The Startup Ideas Podcast - I challenged Genspark to be my AI Co-Founder (Honest Review + Tutorial)

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

On this episode, I provide an unsponsored review of GenSpark, testing its capabilities across multiple business applications. I evaluate the platform's ability to create investor decks, product demos, customer personas, and marketing strategies. While I was impressed with GenSpark's research capabilities and business-oriented content, the product had significant limitations in design quality and occasional content confusion. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:55 - Genspark Super AI Agent Overview 03:28 - Building Fundraising Deck 07:33 - Building Product Demo 10:46 - Generating Social Media Strategy 16:26 - Building Fundraising Deck Pt2 17:17 - Building Data Room 18:59 - Researching Ideal Customer Persona 21:52 - Mapping/Researching Distribution Channels 24:05 - Final Thoughts on Genspark 25:43 - Genspark does not have Self Service Subscription Cancellation Key Points: • GenSpark is a new AI agent platform that reached $36 million ARR in 45 days, adding almost $1 million daily • Greg tests multiple use cases including creating investor presentations, product demos, customer research, and distribution strategies • The platform shows strengths in research and content creation but weaknesses in design and image generation • At $25/month, GenSpark offers value for specific use cases but isn't a complete replacement for other AI tools The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ BoringMarketing — Vibe Marketing for Sale: http://boringmarketing.com/ Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.skool.com/startupempire/about FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

Today we're going to look at Gen Spark, the super agent platform. You see it right now. It's got AI slides, AI sheets, download for me, deep research, call for me, fact checking, all these AI agents, and it's adding almost a million dollars AIR a day because it's going viral. Now, is it hype or is this the new Manis, new chat, CBT? Today we're going to find out I take you through it all around prompts that help you build your business zero to one, how to market your business, how to sell your business, how do you create a deck that raises $2 million? Can Gen Spark use its suite of agents and super agents to help you

have an unfair advantage in your business? Today, we are going to find out. Today we're going to dig into Jen Spark. They call themselves the super agent platform and they're competing with chat EBT, Clode, Manis. But is GenSpark the new? Manis, Chat TBT, or is it hype? I want to find out, and that's what we're going to do today. We're just going to go through a bunch of prompts to find out if GenSpark is super, super valuable to people like us, people who are building zero to one, people who are looking to get more productive, people are looking to make internet money.

So if you've never heard of GenSpark, it used to be a search engine. I think it had about 5 million users. then they launched the agent platform about two months ago. It hit 10 million ARR in nine days. Now they're at 36 million ARR in 45 days. They're basically adding almost a million dollars a day in ARR. Let's dig in to see if these agents are any good. So I went to Jen Spark and I basically said,

hey, I've done this video on Perplexity Labs where I showed founders how to use perplexity to replace their copyrighters, salespeople, film directors. I want to do the same for Jen Spark, different use cases and stuff like that. And I basically asked it to give me game-changing prompts. So it gave me a bunch. It gave me replacing a market research agency, replacing a business development consultant, replacing competitive analysis firm, replacing a content marketing agency, replacing a growth marketing agency, replacing a sales consultant.

you get the idea. I asked more. I was like, I want to make sure that these are the best prompts for zero to $10 million AR founders, people who are starting from scratch. It gave me some more. And in this episode, we're just going to go through some of these and just see, you know, I'm going to give you my honest opinion. I'm not sponsored by Jen Spark.

I don't know anyone at Jen Spark. I paid $25 for, you know, $1,000. for access to this. And we're going to go through this together. And by the end of it, we're just going to see, you know, is it worth it and how to think about using Jen Spark? Because I have heard a lot of good things about it. But you never know in this day and age.

So that's why I'm here. I'm here to like basically help you figure out, you know, what's signal and what's noise. So let's get into it. So the first prompt I did, I said, I'm raising a seed round for my company ideabrowser.com. I say research it, which is a suite of ideas, tools, trends for people looking to build startups, create a compelling investor presentation that tells our story with data-driven slides. And then I basically ask it to come up with, you know, some specific slides. So it comes up with it.

And as you can see on the left-hand side, GenSpark has like an AI slide. slides product and AI Sheets product. And so that's one of the reasons why I picked this one. I wanted to see Can, is it possible to create really good research slides? I've used other products. I've used Gamma. I've used Manus for slides. I'm still looking for like a really good AI slides product.

And, you know, if I, if this can actually do it, design a 15 minute presentation that gets investors excited to write checks of $2, $3 million. It's going to be helpful for a lot of people. here listening. So I'm using ideabrowser.com, my startup, just because I'm curious what it's going to say. But it, first of all, the design does not look that awesome. It's, you know, okay, I'll call it. The design looks lame, super lame, but I'm reading here and, you know, the startup opportunity ideas are everywhere. I really like that. The entrepreneurial explosion. A lot of this content is pretty good.

Time spent on idea validation, like, yes. This is interesting to me. As someone who's building this product, where it's a database of ideas and trends and AI agents to help people through the idea process, you know, that is interesting to me. I've never thought about it like that. The average founder spent 155 hours on validation before building.

So I'm liking the research. I'm not liking the design. And I'm not going to go into every single slide, but just like looking at it from a gut reaction perspective, it's done a really good job better than most in the research. And from a design perspective, mid, as the kids say. So I'm going to go and ask it to, I'm just going to be like, hey, Jen Spark,

I find the content of this. presentation to be an 8 on 10, but the design is a super mid 3 on 10. I want something more similar to the design of my website, ideabrowser.com, which I find clean, fresh, and crisp. Can you redesign it with that in mind. So let's see what happens there. I anticipate this is going to take some time. So we'll come back to this. And we will see.

Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about startup empire. So startup empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now, they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co-founders. They're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing?

How do you build an audience? How do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things. That's exactly what startup empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas. Or it's for people who have a startup, but just they're not. not seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to startup empire.com in the description.

And let's go to another prompt and see what happens. The next prompt I said was create an interactive product demo experience for Idea Browser.com that converts prospects into customers. Build a single page HTML demo that includes interactive product walkthrough showing key features, customer success stories with embedded testimonials, pricing calculator, It shows ROI, lead capture forms integrated throughout social proof, et cetera, et cetera. Make it load fast and look like it cost 25K to build. So this is testing, basically building apps on Gen Spark.

And it created this. I think it took like a few minutes. And the funny thing is I'm looking at it and this is like I don't understand what it's saying. Resolve conflicts without breaking the bank. It's like, what? And then I realized that this is actually the idea of the day. So what happened was Jen Spark actually went on IdeaBrowser.com.

It found the idea of the day, which is basically an AI power to alternative to hiring a mediator or a lawyer. It's this idea that, you know, for $99 a month, you can have this like SaaS app that's AI power that helps mediate. For example, couples who are trying to get divorced and stuff like that. So that's what it did. So it made that mistake. But then I'm like, this is really interesting. So it basically thinks that that is the startup up in that, you know, is idea at Brows.com.

So huge miss. But then I'm looking at this SaaS app and this is brilliant, right? So you upload your documents. So let's just assume that, you know, it's trying to build out this idea, right? From idea browser. securely upload legal documents, emails, and relevant files. Our AI analyzes instantly. AI analysis and strategy, get personal mediation strategy based on thousands of successful cases,

practice conversations, roleplay difficult conversations with AI coaching to build confidence, and then reach an agreement. Generate fair proposals and track progress until both parties agree. So it's basically taken the idea from idea browser, and built a app that is like working, which is crazy. And gets me thinking that a lot of people are going to go onto Idea Browser, look at some of our database of ideas, and just use products like this to create it.

So I think this is interesting. What happens if I just actually try this feature? Like is this just the front end, right? It's probably just the front end. So I asked it, does it actually work? It says, let me test the demo I create to see if it's actually working. Using the tool, it's capturing the screen. That's pretty cool.

So it's actually like going through the website and checking it. So it says that it's working. The live demo works. The ROI calculator works. That's cool. I mean, pretty cool. I like what I saw there. Let's do one more, and then we'll go back to the slides.

So this prompt is about social media. So I need to dominate social media to build my personal brand as a founder. I know a lot of people listening here are trying to build their personal brand. So let's see what we can do. Create a complete visual content system, including 20 quote graphics with the best insights about startup ideas. It actually, I put startup ideas because that's my niche. So whatever niche you're in, you would obviously put that there. Infographics, templates for sharing, industry data, social media, post templates for

LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Branded slide templates, yada, yada, yada. Generate actual images I can use immediately and templates I can customize. Focus on content that positions me as a go-to expert in my niche startup ideas. Okay. So it's given me 20 quote graphics. seven templates, 90-day content calendar, all ready to use. Every unicorn, every unicorn startup with this, well, look, they spelled, see how they spelled

startup? So you know that could be AI, right? So you hate to see that. You're starting to see this here. Look, for solution, flushion, you know, no, no, no, no, no. text is remarkably bad for um yeah yeah for you know with AI you want to limit the amount of text and just in general here's like a tip for you if you if you include the text in a JSON format it's more likely to give you the right text so this was a huge that sucked um the the the

templates, like just looking at these templates, like, they kind of look mid in terms of the design, but I will say like these things work, right? Like five key startup metrics that matter, like that probably will work. Three step frameworks, that's probably going to work on a LinkedIn Carousel. Like they've got the framework right, but the design is not great. That's cool. It gives you a little content calendar, which I do, I do think that's really cool. It gives you, weekly themes to think about. I think that's cool. That's actually well done.

Behind the scenes, it's giving you a lot of good advice. The design is just not great. What to avoid. Don't post without adding your own perspective of experience. I guess this is good advice. Always add personal commentary to quote graphics. This is really good advice.

Engage with comments within two hours of posting. Good advice. Use relevant hashtags. I find hashtags to be cringe personally. But, you know, tell me what you think in the comments. Target metrics, like overall, like interesting. I wouldn't, like, I don't think this like replaces your social media manager in one prompt.

But I, you know, it would be interesting to see if you can, if you can continue to prompt this to get this to, like, let's Let's see if we can like, okay, so first of all, interesting thing. It uses flux. So it uses flux here. And it tells you what it uses. It also gives you the ability to make an image to video. That's a really good feature. So I'm going to say, I'm just going to prompt in and say, I don't like this quote.

Use quote from famous person who knows stuff about startup ideas. and make the design fresh, clean, and punchy. And let's just see what happens. Let's see if it goes and researches. Obviously, a quote by Sam Altman about a startup idea is going to be better than Felipe Carrey, who I have no idea that, you know, obviously, I don't think that's a real person.

So it's interesting. It's using the tool. And oh, wow, okay. So it's creating multiple of them. Reid Hoffman, Eric Reese, Mark Cuban. And that's the thing with a lot of these tools, honestly, is like, we expect to one-prompt it and it's perfect. And the reality is it's not the case. It's really, really not the case.

Like people one-prompt and then they're like, wow, ha-ha-ha, AI sucks. Because the, you know, look at how they spell. love they put a one in it but it's like well you if you continue prompting it you could get it to a place that's better or you can't you know or you can't but you know it's good to see like wow okay so basically what have we learned here we've learned that jenspark basically can't do quotes or text on images so that's a big miss um it was getting me excited i'm literally taking out my sweater because I was getting excited. I was getting really excited there.

All right. Well, that's a miss from Jen Spark on that one. All right. Next prompt. Actually, let's go back to see if our design worked for our fundraising deck. Way cleaner. It's not taking my idea browser logo, which I would have loved. it's taking the blue which is cool um it's it's fine this is it's fine like it went from a two or three

on 10 to a five or six on 10 um so this is you know this is like this is valuable to have this is valuable to have and that you know it's $25 for a monthly thing here so even that alone is valuable um all right let's to create a comprehensive fundraising package that proves my startup, ideabrowser.com is investable. Build a data room website with organized financial documents and metrics, traction, visualized dashboard showing growth trends, market analysis slides with compelling charts,

financial model with scenario planning visuals, customer testimonial showcase page, team credentials, presentation, competitive analysis with positioning maps, and an executive summary with key, metrics highlighted. Make it look like we hired McKinsey to prepare our fundraising materials. So I actually don't find this to be super helpful from our fundraising perspective, but if you're selling a company and I've sold companies before, you're going to want a data room. And making a

data room is super lame. So looking at this, the fact that it's a conservative scenario, base case, aggressive, pretty cool. I mean, some stuff that's not true. We don't have an advisory board or investors, but funny that all of these are my old investors from my last company. So anyways, pretty interesting. Like, good to know. Good to know that you can basically build a data room and on the fly in a web app and send this over. And then you can just, you know, obviously this isn't real information. but you would upload your documents to make sure that it puts your information in.

So next time you want to create a data room, Gen Spark might be for you. Okay, I'm building, okay, next prompt. I'm building ideabrowser.com, a database, a validated startup ideas, trends, and tools to build a business that's more likely to succeed. I need to understand my ideal customers inside and out. Super important, by the way. like can we get GenSpark to basically create a report with actionable insights for messaging, positioning, and outreach? Researching, you know, I'm continuing the prompts, research and create detailed customer

personas for my target market, including their biggest pain points, what they complain about online, where they hang out, what language they used to describe their problems. They're buying triggers, objections they typically have in the exact moments they realize they need a solution like mine. So, so key to have this insight. You know, when I'm building businesses, I want to know this. So let's see if it was able to do it for ideabrowser.com. So it gives the demographic profile, experience zero to two previous startup attempts. Current status, either pre-idea validation or stuck in building within validation phase. Like I find this really helpful. Major pain points, direct quotes from research. I spend six

months building features nobody wanted. It's really hard to find those problems. What if you don't know who the customer is? I wish there was a website that just listed different real customer pain points by industry. Most no code tools available, but difficulty building their MVP. Anyways, point is they nailed the pain points. The specific language they use, I'm looking for my next idea. Why is this so key? Is that you can actually feed this in to Clode and say, write copy on my landing page based on these pain points and specific language they use. And that's going to help you convert better on whatever it is you're working on. So, you know, exact moments they realize they need help.

I really like that. Emotional triggers, price objective, skepticism. This is probably one of the best prompts. This is the best prompt out of all of them I've seen so far. Like this is and then it says feature prioritization based on pain points. You kidding me? Says what they'll pay for, time savings, risk reductions, avoiding another failed venture. I mean, this is all true.

This is all true. Must have features. Come on. This is so good. This is really good. I think GenSpark is probably, it's, yeah, if it wasn't worth it for the data room whenever you sell your company, I think it probably is just for this one. And by the way, they have a free plan as well.

Okay, let's do, let's see if we have time for a couple more. I'm a bootstrap founder with ideabrowser.com, targeting founders and solopreneurs. Again, that's MySpace, but you would put whatever it is you're working on. Map out every possible distribution channel and partnership opportunity for my business, include direct sales, partnership opportunities, platform innovations, affiliate programs, marketplace opportunities, and unconventional growth channels my competitors haven't discovered. For each channel, estimate effort required, time and results, and potential acquisition cost. So obviously super important.

Let's see if they can do it. Complete distribution channel map for IDI at DioBraser.com. Okay, so the highest impact they're saying is content-led growth. I think that's right. The content ties 50 startup ideas from Reddit this week. that's good. Trend analysis reports, that's good. Founder Journey stories, that's good.

That's on point. This is what I'm learning about GenSpark is like the design of things, the images, not great, but the actual content, pretty good. Longtail keywords around startup ideas and trends, free tier with viral mechanics, approach daily idea email plus limited database access. So we already have that. People can get a free startup idea on ideabreds.com. So I'm wondering why it gave me the same idea, but I'll skip that one.

Or I won't judge you on too much on that one. But yeah, this is like, okay, platform integrations and marketplace opportunities. Connect idea browser to Slack, Trello, and Ocean Airtable, automate weekly idea delivery to team channels. Pretty interesting, except, you know, do teams want new startup ideas in their channels? Yeah, actually maybe, who knows. Ooh, app marketplace listings. Create a Shopify app store, e-commerce business ideas section, WordPress plugin directory, Chrome extension store.

This is really good. This is really good. I won't go through all this, but I'm thinking about idea browser a lot. And some of these ideas I've had and some of these ideas are like, oh, I never thought of it that way. And that's why it's interesting. My gut take on GenSpark is, you know, is it the madness killer? Is it the chat TVT killer? No. But is it interesting and something that you want to put as a part of like your cocktail of different tools that you're using to get a diverse opinion on a particular problem? Yes. Like, you know, if you're trying to create a social media calendar or you're trying to do some market research or, you know, you're trying to, you're trying to, you're trying to, you're trying to, you're trying to, you're trying to, build a SaaS app or a lead magnet, you might want to go to Manus, you might want to go to

Jenspark, you might want to go to ChachipT, you might want to go to Perplexity Labs, and just see what is working best for you, you know? And that's kind of how I see it right now. Like I'm in, I'm, I'm sort of in wait and C mode with Jenspark. I've seen a couple interesting things. I've seen some big misses, seen some big misses. Some of the design stuff, that was horrible. And it's kind of like missing it with respect to what, you know, what ideabrowser.com really is. So that, you know, that was a miss and you have to like kind of reprompt it. You know, don't love that. Don't love that.

But I think a lot of the formatting, I think some of the research was really good. I think I also find they're not just like writing content for the sake of content. So I found out like very concise and clear. So overall, GenSpark, it's worth a shot. It's worth a shot. and seeing what you get out of it. Okay, after I recorded this episode, I tried to cancel my GenSpark

and just go down to the free version and I literally couldn't figure out how to do it. And so I went on GenSpark and I basically asked it how do you cancel your JenSpark? And it basically says, I couldn't find a self-service cancellation option directly on GenSpark's website. And then it gives you email support and a phone number. And there's no self-service option. And that gave me an idea for a tweet.

Never trust a company that makes canceling your monthly subscription harder than signing up. not cool not cool Jen Spark not cool at all so I just wanted to let people know that there's a lot of good in the products but I just feel like it's dishonest

when companies hide the cancellation button so my recommendation for people is try out the free version see if it works for you and if you do do get in your workflow, definitely upgrade, if you can use more of it.

And yeah, you know, it's just going to, but it's going to be, you know, I don't know if I wouldn't, I probably wouldn't use sensitive data on this product. This is like, you know, Toby from Shopify, founder of Shopify has this really good. Concept called the trust battery where you trust a person, you know, you hire someone and, you know, They might start at 50% and then they do a lot of good work and have high integrity and now they're 70%. Or maybe they do something shady and they go to 30%. Well, I think we have trust batteries for companies too. So, you know, I think Jen Spark lost 20% of my books.

I don't know about you. But let me know in the comments, what you think. And I just wanted to give you all a heads up about that. Not cool, right? Not cool. Thanks for listening to the episode. I think I need to do like a comparison episode, like Manus, what's Manus good for? What's ChatGPT good for? Which model for this? Which model for that? And just do like,

it might be like a two hour episode, but breaking down what you should use what for. So if people are interested, let me think about that. Let me know in the comments. I read every single comment. I appreciate every single like. And I'm learning alongside you and showing you what I learn along the way. So I hope it's helpful. Have a creative day, friends.