The AI Why with Liam Lawson

Two years ago, Mischa Collins was let go from her marketing manager role at a startup. After months of applying to jobs she was overqualified for and hearing nothing back, she decided to stop playing the victim and take control. She posted about her journey on LinkedIn. It went viral. Then she posted again. That went even more viral. From just two posts, she signed three clients and launched her career as a full-time LinkedIn creator.

Today, Mischa has grown to over 50K followers in just 18 months, runs a ghostwriting agency, coaches founders on personal branding, and is currently living in a "LinkedIn Influencer House" in Mexico with business partners Corey Blumenfeld and Charlie Hills. In this conversation with Liam, she breaks down exactly what's working on LinkedIn right now, why the algorithm has shifted more in the past month than in her entire time posting, and the specific content formats (infographics and cheat sheets) that are massively outperforming everything else. She also shares the real numbers behind her content: how a single post with a text overlay hit 80,000 impressions while the same post without one got just 5,000.

Key Topics Covered

How getting fired became the best thing that ever happened to her career

Going from fashion to tech sales to full-time LinkedIn creator

The 2 LinkedIn posts that went viral and signed her first 3 clients

Growing from 0 to 50K LinkedIn followers in 18 months

Why the LinkedIn algorithm has shifted more in the past month than ever before

Dwell time: the metric that matters most on LinkedIn right now

Infographics vs lifestyle images: 80K impressions vs 5K from the same creator

How to run a ghostwriting agency and what clients actually need

Brand partnerships on LinkedIn: what makes a good campaign vs a bad one

Platform dependence: why relying on one social platform is risky

The "LinkedIn Influencer House" in Mexico with Corey Blumenfeld and Charlie Hills

Building a personal brand while staying authentic

Why rock bottom is the best place to build from

Episode Timestamps

00:01 - Introduction and the LinkedIn Influencer House in Mexico

02:01 - Origin story: fashion to tech sales to LinkedIn

03:33 - How LinkedIn content landed her marketing manager role

05:02 - Getting let go and the two months of rejection

05:49 - The viral LinkedIn post that launched her solo career

08:00 - Growing to 50K followers: what worked

15:07 - What's working on LinkedIn right now (algorithm shift)

16:36 - The 80K vs 5K impressions experiment

17:41 - AI's impact on LinkedIn content creation

22:00 - Building a ghostwriting agency

27:00 - Niche vs expanding your content topics

31:55 - Platform dependence and branching to Instagram/TikTok

36:00 - The creator economy on LinkedIn

40:00 - Revenue streams: brand deals, coaching, ghostwriting, cohorts

47:03 - Breaking down her income sources

50:00 - Helping brands run better LinkedIn creator campaigns

55:00 - The future of personal branding

01:00:00 - Building a life on your own terms

01:10:34 - Why you don't need to stay in your lane

01:11:06 - Where to find Mischa

Mischa's Socials:

LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mischacollins/

Instagram — @mischabuildsbrands

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$852 billion. That's what OpenAI is now worth, and its own investors are starting to question if that math adds up. This week, Anthropic's new model takes the coding crown from GPT-5.4, OpenAI's backers get cold feet, Snap cuts 1,000 jobs and points the finger at AI, twelve tech giants team up to secure the internet, and Nvidia writes a $5 billion check to its oldest rival.

If you're a founder, operator, or executive trying to keep up with AI, this is your weekly five-minute briefing every Tuesday.

Stories Covered This Week:

Claude Opus 4.7 hits 87.6% on SWE-bench Verified, beating GPT-5.4 and Gemini 3.1 Pro on coding

OpenAI's $852B valuation faces scrutiny as Anthropic's revenue triples to $30B in one quarter

Snap lays off 1,000 people (16% of staff), citing AI writing 65% of its code

Anthropic launches Project Glasswing with Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and 7 others

Nvidia invests $5B in Intel, co-developing x86 chips built for its AI stack

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro
00:31 Claude Opus 4.7 takes the coding crown
01:26 OpenAI investors get cold feet
02:18 Snap cuts 1,000 jobs, blames AI
02:56 Project Glasswing: Securing the world’s critical software
03:49 NVIDIA invests 5 billion into Intel
04:41 Outro

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In this episode, Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy, host of over 2,500 founder interviews, and creator of The Next New Thing, reveals why the most exciting business opportunity in AI right now isn't building another chatbot or SaaS tool. It's building for AI agents as customers. Andrew shares how one founder went from $3K to $70K/month by simply pivoting his social media tool to serve AI agents instead of humans, why Jason Fried at Basecamp is now adding agent-first features, and what this means for every entrepreneur and operator watching the AI wave.

Andrew breaks down his own AI tech stack (Claude Code, VS Code, Atlas Browser, OpenClaw), why he keeps a separate laptop just for AI agent work, and the brutal honesty about how much time we're all spending "playing" with AI vs. actually building revenue-generating products. He and Liam go deep on the "SaaSpocalypse" debate, whether intelligence becoming a utility makes audience and distribution the only real moats, and why the agent-to-agent economy, where software sells to other software, might be the biggest shift since mobile.

Key Topics Covered

How Andrew built a $30M/year email newsletter business in his 20s and what he learned about monetization

The origin story of Zapier: Andrew was their first paying customer before they even had a product

Why AI's "shiny object syndrome" is the biggest trap for builders right now

Andrew's daily AI tech stack: Claude Code, VS Code, Atlas Browser, Claude Desktop, and WhisperFlow

How Postiz went from $3K to $70K/month by becoming the social media tool for AI agents

The agent-to-agent economy: why your next best customer might not be human

Is SaaS dead? Andrew's nuanced take after 2,500+ founder interviews

Why audience and platform stickiness are the only real moats when intelligence becomes a utility

Liam's Claude automation workflows: auto-generating guest research, marketing assets in 5 minutes

Vibe video editing and the future of AI-powered content production

Episode Timestamps

00:00 - Introduction and welcome

00:28 - Andrew's background: building a $30M email newsletter empire

02:00 - Selling the business in his mid-20s and traveling the world

06:19 - Starting Mixergy and doing 2,500+ founder interviews

09:39 - The founders Andrew admires most: Wade Foster and Zapier's origin story

12:07 - How solving problems for free changes your career

12:51 - AI's shiny object syndrome: building for fun vs. solving real problems

14:36 - Andrew's mission: helping AI builders find real revenue

17:45 - Andrew's AI tech stack: VS Code, Claude Code, Atlas Browser, WhisperFlow

22:32 - The ideal future of work with AI agents

24:31 - What's most impressive and most underwhelming about AI right now

25:20 - Building a social listening tool with AI

27:08 - The SaaSpocalypse debate: can you vibe-code your own tools?

36:12 - Postiz: from $3K to $70K/month by selling to AI agents

38:17 - The agent-to-agent marketplace future

40:06 - Liam's Claude automation: auto-generating guest research briefs

43:19 - Real-time AI workflows with WhisperFlow and Claude

48:02 - Why investing time in AI compounds exponentially

50:05 - Creating marketing assets in 5 minutes with Claude

51:27 - Vibe video editing: the next frontier for content creators

53:42 - Thought experiment: what's defensible when intelligence is a utility?

55:39 - The bread maker analogy: why SaaS won't actually die

58:01 - What makes software defensible: switching costs and stickiness

01:00:47 - Postiz deep-dive: the agentic social media scheduling tool

01:03:26 - Agent-first businesses: newsletters, chat apps, and tools built for agents

01:08:51 - Where to find Andrew and closing thoughts

Andrew's Socials:

LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewwarner/

Website — https://thenextnewthing.ai

Partner Links

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$1.75 trillion SpaceX IPO, Meta's closed-source Muse Spark, Anthropic's restricted Claude Mythos, OpenAI's four-day work week proposal, and Google's open-source Gemma 4. This week, the biggest companies in AI are making very different bets on power, access, and what happens next.

AI News in 5 is your fast, no-fluff weekly AI news roundup for founders, operators, and executives who need to stay current. Every Tuesday, in 5 minutes.

Stories Covered This Week:

Meta launches Muse Spark, its first closed-source AI model under Alexandr Wang's $14B deal

Anthropic restricts Claude Mythos to 50 partners via Project Glasswing over cybersecurity concerns

OpenAI publishes 13-page policy calling for 32-hour work weeks and a "robot tax"

SpaceX files for $1.75T IPO after $1.25T merger with xAI to build orbital data centers

Google releases Gemma 4, open-source models running on a single laptop

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:25 Meta launches Muse Spark, goes closed-source

01:15 Anthropic holds back Claude Mythos over hacking risks

02:10 OpenAI proposes four-day work week and robot tax

03:05 SpaceX files for $1.75 trillion IPO

03:55 Google releases Gemma 4 open-source

04:45 Outro

Partner Links

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In this episode, Yasmeen Ahmad, Managing Director of Product Management for Data & AI Cloud at Google Cloud, reveals why 80–90% of enterprise data is "dark" and untouched — and how Google Cloud is building the tools to finally unlock it. Yasmeen shares how BigQuery's new Knowledge Engine captures the invisible business context that human analysts have always carried in their heads, and why this semantic layer is the real unlock for enterprise AI in 2026.
Yasmeen breaks down how enterprises are scaling from 50 to 2,000 autonomous AI agents, why continuous evaluation (not unit testing) is the only way to keep agents trustworthy, and what Google learned from seeing 50% of its own code now written by AI. She also explains why 95% of AI pilots produce zero measurable ROI — and why companies that partner with a platform like Google Cloud see dramatically different results. Plus, her contrarian take on governance: it's not the brake, it's what lets you drive 150 mph into the bend with confidence.
Key Topics Covered

Why 80–90% of enterprise data is "dark" unstructured data that GenAI can finally unlock

How BigQuery's Knowledge Engine captures the invisible business context analysts carry in their heads

The semantic layer: why the next big unlock is context, not just more powerful models

How enterprises are scaling from 50 to 2,000 autonomous AI agents

Intent-driven agentic AI: giving agents outcomes instead of step-by-step instructions

Why continuous evaluation is replacing traditional unit testing for AI agents

Google's internal AI adoption: 50% of code written by AI, 10% engineering efficiency gains

Why 95% of AI pilots produce zero ROI and what changes that outcome

AI governance as an accelerator — the "brakes that let you drive 150 mph" framework

Why culture and founder mentality matter more than technology budget for AI success

Episode Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction and welcome
00:50 - Being Scottish in Silicon Valley and the power of community
03:13 - The career thread: curiosity, pivots, and getting outside your comfort zone
06:20 - What makes data fascinating: the hidden stories inside numbers
07:48 - Why data is the lifeblood of enterprise AI
10:19 - 80–90% of enterprise data is "dark" and untouched
12:59 - What BigQuery actually does (explained simply)
14:50 - The invisible work: knowledge layers and business semantics
17:38 - The agentic AI moment: agents that think, plan, and execute
20:41 - From 50 to 2,000 autonomous agents inside enterprises
22:07 - Why you can't evaluate AI agents like traditional software
25:46 - Signals of AI readiness: Google's 50% AI-written code and Honeywell's 30% efficiency gains
30:21 - Why 95% of AI pilots produce zero ROI
35:37 - Governance as a speed accelerator, not a brake
39:53 - Who's best poised to win: culture over budget
45:59 - Why do you do what you do?
Yasmeen's Socials:
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasmeenahmaduk/
Partner Links
Book Enterprise Training — https://www.upscaile.com/
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