The most profitable AI startup directions in 2027

Original Title: The most lucrative AI business to start in 2027

Original Author: Dan Koe

Original Compiler: Liu Boss

The most profitable skill has always been attracting attention.

The reason is simple.

If your goal is to make more money, then it doesn't matter how good the software you develop is, how many drafts you overturned while writing a book for three years, or how hard you work to improve yourself for more career opportunities.

If no one knows who you are or what you can offer, how are they going to pay you?

This means that regardless of what job you do or what business you start, attracting attention and acquiring customers will be the primary factor determining your success.

This applies to your own business as well as to others' businesses.

Moreover, others are willing to pay a high price for you to do this for them.

As job stability declines, people have three choices:

1. Complain that life is unfair and do nothing.
2. Upgrade skills, retrain, and look for better job opportunities.
3. Start the business they have always wanted to do.

Many astonishing people will choose the third path.

You probably guessed it, just as everyone on social media is loudly proclaiming, they will start this business by building a personal brand.
Why?

Because attention is a limited resource and will only become scarcer. People can earn more money, but they can never reclaim the attention they have already spent.

In this letter, I will teach you how to master the ability to attract attention on social media. This way, at least for the next few years, you won't have to worry about making money.

With this knowledge, you can start your own business and use social media to drive its growth; or you can become a "one-person creative team" for other companies, allowing them to pay high fees for your skill set.

Promotion: "Second Renaissance" workshop I will collaborate with Hussain Ibarra------his Substack subscribers grew from 2,600 to 20,100------to teach you how to write newsletters and articles that people really want to read. If you have considered running a Substack or want to improve your X articles, you can sign up here. The fee is $49, but it will teach you skills that can earn you far more than this amount.

1. You either become a creator, pay creators, or make money by working for creators

These data are hard to ignore.

Goldman Sachs predicts that the size of the creator economy will nearly double, from $250 billion in 2023 to $480 billion in 2027.

By 2025, creators will earn about $185 billion in advertising revenue. This will be the first time they surpass traditional media.

In 2021, American brands invested $13.9 billion in creators. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) predicts that by 2026, this number will reach $43.9 billion, nearly tripling in five years.

It's outrageous.

I am both a creator and have worked for creators, and I also pay creators. From my experience, the offers are indeed astonishing. A significant amount of venture capital is being poured in; a Reels short video or a 60-second ad slot in a YouTube video can fetch thousands of dollars------and these placements often yield no results 90% of the time.

The key is that attention is now concentrated on social media, rather than broadcast, television, or news media. When you want to start any kind of business, whether it's a small business around personal interests or the next unicorn startup, publishing content has almost become a necessary option for attracting paying audiences.

When companies want to expand, they invest millions in affiliate marketing and collaborative promotions. I keep seeing ads from Hormozi, who says they pay creators over $1 million a month to promote Skool. Not to mention, Hormozi himself is a creator, which greatly helps Skool's growth.

"Founder-led marketing" has now become a buzzword in the startup circle. It basically means: the latest and most effective way to grow your startup is... you guessed it, build a personal brand and then publish content. By the way, most of them do it poorly. You should probably start using Eden to do research, establish differentiation, and publish content.

What does this mean for you?

Whether you plan to work for yourself, already have a business, or want to work for other companies, the most worthwhile skill to learn and the most profitable skill is attracting attention. In the digital world, the most profitable skill is creating content------high-quality content, not endless junk content.

Unfortunately, just because you can master the methods of attracting attention doesn't mean you have truly captured attention.

If a tweet or short video gets 1 million views, but other posts only get 1,000 views each, then that viral moment is of no use. It indicates that your content is decent, but your brand has not been established at all. We need both.

You can chase viral hits. Most people are doing this, and it is also the reason why most people fail miserably. Or, you can build a content world that people can't help but keep exploring.

I will teach you how to do this.

2. One-Person Creative Team

The content industry is undergoing a massive transformation.

I am the founder of Eden. This is a tool that creators and digital business operators can use to research viral ideas, plan content and schedule releases, sell digital products, and manage email subscription lists.

I say this not to promote, but to point out: we possess relevant data that almost no one else has. Through billions of posts, we know which topics, opening hooks, and content styles are effective.

Moreover, freelancers and service agencies also use it to operate clients' personal brands, covering content, email marketing, digital product launches, and building marketing conversion funnels.

When we communicate with these content service agencies and media teams, we hear similar statements. Here are the main points:

"We haven't laid off anyone yet, but we can take on much more work without expanding the team because everyone's output has increased."

"Creators and founders hire us because they simply don't have time to think about content. They need to manage teams and run businesses, which requires focus. AI can write content for them, but they still know they need a strategist or creative director who is better at leveraging AI than they are. This still requires creativity and thought."

"AI still can't write the best posts, and I believe it never will. But it can research which content performs well, understand strategies, and write initial drafts that are already quite close to the requirements. Nowadays, all my work is reviewing and rewriting initial drafts. Now I can finish it in 4 hours a day, whereas before it took 12 hours."

In my view, there are two directions for the most profitable AI business that one person can start.

First, become your own creative team. Build a personal brand, accumulate an audience, develop digital products, establish an email subscription list, and so on. Focus on doing these things. Trust me, even with AI, this is a full-time job. If you are a creator without a team, you probably can't develop software at the same time.

Second, become someone else's creative team. Help companies, founders, or even creators who lack sufficient creative energy produce irreplaceable content. Most founders are still publishing "announcement-style" content and have no idea what it takes to build influence online.

In other words, you need to become the creative director for your own brand or someone else's brand.

If you can do this, I don't see why you can't charge a fee that is a fraction of the cost of a full team. Serving 1 to 3 clients with a monthly income of $10,000 to $75,000 is not out of reach------provided you are good at it and practice continuously. Don't let yourself think this is another get-rich-quick opportunity. For business owners who invest millions in marketing, this price won't make them blink.

So, what does this one-person creative team look like?

What skills do you need to learn?

Responsibility 1: Brand Strategist

Brand strategists are responsible for positioning and how people perceive the brand.

They will be the first to tell you: don't just chase trends, and don't try to make every post go viral. Growth and engagement are important, but not at the expense of trust and authority.

By the way, I will show you how to do these things below.

Responsibility 2: Content Strategist

This is not the same as a brand strategist.

Content strategists study which content performs well in different topics and niches and suggest what creators should post next. They delve into post formats, YouTube thumbnails and title structures, audience retention, and content shareability.

They excel at growing accounts, but if brand strategy is not considered, once the creator stops updating, no one will even ask where they went.

Responsibility 3: Content Writer/Social Media Operator

This person is responsible for drafting tweets, YouTube or Reels video scripts, X articles, and Substack newsletters, as well as planning and publishing.

They take the ideas from the content strategist and the direction from the brand strategist, ensuring that the final content aligns with both.

You probably see why most people can't create anything lasting with AI. They still treat AI as a means to get rich quickly. They think that as long as they let Claude generate scripts endlessly without direction or data, they can magically connect with the audience.

Almost no one considers brand strategy.

Some people consider content strategy.

Most people just turn random ideas into posts and then pray they perform well.

These are your competitors. It’s not hard to stand out from them.

3. If you were my client, this is how I would build an irreplaceable personal brand for you

Let's do an interesting exercise.

I will assume you are my new client entering the collaboration process.

This way, if you want to become a creator, you can execute this process yourself. If you want to provide content services for others, such as ghostwriting tweets or writing Substack articles for brands, this is also how you can onboard new clients. Later, I will share an excellent strategy for landing your first client.

Step 1: Through a kickoff interview, clarify the client's unique thought identity

To make the client's brand and content stand out, you need to understand a lot of background information related to them.

After securing the client, schedule a call to gather all the information you need through the interview. Record the call and save the transcript for later reference and AI utilization.

If you are doing this for your own brand, I have prepared a questionnaire/prompt that you can use, along with a 30-day creator sprint course. It will combine trending content with your unique aspects to formulate a strategy for you. You can try it out here.

The following questions can be used to ask clients or to ask yourself. You can also paste them into Claude to have it extract information from you through questioning, and then save it as a brand document for easy reference with AI at any time.

All these questions are shaping your brand.

They can extend into content themes that will become the content you publish continuously over the next 6 to 12 months. Someone might ask, "How can I explain all of this in one post?"

You can't. This is a long-term game, and that’s why most people fail miserably. They want to gain attention and authority quickly. So good luck to them.

Because the content is lengthy, I have compiled these questions and more into a complete prompt that you can save or copy to your own workspace.

Who You Help

• Who do you most want to help? Describe a real person.
• What does a bad day look like for them right now?
• What do they say when they complain to friends? Use their exact words.
• What have they tried that hasn’t worked?

Your Story

• What are the things your audience is experiencing that you have also experienced?
• What moment changed your situation? It can be something small.
• What have you accomplished, tried, failed at, and figured out? List them from big to small; each item has value.
• What results can you showcase for yourself or the people you have helped?

Who Shaped Your Thinking

• Whose books, posts, or videos do you never miss? List specific names and works.
• Which of their viewpoints do you keep coming back to? Why?
• Who changed the way you think, even if you no longer agree with them?

Content Pillars and Unique Perspectives

• What topics can you talk about for hours? List them all, even if they seem unrelated.
• Which 2 to 3 are the most important to you?
• How is your approach to each different from others? For example, "from a psychological perspective" or "as a former nurse."
• What do others most often seek your advice on?
• What do you find yourself explaining over and over again?

Mission and Beliefs

• In one sentence, what do you want to help people achieve?
• What do you believe that most people in your field do not?
• What common advice do you think is wrong in your field?

What You Oppose

• What lifestyle is harming the people you want to help?
• What kind of life do you want to help them escape from? Answer in your own words.
• If you could, what misconception or habit would you eliminate? Note that it should be a habit or belief, not a person or company.

Why This Matters Now

• What change has just happened in the world that most people have not noticed?

Where You Want to Take Them

• What will their daily life look like 5 years from now if they follow you?
• How will they proudly refer to themselves in their profile?
• What role do you play in their story? Are you a guide, a chronicler of the journey, or someone who has already walked the path and returned with a map?

Rules and Terminology

• What does your ideal reader believe, and what do they do every day? List 5 to 12 principles.
• Have you ever named your viewpoints, methods, or issues? Write down each name and its meaning.
• Keep this information securely stored somewhere, like in Eden's brand board, so you can refer to it whenever you brainstorm posts.

Step 2: If the client is already publishing content, gather their best-performing content.

I think we can all agree that AI cannot fully replicate a person's style of expression.

Even if it gets close, there will always be some subtle aspect that feels off.

But that’s not our goal. AI can handle corporate expression styles well, but the reason personal brands are "personal" is that they need that unique flavor.

We interview clients and collect their best content not to automate the entire process. We are building a knowledge base that captures everything unique or noteworthy about that person. This makes it much easier when you use AI for brainstorming, drafting, or ideation than starting from scratch.

To gather the best-performing content from clients across all platforms, you can connect Eden to Claude or ChatGPT via MCP, allowing it to access the client's posts or trending posts from others. Provide the client's social accounts and then use a prompt like this:

markdown

Please retrieve the best-performing content from [@account list]. Extract 10 to 20 posts from each platform where they are active. Then, document the core points that make them unique, the personal aspects of their expression style, and speculate on what worldviews or life philosophies they might have that resonate with others. In short, document all the elements that contribute to their growth and organize them into a document.

You should also take a look at their best-performing posts across various platforms to identify reusable patterns.

Step 2.5: If you haven't started publishing content yet

For beginners, this might be the most worthwhile thing you can do.

You must understand that your thoughts have always been shaped by those who have influenced you the most. Your best ideas—the ones that will drive your growth—come from how you understand and interpret the perspectives absorbed from others.

It's a bit like "stealing like an artist," except this is how thinking works.

When you encounter a new idea, being able to replace the old beliefs and thoughts that dominate your thinking is a core expression of wisdom. Clinging to beliefs or ideas that do not yield favorable results is a foolish behavior.

My thoughts are largely a mix of perspectives from Naval, Leo Gura, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Steven Kotler, Ken Wilber, and others. The interplay of these perspectives in my mind, combined with my own life experiences, is what makes my thoughts "my" thoughts.

So, if you haven't published content yet, list the 5 to 10 people who have influenced you the most.

If they are creators, that’s even better. Compile them into a list for easy access to all their content or to have conversations with AI around that content.

Then, use the same prompt as above, just replace the accounts with theirs. If they don’t have social media accounts, have AI gather the best insights from the web and their books. Save the results as a document and keep it secure.

Step 3: Create a research-backed content map

So far, we have:

• Gathered enough brand background information to create unique content.
• Documented the best insights that can be reused, repurposed, and repositioned.

Now, we need to switch to the marketer's perspective.

Actually, more accurately, we need to switch to the artist's perspective.

Most "creatives" resist the idea of researching viral posts, high-performing YouTube titles, or creating based on what is more likely to perform well. But this is because your perspective on the issue obscures the essence of the matter.

You are collecting reference materials.

That’s what artists do. They build inspiration boards, collect references to help shape their work. They don’t copy one-to-one; instead, they distill patterns and principles to make their work more likely to perform well.

Because at the end of the day, you want your work to succeed. You just feel that looking at data is a bit off-putting, as if it doesn’t belong in the creative process. Stop thinking that way.

Here’s how to do it.

(Note: I mention Eden multiple times in this letter because, frankly, nothing else can accomplish this task. Social content scraping tools cannot simultaneously see which content performs well across multiple accounts; applications like GrokBot are great but can only be used for X. Moreover, to gain unique insights, it’s best to study platforms where you haven’t published content.)

The approach is simple: use the prompt below and provide the two documents you created earlier.

I want you to create a research-backed content map: set up 3 to 4 unique and broad content pillars, each extending down into 5 to 7 themes. These themes should be based on proven effective insights and incorporate [@brand document] and [@content document], reflecting my unique perspective. Under each theme, extend into 5 to 10 potential high-performing ideas; under each idea, extend into 4 to 5 angles.

Read my brand document and content document to extract potential content pillars and my perspectives, then use Eden to research what high-performing content exists on these themes across different platforms. We need a unique content map while also incorporating patterns that have been validated over the past 6 to 12 months.

Organize the results into an easy-to-read document.

Now, you have approximately enough content ideas to last 6 months. You can have Eve or AI draft content based on the background information you previously organized and refer to high-performing content to validate the structure of your posts.

I think it’s hard to deny that this process will yield results; it will also put you far ahead of those who do not do this.

As mentioned earlier, here is a document/prompt that you can copy and use, containing the complete process. It may take some time to complete, but it is comprehensive.

IV. How to Land Your First Client

A few years ago, my friend JK Molina sent me a private message. He is basically the person who started the trend of "doing Twitter ghostwriting."

His message was essentially:

"Dan, I know you don’t want others to write content for you, but I went ahead and wrote 10 posts for you. You can try posting them. If you like them, let me continue writing for you, or just give me a recommendation."

Before doing social media, I was a freelancer, and developing relationships with strangers was hell for me. I hated it.

But after receiving this message, I realized that this must be one of the best strategies to land content clients paying $2,500 to $5,000 a month. You can target busy creators, founders, or those struggling with growth.

You can integrate everything we mentioned earlier into a prompt, walk your target clients through the process, have AI draft 10 posts, refine them seriously, and then send out 10 private messages every day.

If you truly do this, I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t land at least one client within a month.

This is the "Permissionless Apprentice" method.

You do some work for your ideal client for free first, then find a way to get them to see it.

If private messages are not effective, showcase it publicly like this. You can basically do this on X, Substack, or any other platform.

In that short video, he grabbed attention with this line:

"Grant Cardone needs a new creative director, and this is my application piece. His content looks like it's still stuck in 2016."

Grant Cardone replied, "Contact me, I really am stuck." I believe this reply, along with the engagement on this post, has already proven most of the points in this letter. Right now, this is a huge opportunity. And you already have all the tools needed to land these clients, kick off collaborations, and create outstanding content for them.

Hope this helps you.

------Dan

Just a reminder, a workshop on how to write newsletters/articles that people can't help but read will be held on November 10. If you want to turn long-form content creation into a skill, you can sign up here.