Greg Isenberg Lists 36 Current Startup Opportunities, AI Agents and the Loneliness Economy Lead
Renowned entrepreneurship expert Greg Isenberg has released a list identifying the top 36 startup opportunities currently available. The largest B2C opportunity is addressing loneliness (third spaces, community apps, IRL events), while the largest B2B opportunity is enterprise-level managed AI employees.
Other highlights include elder tech (70 million baby boomers), action-oriented mobile apps (rather than passive browsing), niche social networks (group chats as products), AI shopping recommendation agents, pay-for-results SaaS, digital human verification (against AI content pollution), and physical AI robots.
Entrepreneurs are shifting from "selling time" to "solving paid problems," with AI agents, real human verification, and anti-AI slop infrastructure becoming key areas for capital and talent investment, as many traditional industries face reconstruction by agents.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Greg Isenberg has previously captured trends through list-based insights, accurately identifying early opportunities in AI Agents and the Creator Economy for 2023-2024. This list of 36 continues his path of tracking consumer and enterprise pain points from the Web2 to AI era, having previously emphasized trends like "third spaces" and "pay-per-outcome."
In terms of capital flow, VCs and entrepreneurs are shifting funding from general AI chat tools to vertical agents (such as enterprise-managed employees, shopping agents, matching platforms), concentrating resources on solving real paid pain points (loneliness, elder health, skills training, physical robots). The motivation is to reduce customer acquisition costs and achieve rapid cash flow through existing demand, forming a composite leverage of AI infrastructure and vertical scenarios.
Similar to the benefits of platforms like Uber and Airbnb in matching "idle resources" from 2015-2017, and the rise of SaaS like Notion and Figma with pay-for-results pricing from 2021-2023, we are currently in the early expansion phase of AI transitioning from "general tools" to "vertical problem solvers."
Essentially, this represents a restructuring of the industry chain: traditional entrepreneurship often revolves around "function" or "content," while Isenberg's list emphasizes "paid problems + AI leverage," shifting resources from inefficient human services to scalable agent solutions. Mechanically, this transfers pricing power from platform traffic to vertical builders who genuinely solve pain points, driving the entrepreneurial ecosystem from "storytelling" to "delivering results" in a comprehensive evolution.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Selling time earns hard money; solving paid problems earns compound money.
The stronger AI becomes, the more it requires real human verification and face-to-face connections.
The biggest opportunities are never in the technology itself, but in areas where people are already paying for pain.