Perplexity's new AI agents are INSANE
What this covers
Greg Isenberg walks through [concept:perplexity-labs], a $20-per-month AI agent product, by testing it across four distinct professional roles: film director, salesperson, content strategist, and financial analyst. In each case, the tool produces structured, multi-step deliverables—complete screenplays with storyboards, founder contact lists with outreach templates, content calendars, and investment frameworks—often in a single prompt or with minimal iteration. The underlying argument is that these outputs are sufficiently polished and actionable that Labs represents a meaningful arbitrage opportunity against competing AI tools, and warrants a permanent spot in a builder's toolkit.
The range of work shown spans media production (character profiles and visual storyboards for a startup ad), sales prospecting (Fortune 500 and Y Combinator founder databases with email and phone numbers), content strategy (a 90-day calendar extracted from another creator's framework, with follower-growth math), and investment analysis (a Buffett-inspired valuation system identifying undervalued AI stocks). The video also clarifies how Perplexity's three products differ—Search for quick queries, Deep Research for intensive investigation, and Labs for agent-driven deliverables. One sustained point emerges from the content strategy section: that proven creator formats can be systematically decomposed and transplanted to new niches, a claim Isenberg illustrates by reverse-engineering Dan Koe's six-element content pillar and projecting the work and resources required to reach 100,000 followers in 90 days. The financial analysis segment applies [concept:value-investing] principles to AI stocks, projecting 12-15% annual returns. Throughout, Isenberg emphasizes that Labs works best through iteration—re-prompting to narrow or refine outputs—rather than as a one-shot tool.
The host argues that Perplexity Labs, at $20/month, is a surprisingly capable AI agent product that can replace specialized roles (film director, salesperson, social media strategist, financial analyst) by producing structured, multi-step deliverables in minutes, making it a worthy addition to the AI tool stack.
- Labs generated a full screenplay with storyboards, character profiles, and shot directions for a startup ad in one prompt
- Labs compiled real founder/CEO contact lists with outreach templates and exportable dashboards for sales prospecting
- Labs reverse-engineered a creator's content framework into a 90-day calendar and produced a Buffett-style AI investing analysis
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Social media success is fundamentally a game of formats, meaning a proven creator's content structure (e.g., Dan Koe's) can be extracted and applied to a different niche to drive comparable engagement and growth.
“I've talked about this on the channel before like social is a game of formats. So, you know, there must be a way to use his formats in another niche.”
A Buffett-inspired AI investing philosophy means focusing on AI applications you can understand, prioritizing enterprise AI over consumer AI gadgets, and looking for economic moats in AI such as data moats, network effects, and switching costs.
“focus on AI applications you you can understand. Prioritize enterprise AI over consumer AI gadgets. Look at economic modes in AI, data modes, network effects, switching costs.”
Within Perplexity, 'Search' is for fast quick queries (like Google searches), 'Deep Research' is for more intense investigative research, and 'Labs' is the AI agent product that builds deliverables.
“Search is like your for your fast quick searches like your Google searches. Deep research is for like, you know, more intense deep research... And then labs are basically using the AI agent product.”
Achieving 100,000 followers in 90 days requires averaging ~1,111 new followers daily, generating a million-plus monthly views, cross-posting three to four times daily, influencer collaborations, a $5,000-$10,000 paid promotion budget, and 6-8 hours of daily work—making aggressive growth unrealistic for most, with milestones like 10-15k in 30 days being more realistic.
“achieving 100,000 followers in 90 days requires averaging 1,111 new followers daily”
Perplexity Labs successfully compiled a contact list of founders from the most recent Y Combinator batch—including emails of founders who have raised millions—and generated personalized outreach templates that reference each company's actual product, plus an exportable, filterable CRM-ready dashboard.
“Here, it's giving me all these people's email addresses and these are people who've raised millions of dollars.”
Perplexity Labs is not a one-prompt tool—except in cases like the film director task which came close—and is best used iteratively by re-prompting to refine and narrow outputs (e.g., narrowing overly broad niche suggestions to specific sub-niches).
“I don't think Perplexity Labs is like a one prompt type thing. Although I will say the film director thing was pretty close.”
Dan Koe's content framework consists of six recurring elements—a compelling hook, a big relatable problem, a clear and unique solution, a big benefit, confidence and polarization, and a novel perspective—that consistently drive engagement and follower growth.
“his framework hook, big relatable problem, clear and unique solution, big benefit, confidence and polarization and novel perspective, big idea”
Storyboard sketches generated by Perplexity Labs can be repurposed as inputs for creating high-quality YouTube thumbnails and as video concepts for other AI video tools like VO3 and Kling.
“if you put this into chat GBT and turn this in like this is an an easy way to take this image and make really really good YouTube thumbnails”
Perplexity Labs can build a sales prospecting dashboard listing 20+ target companies with executive contact information (emails, phone numbers, headquarters addresses), demonstrating Perplexity's search strength applied to lead generation.
“it basically gave me the the email address of the CEO of Walmart, the CEO of Amazon, the CEO of Apple... it gave me their phone numbers, headquarter address”
Perplexity Labs can generate a complete short-film ad concept—including character profiles with supporting statistics, six storyboards with sketches, a full screenplay, and visual direction notes (lighting, depth of field)—from a single prompt, approaching usable quality for a non-expert.
“it even goes and it created this the the script for the specific ideab browser.com core demographic”
Perplexity Labs is a worthwhile addition to the AI tool stack and likely offers arbitrage opportunities because it does some tasks better than competing agent products like Manus and ChatGPT—delivering substantial value at $20/month.
“there's probably some arbitrage opportunities because there's probably some things that this is doing better than than, you know, Manis and and other things”
Perplexity Labs can act as a financial analyst by mapping companies as fair-valued, undervalued, or overvalued against a 'Buffett score,' identifying value plays in AI (e.g., Qualcomm trading 22% below fair value) and projecting a Buffett-inspired AI strategy could deliver 12-15% annual returns over 10 years, beating the broad market by 2-4%.
“AI value plays represent the most compelling opportunity offering 16% expected returns with a 9 out of 10 Buffett score”
A Dan Koe-style content pillar distribution should be roughly 40% educational, 25% inspirational, 20% personal brand building, 10% entertainment, and 5% soft product promotion.
“40% educational content... 25% inspirational content... 20% personal brand building... then 10% entertainment polls, challenges, then 5% soft product promotion”
The next logical step beyond using Labs manually is fully automating outreach end-to-end ('vibe marketing'), where an agent reaches out automatically using Perplexity Labs without human intervention.
“automating a lot of this, like automatically have have like your agent reach out like I don't want to do this myself. I just want it to be fully automated from A to Z”
Sam Altman declared it is 'the era of the idea guy,' and the host agrees this is an incredible time to be building a startup.
“Sam Alman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy, and he is not wrong.”
Perplexity Labs shows its reasoning steps and assets in real time (similar to Perplexity or DeepSeek reasoning) and emails the user when research is complete, which improves transparency and usability.
“it's it's very similar to like the perplexity or deepseek reasoning where you can see what's happening in real time”
Idea browser delivers a free data-backed startup idea daily by using AI agents to search what people are looking for and demanding in products.
“We use AI agents to go and search what are people looking for and what are they screaming for in terms of products that you should be building”
Including hashtags in content (as Labs suggested) is a questionable recommendation that the host would personally not follow.
“I don't know if I'd put the hashtags in personally. That's kind of a miss”