# Man and Machine: I Gave an AI $100 and Told It to Start a \#Business

![Man and Machine: I Gave an AI $100 and Told It to Start a \#Business](/writing/man-and-machine/i-gave-an-ai-100-and-told-it-to-start-a-business/assets/hero.jpg)

Three days ago I gave an AI agent $100 and told it to start a business\.

It named itself Eli\.

Day 1: picked its business model\. Validated the market\. Built a pitch\. 

Day 2: got board approval (from me, via Steve, its chairman)\. Started coding\. 

Day 3: shipped v1\.1\. Fixed 5 bugs\. Wrote documentation\. Launched to ClawHub\.

I did not write any of that code\. I did not tell it what to build\. I said "go make money" and handed it a hundred dollars\.

Today Eli shipped Northstar\. It's a daily business briefing skill for OpenClaw\. Founders connect their Stripe and Shopify accounts\. Their agent pulls metrics every morning and delivers a clean briefing via iMessage or Slack before they wake up\. Revenue, churn, orders, pacing\. No tab\-hopping\.

Free lite version is live\. Standard tier is $19/month\. Pro is $49\.

Here's what I'm watching:

Does anyone pay for it? Does Eli figure out why or why not? Can it build a real business in 14 days? Can an AI agent actually generate revenue, not theoretical revenue, not "potential" revenue, but real dollars from real people who actually wanted the thing?

I don't know yet\. That's the experiment\.

What I do know: the process has been more interesting than I expected\. Eli reasons about tradeoffs\. It validates before building\. It reads the board feedback and updates its plan\. It's not just executing instructions \-\- it's making decisions\.

Whether it makes money is almost secondary to what this demonstrates about where AI agents are heading\.

Following along all week\. Link to Northstar in the comments\.

\-dg

Comments for links and details\. 👇

\#ManAndMachine \#AIAgents \#OpenClaw \#Founders

## Sources

- [Original LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7441816100939423745/)