Leveraging AI

240 | AI Builder’s Playbook: Turn Your Idea Into a Working Solution in few hours with Pietro Montaldo

• Isar Meitis • Season 1 • Episode 240

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Great ideas are cheap. Great execution? That’s where the magic is.

In this *step-by-step session for business leaders, AI creator and strategist **Pietro Montaldo* will show you exactly how he goes from *a raw idea* to *a working AI prototype*—in just hours, not weeks. No code required. No technical background needed. Just the right tools, a smart process, and a little experimentation.

You’ll walk away with Pietro’s full framework:
✅ How to choose ideas that are worth building
✅ How to match the right tools to the right use case
✅ The exact steps he uses to create micro-apps that actually work
✅ And how he turns them into high-performing content that attracts serious business opportunities

Pietro Montaldo is the founder of *N-Force, an AI automation and content strategy powerhouse. In just 90 days, he went from a few hundred to **10,000+ highly engaged followers on LinkedIn* by sharing the exact AI tools and workflows he builds himself. His hands-on approach helps companies and creators stop theorizing and start shipping. Expect clarity, wit, and a flood of practical insights.

Follow Pietro on:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pietromontaldo/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PietroMontaldo

About Leveraging AI

If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Isar Meitis:

Hello and welcome to another live episode of the Leveraging AI Podcast, the podcast that shares practical, ethical ways to leverage AI to improve efficiency, grow your business, and advance your career. This Isar Metis, your host, and I am thrilled about today's episode and you will be as well, and I'm thrilled for several different reasons. One, we're starting to go back to doing lives. We used to do this every single week, and now I've been doing so many company specific workshops that have been traveling literally every single week in the last, I don't know, six to eight weeks, it seems like forever. Uh, so we were not able to do this and we, I still have a little bit of travel, uh, coming in the next few weeks, but after that, hopefully we'll get back to doing this every single week. So I'm excited because we're doing this live, but I'm a lot more excited because of today's topic, because today's topic is gonna solve some of the biggest problems that you are facing and that everybody's facing right now, which is deciding how to implement with ai the solutions that you need for your business. So we all have several different steps in our AI journey. Step number one is we don't have a clue, and then you take. My course or somebody else's course, and you start figuring it out. Step number two is like, oh my God, what do I do now? And then you start coming up with ideas on how to implement AI in your business. But there could be 17 different ways to implement the thing that you have as an idea. Do you want to create a chat bot? Do you want to create an add-on to your website? You you wanna create an automation? Do you wanna build it in NA 10 or in make? Do you want to create a custom GPT? Does it need to have video? Like all these kind of things. And it's a mess for most people because most people approach this for the first time versus our guest today that does this for a living. And hence he has a incredibly well defined. Decision tree, a process ongoing from idea to evaluating different options, to testing the different options, to implementing the solution and actually using it because that's what he does for a living. So Pietro, our guest today is one of the co-founders of nForce ai, which is a company that does exactly this. They help companies implement AI solutions across the board, different kinds, different levels of complications, and so on. And before that, in his background, he has a. Really interesting background because he is done well, more or less everything, uh, which is actually really, really awesome. So he is a serial entrepreneur. He had several business on his own that he started, but he also had roles as a product manager, which means he really understands product and defining solution. But he's also been an analyst and an investor. And so he also understand how to be very practical in looking at data and figuring out what it means, which really makes him the perfect person to now build AI emissions for companies and to explain us exactly how to follow this process. Now we're going to start on very high level and go through the steps, and we're also gonna show you examples of the different implementation. So this is gonna be extremely valuable and hence I'm really excited to welcome Pietro to the show. Pietro, welcome to Leveraging ai.

Pietro:

Thank you so much, ISA. That was such a nice interaction. Thank you for having me.

Isar Meitis:

Yes. I, I, I am, I I didn't say that. Uh, joking. I'm, I'm really, really excited about this session. I've been following you, uh, for a while, and I know how amazing all your content and how practical your content is. And again, I'll say one more thing that, that I really like about you, and I think that's gonna help a lot of people understand. I think you're the ultimate tinkerer, right? You like, I think you probably do some of this for fun, right? Just try stuff.

Pietro:

that's how I started, right? I started'cause I wanted to learn, and then I was like, okay, while I learn, I might as well make something with it, right? Which is definitely my f the favorite, my favorite job I've ever had. You know, I literally pay myself to experiment things, which, uh, which is beautiful. And one thing which I wanna add to your, uh, to your introduction is. One thing, which you might have noticed that that brings together all of the things which have done as none of them was technical, right? So I'm purely a hundred percent non-technical. So the approach you see today as an approach with, which is especially beneficial for somebody non-technical, also for someone technical, which has never played with the ai. It might be very interesting, but I think it's mostly interesting for non-technical people and on the side of the, on the side of our business where we develop a complex solution. What I do and my day-to-day as Victor going through this process of experimenting with ideas, but with the goal to share it with a non-technical audience, right? So what we're talking today is basically how I go from, okay, I had a very cool idea while I was in the shower, while I was working for a client. How do I turn into something that can inspire people, right? I see my job a lot as. Giving people inspiration of what they can build and giving them a first concrete step on how they can turn it into reality. And I do it with LinkedIn tutorials and with YouTube. These are the two channels where I work the most.

Isar Meitis:

Yeah, fantastic. And, and again, I think so many people are getting there, right? I think we're going now from the stage of people don't have a clue about AI to a lot of people knowing about ai, but don't really know how to materialize their ideas into practicality. And that's why I'm really excited about this. So I'll give you the stage and just, uh, lead us through the process.

Pietro:

Perfect. Okay. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen for the people who are alive, but I'm gonna drive you through every single steps In any case. Yeah.

Isar Meitis:

And those of us who are joining us live, first of all, thank you so much. We're excited to have you. I know we haven't been consistent in doing this, uh, but I appreciate the fact that you're here. If you have any questions, please write them in the chat, either on the, zoom chat or on the LinkedIn, uh, chat. And if you are not joining us live, then I suggest you try to join us live next time. Uh, you can be on our emailing list and we are gonna send you invites to every time we do, uh, these live, so you can be aware of exactly when they're happening, and be able to join us. We do this almost every Thursday. Again, if I'm not traveling, it's every Thursday at noon Eastern time. So you can join us, uh, this way. but again, back to you.

Pietro:

Absolutely. So, where do I start? Everything starts from idea. One of the coolest thing, and one of the reason why I'm most excited about AI is that I am not limited anymore to what I can build. Because no matter what I'm thinking about my, what my idea is, I know there is a tool that allow me to do it. I, without bringing on our engineering team, right? So one of the goal, which I have whenever I build something for myself and for sharing with the audience and for inspiring people, is I want to be completely independent from the technical team. I don't want to bring anybody from our technical team on board. I'm focused on building micro ops micro solution, which helps you with your day-to-day, mostly business life. What does it mean, right? what are some of these solutions? Just to give you an idea what we're talking about. Uh, one could be a screener for Reddit post, which are interesting for your company and a draft of the SEO optimized comment, which you can leave on that specific post. Another one could be an agent that on a weekly basis, go and scrape all of the ads which your competitor have done on Facebook and Instagram, and send your report of the ads that have worked the best for your competitor. Another option could be. an engine to create content which respects your content styles, right? So it's simple micro solution, which can really solve one task of your day-to-day, or can enable you to add an additional task, which before you were unable to, for example, a lot of people before were unable to post on link, right? And why do I think that link has grown so much in the last, uh, six to eight months? It's because a lot of people are empowered to do it without so much effort, right? Because they can start from an idea, from a call they had and turn it into a proper piece of content which they can share, which has, which literally has actual insight, right? You don't need to make it up with ai and that's not gonna add value or bring you anything. But you can turn your real insight and what you have into something that works. Very quickly, right? So everything starts from idea. When I have an idea of something I wanna build, in my specific case, I look through the lenses of, okay, I wanna turn it into something. I wanna educate and inspire people with, so I, I look for, for some specific characteristics. For me, an idea has to be appealing for a very large amount of people, right? Because that's, that's what goes on social media, right? This won't be the same if, for example, you are studying an idea to apply it in your day to day. You just need to look for a pain point and you can build an idea. For me, an idea also has to be appealing for a large amount of business people. The second thing, and probably this is the most important one, it should have been first actually, is it has to be truly useful, right? I'm not gonna publish something which sell smoke. I wanna publish something where a person try it and say, oh, this guy has done a very cool, simple thing. Let me see what else he can do. Right? And then they book a call with me and we turn that those people into a customer so much easier than anybody else. The third thing, it has to generally be relevant for sales, marketing, operation, or personal productivity. These are the four largest buckets of, uh, non-technical people and also luckily, where companies are happier to invest. because it's the one that have the highest simple on the, on the top line. And then the other thing which I'm looking for is solutions. Master acquire only simple integrations I can explain in under a minute, right? I am not looking for complex integration. For example, if you're working with Salesforce and you have a very personalized sense within your company, I would recommend, okay, go and get an agency that helps you set up a proper automation or what directly would sales for. I'm looking for things which can be integrated, quickly. I can explain it for a non-technical person and you can understand and replicate it. And I usually aim for a maximum to integration per solution. More than that, it becomes a more complex solution, which I can describe for you, but I would wanna build it for you. I would wanna bring an engineer to make sure it can go into production. And the fourth rule, and this is something very personal for me, every solution should take less than four hours to beat, right? So if it has. Been more than four hours. I put in a bucket. I hope one day I'll have someone to help me in this process and I'll, I'll get them out and I'll invest in those. But I want to push out minimum two new things per week. That's how you have, you can stay up to date and this, and with how fast the work move. So I can only apply for our per, per solution and this is fantastic.

Isar Meitis:

2, 2, 2 quick questions. Pietro, one is, how do you document your ideas? Do you voice type them? Do you write them in a document? Do you put a, a voice note on your phone? So that's question number one. And then I'll ask you question number two.

Pietro:

Yeah. So when I'm on my laptop, and most of my idea unfortunately comes when I'm on my laptop.'cause I'm on my laptop approximately, I don't know, 10, 10 hour, 15 hours per day minimum. Uh, I have an idea database in nor, and I just add them there. I classify if it's a lead magnet, a build or idea for another post. But I have a nicely, um, a nicely built, uh, knowledge database where I put all of this. Uh, so you do it in Notion,

Isar Meitis:

so anybody can do this in Monday, JIRA, Ana, Clickup, like any of that. Anything, literally

Pietro:

anything. I had it in Clickup. I moved it to Notion. Absolutely. Same thing. If there's a CanBan perfect. you can do that. Yes. Okay. That's, you don't need anything else.

Isar Meitis:

Second question is, yeah, is, you talked about the four hour limit. How do you guesstimate how long it's gonna take you?

Pietro:

In general, the rules which I have described, are thought for it to be within those four hours, right? If it has less than two connection, if it's of limited, uh, complication, it generally should respect those. And also I get better. I like to think I get better over time. So now I rarely invest time where I get to the four hour mark and I'm like, I couldn't finish. Right. I don't, I don't remember the last time it happened, and at times it's just because maybe there are still some things that require engineers to come on board and maybe they just, called an engineer or gave up before.

Isar Meitis:

Okay.

Pietro:

Okay, so moving on. The idea phase is the coolest one, and you can have them wherever you want. And when you have them, just note them down. If you're around, I use a, a note on my iPhone, and then in the morning I have a blocker to trans transfer everything I taught during the night to my laptop, right? Yeah. Now the question is, and this is the coolest part of this workshop, I think, and I've never done this, so bear with me. I like, I are helping make this clear for everyone. how do I turn this into a working solution? So all of us in general use AI in three main ways. We use them in copilot, which is when AI is embedded within another product, helps you make better use of that specific product. I'll show you a couple of copilot later. we use Via Chat, for example, like use, uh, charge GPT or, or CLO or any other LLM, and we use them as agent or workflow. In general, when we talk about agent of work, we are talking about something that can do work on your behalf, right? Yeah. I like to think of two main characteristics of agent to distinguish what, uh, what is an agent and what is just a chatbot, right? An agent is proactive so it can start working on his own. For example, if he, every Monday he starts working on the specific top on his own, without me going down and telling, okay, do this would, would be classified as agent. And also if it's not a single task, but it's repeated any performance as a set of actions repeatedly and proactively. This also means, for me, it's an agent because basically the two things work together. He works on his own and he repeats the action on his own based on when you receive a certain input. It can be time, it can be, uh, an email received. It can be, I dunno, task completed or not right?

Isar Meitis:

Yeah. And any trigger of something that happens in your tech stack.

Pietro:

Exactly any trigger. That's something that happens in general. and I'm not sure if theory of agents also confirms this, but when the tool is integrated with my, with my tech stack, I also consider that to be an agent, right? If it's integrated and if it's product, if it's integrated, it's repeated, it becomes an agent. We're not talking anymore about a chatbot, but we're talking about something that is independent and can perform work on your behalf, right? And this is the biggest and, and best revolution of ai, right? You literally can free up time because an agent can go and do work on your behalf where you sit at the desk and I already have the idea ready for, uh, my LinkedIn post, or I have a already have my YouTube script draft. so once I respond this question, I know which direction I want to go. If I responded, okay, yes. This is not an agent.'cause it doesn't respect specificity, it's probably falls under the chat idea. when I have a chatbot, when I know it's a chatbot, I have a series of choices I can do, right? And the most important one is what interface do I want to do to this chatbot? A chat can be something very useful, right? It might sound diminishing now that I mention it this way, but a chatbot can be incredibly useful. For example, I can give all of my knowledge, uh, about how to write a good hook for a, for a link in post. And put it into, into a chatbot. And the chatbot only perform that function. That function is incredibly helpful. I've spent, I don't know how much time crafting the way I do the hooks and now I have a chatbot, will helps me get to a hook so much faster than before. Yeah.

Isar Meitis:

Yeah. To, to put things in perspective, uh, we're talking about chatbots. We're not just talking about free conversation, uh, or open conversation, but we're talking about tools like a custom GPT or a cloud project or an assistant by OpenAI that can then work. so it's still a chat interface that is a dedicated chat interface through one of the language models. But, it, it can have instructions and can have a knowledge base and it can know how to follow things. And it's, I probably have. 25 or more, either custom GPTs or cloud projects that we use every single week in the company to do stuff. So yes, there's no reason to. I'll say something else. Anything you can solve on simpler solutions, go to the simpler solutions, right? So don't build a more complex solution if the simpler solution can do that. And there's a lot of things that you can build with these chatbots today.

Pietro:

Completely agreed. Right? Which is very important to go through this step, right? Is this an agent or not? If it's not an agent, there's no need to make it one, right? It happened to me a lot of time that I complicated things very much. I use different models, I do different steps just to realize that I have a knowledge base and I wanted to give it to an interface which can think based on that knowledge base and gimme a response, right? That makes a chat, right? Yeah. And you can also make a chat with fancy, right? Like you mentioned. It can be a simple chat and it can be like, I'm, I'm opening up here on the screen for the people who are here live and will see this on YouTube, on chat, GPT. It seems absurd, but most people don't know that you can create a chatbot, which you can share externally within inter GPT, right? Mm-hmm. This is called, gpt, right? So if you go to this section, these are all GPTs, which are either rent from someone else, you don't have to pay, but you use them and somebody else has built someone else who has knowledge on the space, for example. This YouTube script generator. It's not made by me. It's very good. And I use it a lot. Actually. This was made by me, but there was another one, uh, which wasn't made by me. You can see here that this was created by Xigen Asset, for example, and creates really good hooks. But then I have some other, um, some other G GPTs boats, which I have created myself. For example, this, this is a, a Reddit blog post architect, which works really well. I've put everything I know inside this, and if I go here for example, and I go to add G, this GPT, I can see what is the configuration I gave to this specific GPT, and I can also edit it. And I edit it with a copilot here, for example here. That's a tax base that helps me. Get to a better version of the GPT than what I will do. Just typing myself, right? So this is what we were saying before, a copilot AI embedded in another AI product that helps me get to better results first, right? So this, I have done many, many posts and some were very successful. Where the only thing I did as I put my knowledge into a G pt, I tested it for a week. If it was nice and I thought it was giving me nice results, I publish and tell people, okay, this is, a chat bot that does, except on that I tested it for each week. These are the results. See one result here. And I always past the result. And this is something that. People are very interested with because they might not have the time, the bandwidth, the knowledge, or three days to invest in researching how to make a really good red box, right? So if you have a specific knowledge about something, you codify it, you put it in a chatbot, and you either sell it or you give it away for whatever goal you want is the lead magnet or to general leads, it becomes something very powerful and also a simpler possible solution you can create for yourself. So, to someone who has never created anything with ai, I would tell start by creating GPTs or Cloud project. This will be on any LLM you go, you create a personalized project within A TLM, and you have a product which works, create value. You can sell or you can, uh, uh, use internally, pass it to your team, your teammate, so you work best and it takes you a morning if you already have the knowledge.

Isar Meitis:

Yeah. Sometimes less. So I, I, great, great. Concept here. I want to add 2 cents. One for the people, like, oh, how do you get somebody else's, uh, GPTs? if you just open the regular chat GPT interface, the first thing in the GPT section is called Explore. And if you click on that, then it will take you to what's called the GPT Store, even though it's not really a store, because the, you don't pay for anything. It's a free store. And then you can just either go to the different sections, they have productivity and research and analysis and data and marketing and like all these kind of things. Or there's a search bar on top and you can literally just explain in English what you're looking for and it's gonna show you. They now have multiple millions of these gpt that other people created. Some are great, some are not so great. Uh, but you'll have just to test them out and see how they work. So that's on that one aspect. The other aspect, is on the way I teach people on how to build those custom gps or projects, I always tell people, start with a regular chat. So don't try to build a GPT. Start with a regular chat. Explain to Chachi, PT or Claude. If you're in Claude, what you want to do. Like this is what I'm trying to do. This is gonna be the input. This needs to be the output. Here's the data that I have, here's the knowledge that I have. and work within the chat until you get to the outcome that you want. So basically go back and forth and back and forth. Try to write if, if I'm gonna follow Pieros, uh, example, I wanna write great Reddit posts. So write it again and again and again until it works correctly. And once it works correctly, basically tell Chachi Pet Claude. Okay, I want to turn this into a custom GPT. Please write the instructions for me. These are the files that are gonna be in the knowledge base. Uh, please write the instructions and it writes incredible instructions. Way better than I can write on my own. Uh, and it's gonna be based on your back and forth in trial and error that you've done in that specific chat. So this is probably the fastest and the most effective way to create good, custom GPT projects, whatever you want to call them.

Pietro:

I completely agree. and then if you wanna bring it one step farther and you wanna give a chat put or a very simple app, a phase, which is nicer than just a chat, you can do it using. Lovable or Base 44 or Vault. So what are this? These are web builder and app builder which allow you to create an app just with simple text, right? So I have some knowledge, again, I have it codified and I want to create an app that tells, let's make a complete example. This is something I did a few weeks ago and it's a tax saving calculator when you move to another country in Europe. And I, I collected out of knowledge'cause I had done a lot of research'cause I wanted to move, uh, to a better tax location. I codified the knowledge. and now I have a chatbot and an interface, which very simple, uh, u UX and UI that helps me understand and engage with people better, right? So, okay, I'll do a chatbot first. I'll do a GBT project, I'll do a chat that helps me with this. I go to a very good result. Lemme turn into something a bit more visually appealing, right? And then you bring it unlovable on base 44, which is what we're seeing right, right now today. And I turn it into something a bit nicer. This is another step and it's more of a marketing step.'cause the very important thing is the knowledge. But it's, I have built it. Okay? I liked it a lot. Lemme try and bring you one step further. At least I see it that way. You can also start directly with base 44 if your goal is to rebuild your website, for example.

Isar Meitis:

Yeah, I agree a hundred percent, right? So again, for those of you who don't know, lovable base, 44 rep lit, uh, there's a bunch of others. There are basically what's called vibe coding tools, which means they can write code and do literally anything you want, but they can, they're mostly used to create applications and you can start with a. Somewhere else, like a regular chat or a chatbot or a something, and then give it all of that and it will build the application for you. And then it can help you even in the design and look and feel. If you wanna know more about the overall flow. I created an episode not too long ago was episode 216, that was called the Five Levels of ai, what Every Business Leader needs to know, and it basically starts with a chat to then these, uh, more advanced, like custom GPTs from there to building automation from there to vibe coding. So if you want to dive a little deeper into that, you can go and check out episode one 16. But to summarize what we've, what we've said so far is we said, okay, if something is not a chatbot, meaning, sorry, if something is not an agent, meaning it doesn't need to take action and it doesn't need to be proactive, uh, it just needs to follow a flow based on the knowledge that I have, we went down that path that can either be used inside of Chachi PT or. Build a wrapper around it with like a vibe coding tool. So now I assume we're gonna go to, okay, if we do need an agent, what do we do then?

Pietro:

Correct. Correct. And I love how you remember the exact episode in which you talked about that specific topic. that's some level of commitment. And so now, thank you. Now let's go to, we respond yes to the question where we, before we have said, is it proactive, is it repeated? Is it integrated? If you respond yes to this question, you probably want to build an agent, which is a slightly complex system, more complex system. if we ever responded to this, what I think about next is, is it something, is it something that someone has already productized? and is that product really good? At times myself, I really like to be things from scratches, right? So I have to fight this urge to be d from scratch. And I think it's very useful in general to look off what is, what's already out there, right? There might be people who have already prototyped this to a point where it works incredibly well, right? Some example of this, I dunno, uh, sending colima, selling call emails. It's a huge market and some people have been starting to be there in the last six years, instantly, smartly, for example. They have an incredible amount of knowledge and they build really powerful agents for, for doing that, right? So rebuilding those, you would most likely build something which has superpower and also this solution are not incredibly expensive. Another question I ask myself, if somebody has built it and it's really nice, is it really expensive? If it's really expensive, can I bid something which can do the same thing or very, very similar for much, much cheaper so that people can basically do it themself? If the question is yes, I will still go ahead and bid it. If the question as the product doesn't exist, I will go ahead and build it. If the question is, yes, there is a great product. It's cheap and people know it or don't know it yet even better, but they can access it very easily. I will go ahead, try the product and probably showcase six tutorial about that product right when I have an idea. And I think it's cool and I think it's appealing to people. I want to just give up. it's not like because I can't build it myself, I want create a resource on it. I still think it's cool to recommend people to go somewhere where there's already something existing to recommend to another team who has done a really, really good job about it.

Isar Meitis:

Um, a hundred percent. Quick question about this. Where do you search? Like, do you just go on Google, do you go on Reddit? Do you go on. hugging face and, and foul. Like where, where do you actually search for existing solutions that you can integrate into your processes?

Pietro:

It's a very good question, right? Like I, my question is very basic and probably disappointing, but look, on chat g, pt, right? I tell him exactly what I wanna do and I tell him to recommend the top best product. The next step will, before I invest time or especially money. Into testing a solution as I am part of approximately a hundred thousand groups of AI builder, and I have two or three, which I, which I really like. It's more intimate and it's people who I know I can trust or I can rely on, and I ask if somebody has tried it. Nobody, if somebody recommends something, I'll start there. If nobody has ever tried anything, I'll just test platform. Most of this platform now have a free trial that allow you to have an idea for yourself without, uh, having to go to expensive plants or have very, very cheap plants. Right? So most likely I can afford to try it. And then usually a product that's wider. So for example, if I'm interested in Reddit,'cause now I have this fixation with Reddit, there are not many product about Reddit, right? And a product have several different features. So I might create three, four apps that either compete with them or, or I can create. Beautiful use cases based on what they do. Right. It's never only one thing. Right. So when I try something and it's really nice, I generally come up with more things I can do with it or I can come up with more things I can integrate with something I've already done. Right. So good things I think are really great, especially in this time where everybody can build something right? Good things for me to follow up. They have to be really, really great. And when they are, they're incredible and most likely use them for, for a long time.

Isar Meitis:

Awesome.

Pietro:

So if we have responded yes to the question, do we wanna build it ourself because of all of the reason which we've mentioned before, the next step is it's very, very interesting, right? The next step is the most complex one and the one I had the hardest time also to codifying to the small uh, uh, graph, which is on the screen and which are now present. The question you have to respond is, what capability does my agent require to function and actually provide value to the user right at time? The idea I start with is not the idea I finished with, right?'cause it was more complex, it had more features and I, but I need to make sure I end up with the true nature of the idea. I started, right? There was one value pillar behind the initial idea. Did I get to the the point where I can solve it or make it exponentially better? If, yes, okay, I will continue to build. There are a thousand platforms which can help you create agents and if you search which agents platform, I can, uh, and I want to create, you'll find an incredible amount of option. All these platforms are very versatile, but some I find personally, and again, this is a personal opinion. That, not the, not all of them make it exponentially easier for you to develop a solution while being a non-technical person. Right? So now I'm gonna talk biasedly and I'm gonna talk as the non-technical person I am, I can build on time. I have tried a multiple times make, I can build very, very simple solution. It was very complex for me to get to a point where I was confident presenting anything, to a customer with, with Anan while doing it myself. And at one point I just thought. This is just not for me, right? I can get better, I can learn, I can do very extensive courses about the naan. I can fund them on online for free. This is just not thought for me. And there are people who invested years now and understanding how an naan works and they got really good, even why not being technical. But now, today as a starter, I would never recommend a starter, non-technical person who's starting now. I would never recommend, okay, learn an A 10 from scratches, right? Because other things, more AI native, and when I say more, it's because they're just born later. When there were new instrument, new interface available, make it exponentially easier to get to an equal better, uh, results, which just makes a, a no-brainer for me, right? So when I'm talking about this platform, I have three platform in my mind, right? These are the top three, which I always consider when I wanna beat something. And it's because they brought. The agent building activity to a level which has, which is, can you, you can think it, so you can put it into practice. I have a specific set of tools which you can use if you're looking for these tools. Come here, right? I'm talking about three apps. Again, this is my personal opinion. I just like them and I, I am only presenting them'cause it's what I use and what I think I would recommend to some, a friend who will come and ask me, okay, I want to bid here and I, the first one it's relay up for me. It's probably the simplest and easier for starter where you wanna get to good results. I think this is the best possible solution for non-technical starter users. The second one is Lindy. Lindy is also very simple, very beautiful. They have like a super powerful user interface and it has more functionalities and more integration. Slightly more expensive but, and nothing crazy. And then there's a, the third one is relevance, which again has a great set of feature. But I find it slightly more complex. Something you can get over in with a week, right? When someone who comes and will be the first step, I would always recommend relay up. And if I have the opportunity of choosing between the three,'cause all of the three can do one activity, I will probably go for relay. But again, this is also my building philosophy, my building logic, how my brain works. I would always recommend try the three of them. They all have a free trial. See where you can build the best thing and keep them all there. You know? There's also no reason to choose one of the beautiful things, not having your own platform and infrastructure in this time where everything changes so fast as you can just go and use the best technology out there this month and next month it might be a different one. And you need to adapt, but you don't lose money invested in infrastructure.

Isar Meitis:

So quick, uh, quick note about, about that, about all these platforms. first of all, they're like, you hinted, there's slightly different in nature, so you have. You know, make an NA 10, which are more flow chart oriented. And then you got relay and Indian relevance, which are more conversational, and at the end of the day, they do the same thing, right? There's like a flow that you define, but, but it, but the user interface makes a lot more sense. And I agree with you a hundred percent. I think NA 10 is extremely powerful. It is 100% not a tool for beginners. It is way more complicated. It is way harder to connect it to some of the tools, uh, that in, in, uh, just to give a simple example in all the three tools that you mentioned, and in make.com to connect to Gmail, you give it your login and you're done and in. And then you gotta go to Google Cloud and create a new project and assign it, uh, and assign it, access to different things and connect it to different processes and APIs like it's a whole. Different other animal that you need to dive into to get, if you're doing basic stuff, no added benefit. because there's, like, on the, on most things, you'll be able to do it with Relay, relay or relevance or, or Lindy or, or make without having to go through all that extra effort and without being, uh, so technical. So I agree with you with that a hundred percent. And the last thing that you said, I agree with as well, since Relay is the easiest of the three, if you can do it in relay, do it in relay. Just like what we said before, if you could do it in Chachi pt, do it in Chachi pt, don't go to the next step. So always go to the, the path that is the easiest for implementation and don't look for really complicated, fancy solutions just because they're fancy. And the other thing that I will say that you said a little earlier that is very, very important as somebody I spent most of my career running software companies. So for almost 20 years I was either a CEO in senior position in software companies, feature. Creep is a, is a real deal, right? You started with an idea about like, oh, what if I had this, what if I change that? Uh, what if I can, uh, use it for the, and then you forget what you built this thing for, and then instead of investing 20 minutes and having the thing that you wanted to build, you spend two days trying to add features that may or may not work that provide 2% value, but they're cool. And so, sticking to the reason why you wanna build the thing is a very, very big deal. And I cannot even tell you how many projects I've started and didn't finish because I was trying to make them fancy versus building it in 30 minutes and doing the one thing that it needs to do. And then if you want, build the extension of that the next day, like build something else that does second step instead of trying to merge them into one application. great points.

Pietro:

Thank you. and then going to the next step, trying to make this a bit more concrete. The, like, my goal here with this last part where we'll finish, is how do I make this choice a bit more concrete, right? I could narrow it down and these are not the only point of consideration, but are the main ones the most important one, right? So the first question which you wanna ask to yourself when you were to pick any platform, be it anything which you have mentioned, or anything which you have tried that we haven't mentioned is, does this platform have an integration which I need? For example, say you need an integration with Yahoo Finance, right? Who has an already made integration with Yahoo Finance. No matter like how complex, complex the integration actually is, it will be exponentially better and easier for you to get to a good results if the integration has already been built rather than if you have to set it up yourself, right? So for example, for a Yahoo Finance, no other platform, which we have mentioned has it. So what you want to go for is stuck ai. I was, I was trying to do this and the only platform I could find, maybe there are others, but it was stuck ai. Personally, I haven't used it, right? I had to set this up manually'cause I, I didn't wanna open a new platform, but it would be easier to go there for somebody really nontechnical who doesn't have access to engineering. If I want to integrate it with LinkedIn, Reddit, I've tried a lot of integration. The one that really has, it's incredible, right? Anything that has to do with relay edit, I was like, it's so exponential, easier to go to relay than anything else. And then, for example, if you need integration with Epi Appify, which allows you to scrape a lot of pages and access a lot of very interesting things, the best integration I could find and the easier it's been made. It's irrelevance, right? So the point is, wherever you can find the best integration or the existing integration with what you're looking to do with the specific agent, go there. The second point is. If you want to speci perform a very specific action, and when I talk about a very specific action is, for example, doing phone calls or sending SMS or scraping complex websites, right? A very specific action, which is a bit outside a normal workflow. You also want to do the same activity, right? So who can do phone calls? Really can't. Relevance? I'm not sure. I'm gonna say can't, but don't quote me on that. It might. Lindy is very good at making phone calls, right? So you wanna look for a platform for beginner, a platform that has integration with Yahoo Finance and a platform who can make phone calls. You'll probably end up, okay, I only have one option here really, on what to build. And there's always the alternative, okay, we're getting too complex. There is two specific things. Lemme go to an agent that bids on an A 10 or any other more complex system, and I have a bid for me, right? But here what we're trying to do is we're trying to imagine a world where we have no content with engineering and no budget to hire, right? So this is the work we would do, which is what I do on my day to day to create content and for example, what do I wanna say anyway, um, the third thing. Which we wanna do. And the third question which we wanna ask, ourself is kind of similar to this, the home one that I see it written. And it's when you want to have a specific feature inside the platform, like building a browser extension or expanding memories. Now that we talk about it, I think this is not much different. Second point, right? You're always talking about some specific capability, some specific actions, some specific interface with which, the person interact with the, with the end, with the end agent, or that the end agent has to have, right? So for example, here I was thinking more about memory. Okay. We need the agent to have memory. That's something I couldn't get to a good level with, uh, with really, but I could get to a really good level with the, with relevance, right? Or I was looking to do a, create a browser extension, uh, that I could talk with based on a specific set of knowledge. The only thing I could find was Mind Studio. Mind Studio is very good at that and they're focusing exactly on that, right? So basically here what you're saying is you wanna ask for what integration we have and what specific action it needs to do, And are must have for this agent. And based on those, you'll pick the platform that better suit you.

Isar Meitis:

Now, I'm not sure. Awesome. I want, I wanna do a quick recap from beginning to end of the entire, kinda like decision tree, uh, because I think that's gonna help people put it all together. So we started, we had an idea, and then based on the idea we're saying, okay, is. Does it require an agent or not? If it does not require an agent, create a chatbot, which chatbot you choose doesn't really matter, uh, because they're all kind of the same. Not exactly. Again, this goes back to if you need specific functionality that exists in, Claude and does not exist in chat PT, as an example, go to Claude and not to chatt, similar to what we discussed right now. Uh, and then if you wanna wrap the chat with some other user interface, you can do that as well with the Vibe coding tools. So this is number one. If you do need an agent, then as we said, the first thing you wanna check this, somebody already built this. Does that functionality exist on a third party tool that I can use either the full functionality or even partial so it knows how to process this and that data. It doesn't gimme the output in the format that I want. I can still use that first step to do all the data analysis and collection and I can create. My layer of output on top of that, it will still save me a lot of time from doing the entire effort. So look for something that exists. Uh, and Pietro said you can just use your Chacha PD to ask what exists and what would be best for your specific scenario. Just define your scenario very well. And then if you decided to develop it on your own, then it comes down to picking the right tool that you wanna develop this on. And then you pick the tool by a, does it have the integrations to the tech stack that you want to connect to? So does it connect to Gmail? Does it connect to your CRM? Does it connect to LinkedIn? Doesn't matter, whichever the thing that you want to connect this to. The second question is, does it have a built-in functionality or capability that I need in order to make my life easy? And I'll give you an example of. And I'm actually gonna give an example and add something, but let's say, you wanted to, uh, be able to do data analysis. So some of these tools do not know how to do data analysis. Like you give it an Excel file that doesn't know what to do with it. Some of them do. And so if you need something like this, then find a platform that knows how to do that, and that's gonna save you a hell of a lot of time. Now, the last thing that I will say for people who are not total beginners but have been playing with this for a while, but still struggle to go to the slightly more technical level, and I'll give you a little bit of a trick and we're not gonna dive into that because I do want Pietro to show you a few examples, but I think it's gonna help a lot of people who are like in the transition phase between a total beginner to a more advanced user. All these platforms have the ability to connect to more or less anything. And they do this through either WEBHOOKS or HTTP calls. Web hooks are like triggers that can connect to any other platform. And HTTP calls basically allow you to transfer data back and forth that was not available through the built in solution, inside the tool. Now, some of you, most of you probably don't have a clue what is an HT TP call mean? And to be fair, I don't either. So the way I used to do this is to copy data back and forth from whatever tool to Chachi PT or cloud or whatever. And the way I do this now is I go to Comet, which is an agentic browser by perplexity, and I run whatever tool inside of that. And whenever I get to the point it's like, oh, you can solve this with an HTTP call. I literally ask the browser, the agent within the Comet browser to write the code for the http call for me. And then it actually opens the relevant components inside the application. So inside relay or relevance or make, or NA 10, whatever you're working on, and it writes the code for you. And so even going the next step or like, oh, I need to call my technical team, is becoming more and more available to non-technical people. It's still not perfect, but it's an option that you have at your fingertips without talking to any other person because now the, the browsers themselves are getting to the point that they can do that. I'll stop now. Give it back to you, Pietro. let's show a few examples so people know how this looks like.

Pietro:

Super interesting and I definitely try what you, what you said iza, the last bit of this, uh, of this podcast. We were thinking to show you some of the things which higher built. I'll just be very high level and explain why I picked this specific tool for this specific, uh, build AI micro up. Call it however you want, right? Yeah. So we said before that Relay, for example, has great integration with, uh, with Reddi, right? And if I go here and I am on my relay interface, I'm sharing on the screen, let me make it actually a bit bigger. Uh. I can see this is the agent which I have built. And for example, this went really, really vital. And I had at least a hundred calls who came outta this flow.'cause people thought, wow, this is so cool, this is so simple. And they didn't need me to set it up right. I created a video, YouTube where I explained how to set it up, like the most advanced one, they could set it up even without, right? And what this tool does is every Friday monitor a specific set of sub subreddit, which I define. So it goes to, uh, subreddit about startup and, uh, product marketing. And it compiles the information about me, my own company, so he knows who I am and what do I want to comment and what I look for. And then get all of the posts from those sub, which respect some specific, instruction, which I gave, which is the top post, which are in fit with what I do. Right? So I was looking for posts, which are specifically interesting for what I do, right? I was people looking for automation, for example, and then the agent categorize of this comment, select the top 10 because I don't have time to answer to everyone and drafts a comment, which is. Optimized to be picked up by, LLM, right? So it's, a, it's an AO optimized comment and this works really, really well. It allows you, number one to find organic, clients.'cause Right is great for finding organic clients, even without being picked up by LM. But the most interesting part, it's also if the post goes very well and it gets a lot of views, it usually gets queried by large language models. And you will be recommended because you appeared in that comment, which is something super, super cool, right? Why did I decide to build it here? The idea was I want to beat something already and I want to make it related to answer engine optimization because it's a topic which is really hot and a lot of people are very interested in, right? So I went to the platforms which I, which I like, which I mentioned before and I checked. Who worked the best with Reddit and where could I get to this result first? And in this case really has a great connection with red, uh, Reddit and the set of action, which I needed, were already there, which is really, really cool. Another really cool stuff. And this is another co-pilot, which is something which I mentioned at the beginning of this call. I can tell him here, if I don't know how to do something, I can ask him or I can tell him to insert a new step. For example, I dunno, change step 10 to adjust the prompt for, I dunno, the most recent, uh, Reddits. And he does it for you. So something very, very cool. Yeah. Which I really like and it's getting better by the day, right? so this is one thing which I, for example, I beat him, which was very, very popular. Another thing which will be to relevance. As we said before, relevance is really, really good describing content and finding information.'cause it has already a preset of tools which are really good at doing that, right? So for when I wanna do something deep, very deep and which has a lot of study research, my go-to tool would be, would be relevance. In this case, for example, I wanted to create an N engine that, uh, that tells me the full background of one person. Basically scrape all of the digital footprint, which is public, right? You won't go into private website, but everything which is public about a person, right? So you see here I created, very extensive research that use LinkedIn data, Twitter data scrapes, uh, a lot of different websites. Uh, does research on G two Crunch based, similar web built with, right? And I could get a really good results first here because of the scraping capability of this tool, right? And then I built, something which is called How to Sell to Anyone, which is basically a tool you would use before a sales call. To, to get all of the possible background about the person and then use a framework, which is done by, by a Harvard, Harvard professor, which based on the information helps you understand. How you should approach a sales call with this person, right? It won't sell for you, but it will put you in a better position so that you can sell. Yeah. Uh, and then I don't have actually an account on Lindy. I only have on the free plan. But if I were to build something which has a car wash, voice assistant for a local business, I would definitely go to Lindy. I 20 to, it's a bit com more complex'cause you have to register a phone number or rent it. And it's mostly for the United States, but if you're working with the United States, you can get to really, really good solutions with very, very good voice model by being something, here on Lindy. And I guess that's it. We could go on and I could show you, I have approximately a hundred flows built in, uh, in, uh, in notion. But, uh, this was meant to give you, first introduction to how I would approach building something if I were an encoder. Like I actually am

Isar Meitis:

petro. This was incredible. As expected and even more, I think most people are dabbling with it and are not at your level. And because you build so many of these across so many platforms, your, your process is, is invaluable. If people want to work with you, follow you, learn from you, what are the best ways to connect or follow you?

Pietro:

So, uh, I, I am every day on LinkedIn, so please send me a connection request there saying You saw this, uh, I receive a lot of connections, so send, put a note in the connection. You saw this podcast, you wanna chat And that would be the best, probably the best way. It's Pietro, Aldo, my Art. I'm the first person who come out luckily and I have just started my journey on YouTube where I post mostly tutorial on how to get to beat these things. For example, I posted tutorial how to Build the Red did Flow, and I would really appreciate a follow there. You can definitely engage with me there'cause I'm much more active. This is the channel. It only has 80 followers, but after this session, I hope you will get at least to 90. And I'm very, so in a year from now, if we'll talk, this channel will be significantly larger. And I'm really trying to transmit all of this knowledge and make a also a more, more expanded sessions and micro, micro, micro videos about what we talked about today. Because either you push me to think about it and now I have it codified and now I can turn into much more content.

Isar Meitis:

Fantastic. so again, thanks to all the people who joined us live. Uh, people are writing. This was awesome and people wrote that you were awesome several times, both on LinkedIn and on the Zoom. Thank you so much. This was really, really great. I think it will help a lot of people, build a process in their head and hopefully go and experiment more than they're doing right now. I, and obviously I really, really appreciate you. This was absolutely fantastic. I'm glad that I twisted your arm to put this into a, a well structured process. Uh,'cause I think it's gonna help a lot of people and I think it's gonna help you and you already said that. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Pietro:

Thank you so much, guy. It was really a pleasure. Thank you so much, Isaac, for having me, Joyce, for organizing.

Isar Meitis:

Thanks everyone. Bye-bye. Have a great rest of your day.

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Isar Meitis

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