should they think about their defensibility?

   8. AMAlex Mashrabov13:23

      I think each company can really keep their focus on maybe two or three top priorities.

6. 13:28 – 17:13

   Do we only have 2 years to build?

   1. AMAlex Mashrabov13:28

      Interestingly enough, people like to say about Anthropic that their major success from MCP and Claude Codes actually was not like a top-down, but really bottom-up. And it, like, Claude Code success was not sort of planned. And I think it's true that, like, these large companies, they definitely can benefit a lot from applying top-down approach from two to three initiatives and really consolidating all the resources to make the most progress there. I just think it's the next industrial revolution. It's probably more powerful than the internet. So the number of products and ideas to be built, I think just overweighs, uh, uh, number of ideas which OpenAI or Anthropic can push internally. That's why I would encourage builders to build, especially today when, like, a quite small team of maybe 10 people can build, like, high-scale products.

   2. MMMarina Mogilko14:23

      Do you think there's ... that we have a certain gap of in time when we can build? So for example, I've been hearing a lot on social media that we only have two years to build something new because then we're gonna have some companies that reach AGI, and it's gonna be impossible to find a gap in the market because those companies are gonna be filling those gaps.

   3. AMAlex Mashrabov14:41

      This is a good question. We definitely make, um, tremendous progress as a industry to automating work in digital world. And for sure, maybe next decades, there are gonna be a lot of applications of AI in physical world. It's difficult to forecast how much progress we all are going to make there, but this decade is definitely the era of digital economy completely changing with, with AI, that's for sure. I really don't wanna believe in the future when there are gonna be maybe three labs who have the best models and these models controlling all the world. This could happen. This would be very difficult future. So I would ... I, I try to stay optimistic and encourage everyone to stay optimistic and really focus on building and delivering value. Like, for example, um, today, I just wanna give you a very concrete example. So I s- recently spoke to a very large, very, very large, like, property management company which actually uses Higgsfield to s- to sort of advertise their buildings, their, uh, apartments and so on. Like, no one is building for this industry. Like, in this industry, there is a very specific, um, workflow of a customer. Like, customer needs to learn about, about the property, then they need to go to the website and get all the details, then they need to call, then they need to show up, then they leave deposit, and the whole customer journey. No one is actually building solution specifically for this industry to, like, cover this journey end to end with agents. And the reason why agents are going to deliver lots of value in this specific business is that customers who wanna maybe, let's say, re- rent apartment, especially in certain price points, they wanna make a decision rather quickly. So every day of delay, every day of just moving from one stage to another is just, is just lost revenue. So ... And this business owner just said to me that no one is building for their industry, and, and I'm confident there are many more examples like that.

   4. MMMarina Mogilko16:54

      Yeah, so riches are in the niches, as, as they say. From your experience when you pitched VCs with another AI idea, what makes a pitch stand out these days?

   5. AMAlex Mashrabov17:05

      I think today, um, there is definitely fear that OpenAI, Anthropic, and other labs are going to just,

7. 17:13 – 18:36

   Stop raising VC money

   1. AMAlex Mashrabov17:13

      uh, be, um, very acquisitive and, uh, just trying to expand their product offering to multiple different verticals. Pretty much every week, there is Cl- Claude for X launched and stocks go down. That definitely happens, and that creates a lot of fear. And I would just say that the core insight for me personally was that most of these, uh, hot and hyped AI companies, they are actually cash flow positive. Like, maybe it is a wrong mindset to go and raise venture capital today. I think there is plenty of pre-seed capital available today, but I'm not sure every- everyone needs, like, to raise Series A, B, C, D, and so on.

   2. MMMarina Mogilko17:57

      How much revenue did you have when you raised your first round?

   3. AMAlex Mashrabov18:00

      For me, with Higgsfield AI, it was probably... easier because I had a previous exit and we basically raised, uh, $16M without having, um, any revenue, just with maybe having, like, million users for our mobile app. But this is not exactly the way how I would recommend to build today. I would recommend to focus on bringing, like, the first dollar by day 30 of product development, and maybe 1M ARR by day 90, and then decide if someone needs VC funding or

8. 18:36 – 20:09

   $0 to $1M in 90 days

   1. AMAlex Mashrabov18:36

      doesn't. I mean, a lot of businesses can really scale to tens of millions of dollars today profitably with AI, and for such businesses there is no need to attract VC funding. I can give you a very simple example. So there are so many, uh, websites which just allow to make professional photoshoot, like, for basically for, for passport. Many of them make tens of millions of dollars. None of them-

   2. MMMarina Mogilko18:58

      Really?

   3. AMAlex Mashrabov18:58

      ... are gonna be... Yeah, none of them are gonna be venture capital backed business.

   4. MMMarina Mogilko19:02

      Well, and you said something, $1M by day 90.

   5. AMAlex Mashrabov19:05

      ARR, meaning like 80K a month.

   6. MMMarina Mogilko19:08

      80- 80K a month in three months, that's a lot. And so the, the playbook to achieve that is basically generate ads and launch them and test whether, whether they're landing with your target audience?

   7. AMAlex Mashrabov19:18

      Paid ads are very difficult today. I think a lot of distribution come through organic social media and creator integrations. And just make sure that by day 30, uh, there is monetization in place and then there is a way to constantly grow to a revenue to, let's say, 1M ARR by day 90. Many successful, uh, companies scale very quickly today. Just different verticals have different capacity. Some, in some verticals the ceiling could be just 50 million, in other vertical one billion, in other verticals like 100 billion.

   8. MMMarina Mogilko19:53

      Any tips on landing first customers in the first thirty days?

   9. AMAlex Mashrabov19:57

      Initially, at least last year, Twitter has been the social media where the distribution starts from. It starts from, like, small communities, then it goes to

9. 20:09 – 21:58

   Get your first customers in 30 days

   1. AMAlex Mashrabov20:09

      AI news pages on X, then from AI news pages on X it goes to Instagram news pages, then from Instagram news pages to creators, then it goes to Telegram and, like, other social media. That's what we have seen with Higgsfield and with many other products as well, that they went through the same sort of journey of popularity and news through various social media. But it all originated on X. I think now it's been kind of changed. Today a lot of hype, at least like a lot of companies, they sort of try to use X to boost their product. [laughs] Sort of signal-to-noise ratio just drops. Twitter becomes less relevant, but still it's, it's the main place for new AI products launch.

   2. MMMarina Mogilko20:54

      That's awesome. I'm still trying to crack the, the X strategy. I feel like if you add a word "breaking" or-

   3. AMAlex Mashrabov21:00

      Breaking

   4. MMMarina Mogilko21:00

      ... "just in" to whatever you're posting in the beginning and it should be in caps like then-

   5. AMAlex Mashrabov21:05

      Yeah

   6. MMMarina Mogilko21:05

      ... then it performs.

   7. AMAlex Mashrabov21:06

      And then some- something should be like Claude cooked.

   8. MMMarina Mogilko21:09

      Yeah, yeah, exactly.

   9. AMAlex Mashrabov21:09

      RIP, like something like that.

   10. MMMarina Mogilko21:11

       Yeah, just wiped this out of the market.

   11. AMAlex Mashrabov21:14

       Yes.

   12. MMMarina Mogilko21:14

       Yeah, it has to be very sensational on X.

   13. AMAlex Mashrabov21:17

       Yeah.

   14. MMMarina Mogilko21:17

       But you're so right. I've heard so many, and I know a lot of creators who build their whole, like, email newsletter, one million subscribers just off-

   15. AMAlex Mashrabov21:24

       Yeah

   16. MMMarina Mogilko21:24

       ... viral X, uh, posts.

   17. AMAlex Mashrabov21:26

       Yeah.

   18. MMMarina Mogilko21:27

       That's amazing. I love this life hack. Thank you so much.

   19. AMAlex Mashrabov21:29

       Although this has been the primary life hack of the '25, and I do believe that the media evolves itself as well, so '26 could be different.

   20. MMMarina Mogilko21:38

       Well, I always see LinkedIn on the rise, so maybe.

   21. AMAlex Mashrabov21:40

       [laughs]

   22. MMMarina Mogilko21:40

       Maybe LinkedIn.

   23. AMAlex Mashrabov21:41

       Maybe LinkedIn.

   24. MMMarina Mogilko21:42

       Your previous company, you sold it for 166-

   25. AMAlex Mashrabov21:44

       Yes

   26. MMMarina Mogilko21:44

       ... million. Were there any key learnings from that business or mistakes that you made that you will never repeat in this one?

   27. AMAlex Mashrabov21:54

       It, it's, it's like never say never, but one of the key learnings for me

10. 21:58 – 23:48

    AI Is the new social elevator

    1. AMAlex Mashrabov21:58

       and the key takeaways was to embrace meritocracy, sort of. Like, I'm 30 and I feel sometimes that I'm quite old for this new era of AI. Like, a lot of new ideas, uh, in Higgsfield today come from these kind of fresh grads, maybe 23, 25, who sort of maybe never worked in a large company, who are doing, like, freelancing with some vibe coding tools, who are doing vibe coding before the term vibe coding, basically. And, uh, they, th- they just think differently, and I think that's sort of maybe the right mindset. So traditionally in any, like, corporation, those people would be just simply, no one would just simply listen to them. So, and the same applies to the creative role. So there is definitely some resistance from people who especially build like, let's say like large Hollywood projects that, oh, AI is dangerous. It's not authentic. But, and it's, and at the same time it's really exciting that for many, many peop- young people, AI become social elevator. And I sort of strongly relate to that personally because for me, I had to do a lot of competitive programming. You know, like who solves more problem within like five hours? You know, like, and everyone in the world competes. So this was social el- elevator in 2010 maybe. And this applies both to, uh, creative and to software engineering as well.

    2. MMMarina Mogilko23:25

       I love how you said that AI is a social elevator because I feel like social media was the social elevator for me. Now it's the era-

    3. AMAlex Mashrabov23:31

       Yeah

    4. MMMarina Mogilko23:31

       ... of AI. I think you mentioned that video models could be a path to AGI and that you're also building a world model. Can you talk to me about that? And for everyone who's watching, just wanted to explain. I was just in Davos and everyone was talking about LLMs having

11. 23:48 – 26:53

    Video Models: Is This the Path to AGI?

    1. MMMarina Mogilko23:48

       a ceiling because basically just describing our world with words is something that we're used to and there's a lot of information on the internet, but understanding the physics is the next level. And once we understand the physics, then we're gonna have robots walking around our house and doing chores, if I'm explaining this correctly.

    2. AMAlex Mashrabov24:04

       Absolutely. Th- I think there isFrom Google and Elon from X AI. They started this narrative, and definitely they are top influencers in the space. That's why now the narrative, uh, goes to masses to everyone. It's still unclear if that's sort of the path to AGI, although that's definitely a path to advanced robotic systems. Like, I think Elon proved to the whole world that self-driving cars can work really well through just cameras, and I think, uh, the same logic is going to apply to more advanced robots as well. That's why developing perception and visual understanding is critical for next wave of robotics and it's a top priority for a lot of research labs as it's the next frontier. And, um, there is no other way to improve video generation without visual understanding. Roughly it takes around... I think people like to say that in one minutes we can read 200 words. One minutes of the video i- can be described with maybe 10, 60,000 words. There is just so much going on.

    3. MMMarina Mogilko25:13

       If you and I were having coffee after this episode, I'd certainly pull out my phone and say, "Look what I tried this week. It changed how my team works." This is what I do all the time. To share these kinds of things that don't fit into the podcast, I started my own newsletter. Every week I write about AI tools, strategies, and experiments I'm running in my own business with real numbers, real results, templates that you can use, and also honest mistakes. If you want to be in the loop, the link is waiting for you in the description. So where do you see yourself in two years? Are you still working on videos? Or because, uh, because I saw Menlo Ventures announce their investment in you and they, they said that Higgsfield is building the next world model. Do you feel like your focus is gonna shift to that or are you still gonna stick to the marketing with video?

    4. AMAlex Mashrabov25:58

       I think, uh, the dif- what differentiates us from many other is we are, from day zero, we are focused specifically on short-form content. And I do think that world model is going to change the way how social media content is made. So for example, next decade is gonna be the era of interactive media. Uh, basically when games and videos are sort of blurred in like one experience where, like, it's kinda choose your own adventure. So a lot of marketing is gonna go this way, especially kinda premium marketing and, uh, customer loyalty programs. I think this decade is all about super charging cr- creators and marketing with those models.

    5. MMMarina Mogilko26:37

       You said you're seeing customers with marketing budget over $100 million, 90% of their ads are AI generated. As a creator whose 90% of my revenue [laughs] is from large corporations through, from their marketing-

    6. AMAlex Mashrabov26:51

       Yeah

    7. MMMarina Mogilko26:51

       ... budgets, should I be afraid?

12. 26:53 – 29:31

    Should Creators Be Afraid?

    1. AMAlex Mashrabov26:53

       This is a good question and, um, this is definitely where we should make sure that video AI can help personalities. Like, what I would love to see is that, uh, creators like you, MrBeast and so on, who are sort of AI native, start to make like more channels and just expand their media presence and be like the whole media empire. So like the next media empire is gonna be built maybe with like 300 people, 500 people, uh, and be worth like $10 billion. So that's on the one side. On the other side, what I see personally is that essentially these high-scale AI content creation comes after, uh, maybe platforms like TikTok Marketplace, frankly. So in the past, those brands, they could just hire sort of even programmatically thousands of creators through TikTok Marketplace just to do kinda these, uh, templatized videos like, "I used this product, it's so good. Go buy that." So like this entry-level marketing definitely get, gets democratized. Although in my opinion, as we are seeing a lot of AI flop on social media and so on, uh, the genuine connection and, and understanding of audience now matter more than ever. So there are gonna be just a lot of average and above average content on the socials. Um, and I think this is happening one way or another, and just deep understanding of the audience and authentic approach matter more than ever.

    2. MMMarina Mogilko28:34

       Okay. So you think s- social media letter, social letter is not dead.

    3. AMAlex Mashrabov28:39

       Definitely not. I just think that authenticity is going to matter a lot and, and the way how I think about that is if, let's say, top creators now can make their own shows, their own movies with AI and creators can drive a lot of traffic, that's going to affect like streaming business a lot I think. So I think the revolution is going to come at every level, although I think clearly people who already understand their audience, who have authentic approach, those people are definitely gonna be the winners.

    4. MMMarina Mogilko29:15

       Okay. My last question. For someone who's watching this, still has fear like, "This is moving so fast."

    5. AMAlex Mashrabov29:22

       Yeah.

    6. MMMarina Mogilko29:22

       "I don't know how I can start. I start something today, it's outdated by tomorrow." Can you give them one piece of advice so they can start?

    7. AMAlex Mashrabov29:29

       First I think I

13. 29:31 – 33:43

    The AI Era Is "Extremely Unfair"

    1. AMAlex Mashrabov29:31

       would start from a position that large companies, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, think they're all relatively well positioned to be winners in AI era, as they simply control data centers, GPUs and so on. And I'm not sure there is much insurance policy for everyone else regardless, right? [laughs]

    2. MMMarina Mogilko29:55

       Well, buy their stocks. Yeah? I don't know. [laughs]

    3. AMAlex Mashrabov29:57

       Yeah.

    4. MMMarina Mogilko29:58

       Just buy their stocks. [laughs]

    5. AMAlex Mashrabov29:59

       Yeah, yeah. Buying their stocks is a good idea. But that's, I think I'm not sure we can share-

    6. MMMarina Mogilko30:03

       Not, not investment advice

    7. AMAlex Mashrabov30:04

       Yeah. [laughs]

    8. MMMarina Mogilko30:04

       ... this is just personal chat. [laughs]

    9. AMAlex Mashrabov30:06

       Yeah. I do think that there is a, a lot of value in these companies, but I mean, for, for lots of others, right? I mean, we see the sell-off across us. We see the sell-off across cybersecurity, and then there is an ultimate question. If I wannaLike basically depend on someone else to figure out AI strategy, or I wanna embrace AI myself and benefit the most, right? Think that's a personal question for everyone. And as we all know that these technology revolutions, they're both fair and un- and unfair. I think in long term, every technology revolution is fair, and GDP per capita and quality of life goes up on the horizon of 10 years. On the horizon of like three years, I think it's extremely unfair 'cause market just loves to pour money into companies which are winning. And companies which are, like, not winning, they immediately go down.

    10. MMMarina Mogilko31:01

        Mm-hmm.

    11. AMAlex Mashrabov31:02

        But in the short term, I think the, we, it's gonna be fair 'cause people, um, both on the creative side, marketing side, engineering side, those who are embracing AI, they can propel their career so quickly. In the end of the day, net, it's gonna be net positive. Although I think, um, individually we all just need to think how I can personally benefit the most from AI, how I can become more efficient with AI, how the value of my skill set can actually grow with AI. And, um, this always require using those, um, agents and various AI models several hours a day to g- to build this intuition.

    12. MMMarina Mogilko31:45

        Let's give them a home task. What should they do right after watching this video? Which tool should they start using, and how?

    13. AMAlex Mashrabov31:51

        For me personally, I'm an immigrant so, you know, it just takes quite a bit of effort to come with a logical, linear storyline. o3 mini became my coach-

    14. MMMarina Mogilko32:05

        Mm

    15. AMAlex Mashrabov32:05

        ... really. This was the first a-ha moment for me. The second a-ha moment was around Gemini 3 Pro model. So I felt that my economic productivity really depends on, like, how much I use Gemini 3 model. These capabilities of the model which can process voice, which can make image, but which has also deep reasoning capabilities and deep research, this was mind-blowing to me. So that's why I feel that my just economic throughputs really depend on how much I use Gemini 3 today.

    16. MMMarina Mogilko32:35

        Do you use it to make decisions about your company, like strategic operations?

    17. AMAlex Mashrabov32:39

        I really feel that communication with humans becomes way more important skill set for me 'cause a lot [laughs] other decisions, I'm sure Gemini 3 and Claude's are gonna be better than myself. AI is no, is not yet good in communication, so that's where I think I try to put a lot of my personal emphasis.

    18. MMMarina Mogilko33:05

        Mm-hmm.

    19. AMAlex Mashrabov33:05

        Think other than that, um, a lot of process can actually be built with AI. So, um, just human-to-human communication and sort of conflict resolution, and maybe goal set, goal setting-

    20. MMMarina Mogilko33:18

        Yeah

    21. AMAlex Mashrabov33:18

        ... and like number-driven goal setting really is where I put a lot of my time, my personal time. For everything else, I'm trying to evolve Gemini as much as possible. But also use Claude for Excel, Claude for X. Like, for example, Claude for cybersecurity, as it really increases the productivity.

    22. MMMarina Mogilko33:35

        Alex, thank you so much.

    23. AMAlex Mashrabov33:36

        Thank you.

    24. MMMarina Mogilko33:36

        It was amazing.

    25. AMAlex Mashrabov33:37

        Thank you.

    26. MMMarina Mogilko33:37

        Uh, I'm looking forward to reading your comments. What was your key takeaway, and what are you gonna do right after this video? Thank you so much.

    27. AMAlex Mashrabov33:43

        Thank you.

Episode duration: 33:43