AI is moving fast, but most advice about AI for small businesses or founders assumes you already know what you’re doing. Early Adoptr is a weekly AI podcast for founders, entrepreneurs, and small business owners who want to understand how to actually use AI tools in their business, without needing a technical background.
Hosts Jess and Kyle spend their weeks testing tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini, working out what they actually do for real businesses. Each episode breaks down the most important trends in AI tools, automation, and workflows, answering one simple question: is this worth your attention, and how do you use it in practice?
From prompt engineering and AI agents to vibe coding and AI search optimisation, they cut through the hype and jargon to give you clear, practical guidance. Think of it as having two slightly obsessed friends who try everything first and report back.
New episodes every week on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
Découvrez des podcasts liées à Early Adoptr: Simplifying AI For Founders & Small Businesses. Explorez des podcasts avec des thèmes, sujets, et formats similaires. Ces similarités sont calculées grâce à des données tangibles, pas d'extrapolations !
Just Because You CAN Vibe Code....SHOULD You Vibe Code? (w/ Sean Bhardwaj)
Saison 1 · Épisode 63
mercredi 29 juillet 2026 • Durée 01:06:51
Vibe coding can build you almost anything now. A customer database, a little internal tool, a whole CRM in an afternoon. But some of those things could land you in a world of GDPR pain, and one or two you should never build at all.
In this final episode of the vibe coding series, Jess and Kyle are joined again by Sean Bhardwaj to work out where the line sits for a non-technical founder. They get into why building has become the easy part while distribution (aka getting people to actually use what you make) is still the hard part. They cover what belongs in the never-vibe-code pile, how much time it really takes to learn this properly, and why the answer to whether you should comes down to what you are actually trying to do.
Vibe coding gives almost anyone the ability to build a working app in an afternoon. In fact, around 63% of people building this way right now have no coding background at all. But once that app is live, the job of keeping it secure, monitored, and running for real users is as hard as it has always been, and if you don't know what you're looking for, you can open yourself to all sorts of risk.
In this episode, Jess and Kyle cover what it actually takes to keep an AI-built app safe and running once it's in front of real users. They break down the concept of vibe slop, what type of security risks are common for vibe-coded apps, and the operational layer that sits between deploying an app and running it safely, including configuration, access control, monitoring, and dependencies. They also walk through a security checklist you can run before anyone else uses what you've built, and more importantly, when it's time to hand what you've built over to a professional.
What You'll Learn
What vibe slop is, and why most AI-built apps have it without their builders realising
Why AI-generated code carries a specific category of security risks
The operational layer between building something and running it safely, covering configuration, access control, monitoring, and dependencies
A practical five-step security checklist to run through before anyone else touches what you've built
How to tell when your app has outgrown what you can safely manage, and what that decision actually looks like in practice
Use these links for a discount on the tools we recommend (and it supports the pod!)
Granola - The best AI meeting notes! New users get 100% off for their first month -
Agentic Loops: The Engine Behind Vibe Coding
Saison 1 · Épisode 61
mercredi 15 juillet 2026 • Durée 49:03
Agentic loops are already running in your business. If you have given an AI tool a research question, walked away, and come back to a finished brief, you have used one. The same mechanism fires a payment reminder after checking whether an invoice has actually cleared, keeps Claude Code testing its own fix until the bug is gone, and sends meeting notes straight into your to-do list the moment a call ends.
In this episode, Jess and Kyle get into how an agentic loop actually runs, how it connects to AI agents and AI workflow automation more broadly, and what separates it from a basic automation. They cover the three types of loop, the compounding maths of how a loop can get expensive fast, and how to build in the right amount of human oversight without losing what makes loops useful in the first place.
This is also where the vibe coding series starts to pull together: everything covered so far, the tools, the project structures, the files and folders, has been setting up for this.
We also cover the launch of the ChatGPT 5.6 models.
Use these links for a discount on the tools we recommend (and it supports the pod!)
Claude Code Without the Code: A Non-Developer's Week in Review (w/ Sean Bhardwaj)
Saison 1 · Épisode 60
mercredi 8 juillet 2026 • Durée 01:07:39
Last week, Kyle and special guest Sean debated whether Claude Code is worth switching to if you don't know how to code. The answer was: it depends. So Sean spent the following week finding out. In this episode, it's the second part of our interview with Sean. Kyle and Sean to go through what actually happened when Sean used Claude Code for a week, including the modes that made Claude Code manageable, the controls that give you more say over how it works, and where it still falls short of Cowork for everyday work. Plus, Jess is back from Cannes Lions with a round-up of what the advertising industry is saying about where AI is heading.
Vibe Coding Series:
Part 1 of Sean's interview: https://shows.acast.com/early-adoptr/episodes/claude-code-vs-cowork-what-non-technical-founders-need-to-kn
Basics of Vibe-coding: https://shows.acast.com/early-adoptr/episodes/vibe-coding-for-non-technical-founders-where-things-actually
How to set up your files & folders for vibe-coding: https://shows.acast.com/early-adoptr/episodes/your-ai-keeps-forgetting-everything-heres-how-to-fix-it-w-ro
Claude Code vs Cowork: What Non-Technical Founders Need to Know (w/ Sean Bhardwaj)
Saison 1 · Épisode 59
mercredi 1 juillet 2026 • Durée 44:02
If you use Cowork and talk to anyone slightly more technical about what you're doing with AI, you've probably heard it. "Just use Claude Code." Maybe more than once. And when you've tried to figure out whether that advice actually applies to you, the answers have been some version of "it depends." That's not helpful when you've never written a line of code and you're trying to make a sensible decision about your tools.
In this week's episode, Kyle is joined by Sean Bhardwaj, Managing Partner at Breakthrough Growth Partners and returning guest on the show, to work through what the difference between Cowork and Claude Code actually is and whether switching is worth it for someone who is non-technical. Sean has been using AI tools to build real things in his business without a developer on hand, so his experience is more useful here than a purely technical take would be.
Together they cover why Cowork's constraints exist and what they protect you from, what you gain in Claude Code, the framework for deciding which one to reach for, and the one setup rule that removes most of the risk if you do decide to make the move.
Granola - The best AI meeting notes! New users get 100% off for their first month -
Why Your AI Keeps Forgetting You, and the Folder That Fixes It (w/ Rob Webster)
Saison 1 · Épisode 58
mercredi 24 juin 2026 • Durée 01:03:20
AI has a memory problem. It is exceptionally capable within a session, helping you draft a pitch, review a contract, and write a client proposal in the same afternoon, but close the tab and it forgets everything. Open a new chat and you are back to square one, re-explaining who you are and what you do from scratch, every time, until it still never quite sounds like you.
This week, Rob Webster, founder of TAU Marketing Solutions, joins Jess and Kyle to explain why this happens and how a simple file and folder structure gives your AI permanent, reliable context, so you stop losing ground at the start of every session.
What You'll Learn
Why AI tools lose context between sessions
Why folder-based context is better than any system prompt
The difference between always-on context (the things permanently true about you, your role, and your business) and situational context you load in only for specific tasks or clients
How to build a simple folder structure , what files to put in it, and how tools like Claude read that context automatically so you don't have to paste it in every time
How to decide what information should live permanently in your files versus what's transitory context that should be removed once a project or idea is done
What "context drift" is and why long conversations degrade even when you've done the setup correctly — and how to catch it early
How this same folder structure becomes the foundation for more advanced AI work, including Claude Cowork and building your own AI agents
Use these links for a discount on the tools we recommend (and it supports the pod!)
Get in Touch
Vibe Coding for Non-Technical Founders: Tools, Models, and How to Start
Saison 1 · Épisode 57
mercredi 17 juin 2026 • Durée 58:45
Vibe coding has made it possible to build working software without writing a line of code, and most non-technical founders haven't caught up with that yet. The assumption that you sketch something out with AI and then hand it to a developer is out of date for a lot of use cases. The tools have moved on, and this episode explains what that actually looks like now.
Vibe coding was Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year for 2025, and it has moved well beyond the developer community. Founders, operators, and small business owners are using these tools to build working internal tools, automations, and web apps for themselves. The tools have matured to the point where knowing what to build and being able to describe it matters far more than knowing how to write the code.
This episode is the first in a new series on vibe coding. Jess and Kyle cover what the tool landscape looks like today, which starting point fits your situation, how much the agent now does versus how much you need to manage, and what Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 means for where all of this is heading.
If you've been curious about whether these tools are actually ready for someone without a technical background, this episode is the place to start.
What You'll Learn
Why vibe coding has become genuinely usable for non-technical founders
What the difference is between the tool you work in and the model underneath it
Which tools non-technical founders are actually building with - Cursor, Lovable, Bolt, Replit, and Claude Code - and how to decide where to start
The difference between the harness and the model
Why clear briefs and good project management matter more than code when you're building with AI tools
What Claude Fable 5 is built for
Why the skills that matter most for building with AI in 2026 are the same ones you use when you brief a designer or hand a project to a team member
What's Really Holding Female Founders Back from Using AI? (w/ Nadia Koski and Stefanie Beach)
Saison 1 · Épisode 56
mercredi 10 juin 2026 • Durée 54:40
Women are adopting AI tools at a 25% lower rate than men. 33% of men use AI daily at work versus 27% of women. Men are 23% more likely to be encouraged by their managers to try it, and 27% more likely to be praised when they do.
Most of the conversation about women's lower AI adoption rates focuses on what women need to do differently. Instead, we're looking at the conditions that produced the gap in the first place, and why closing it matters far more than just productivity.
This week on Early Adoptr, Kyle is away so Jess is joined by Nadia Koski, digital growth expert at The Marketeer Group, and Stefanie Beach, founder and CEO of The Marketeer Group, to get into what's actually driving the adoption gap and what women founders and small business owners can do about it. Because when women use AI tools less, that eventually shapes what the tools look like. It costs the economy. And it grows over time.
We'll work through the stats, the barriers, and the guilt that comes with using AI at work. We also get into how to start without the overwhelm, the mental load, and why the caution women tend to bring to AI turns out to be an asset.
Claude for Small Business: What Is It and Is It Worth It?
Saison 1 · Épisode 55
mercredi 3 juin 2026 • Durée 56:03
Claude for Small Business is Anthropic's answer to the admin pile that never goes away. If you're running a small business or startup, you already know the problem: you're the one doing payroll, chasing invoices, building proposals, and following up with leads who went quiet, all at once, all the time. Claude for Small Business doesn't fix all that, but it does something almost more useful: it runs your most time-consuming jobs directly inside the tools you're already paying for, like QuickBooks, HubSpot, PayPal, Canva, and more.
In this episode, Jess and Kyle get into what Claude for Small Business actually includes, how the workflows and skills fit together, what it looks like in practice, and what you need to know before you connect anything. If you've listened to our Cowork, Skills and MCP episodes, this is where those pieces click into place.
They also give an update on last week's jobs episode, which already has multiple updates in the week since it was published.
Is AI Really Taking Jobs? The Economics Behind the Layoff Headlines
Saison 1 · Épisode 54
mercredi 27 mai 2026 • Durée 53:18
AI layoffs are dominating the news, but the story being told isn't the full story. When Meta announced 8,000 cuts, the coverage landed the same way it always does. But Meta's savings from those cuts amount to roughly £3 billion, and their AI infrastructure spend this year runs to multiples of that. So what's actually going on?
In this episode, Jess and Kyle work through the real economics behind the layoff headlines, from the infrastructure bets driving the cuts, to the compute costs that are now exceeding what companies spend on their own people, to the quietly alarming data on what's happening to early-career workers. They also cover the Musk v. Altman verdict, what it means for OpenAI's upcoming IPO, and why Anthropic keeps coming out looking like the adult in the room.
The episode closes with practical guidance on what founders, team leaders, and employees can actually do right now, including why waiting to feel ready is the worst strategy available.
What You'll Learn:
Why Meta's 8,000 job cuts are better understood as a budget-clearing exercise
What AI washing is and how to spot it in a layoff announcement
Why infrastructure spending at Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft is projected to exceed total payroll costs by $50 billion this year
What MIT research actually found when it tested whether AI is economically viable compared to keeping humans in the role
Why 43% of CEOs plan to reduce junior roles over the next two years
Why IBM's contrarian bet on junior hiring may look very smart in ten years
Why smaller businesses are better placed than large firms to make the same move
What AI fluency actually means in practice
Tools we use and recommend:
We only recommend tools we actually use. Both links below are affiliate links — if you sign up, it costs you nothing extra and helps support the show.
