13 AI Recs from Top Consumer Founders
The best product recs come from the front lines. This week, we hosted a forum of top consumer founders in NYC, from a brand launched last month to a company doing 9 figures in revenue.
Here’s what they cited as their favorite AI tools right now:
👑 Claude is consensus.
1. Claude
The #1 answer by a mile, used for everything from gathering simulated feedback from customer personas to building custom iMessage apps. Claude for Excel earned its own shout-out for financial modeling.
🎙️ Voice-to-text is popular but fragmented.
2. Wispr Flow (mentioned 2x)
3. Willow
4. Monologue
⚡ Productivity picks are scattered but with glowing reviews.
5. Hyperagent by Airtable (in alpha)
Platform for using and deploying ‘AGI-level’ agents in the cloud (our team at FC is testing and hugely impressed)
6. Lightfern
Gmail autocomplete tool (reportedly blows every competitor out of the water 👀)
7. Cursor
Coding copilot, helpful for rapid prototyping
8. Gemini by Google DeepMind
Particularly because of its Google data integration
🎨 Favored creative tools are multimedia.
9. Suno
Music generation
10. Midjourney
Image generation, but shouted out for 3D animations
11. Untold
Journaling
🧠 Bonus recs from the group – 2 thought leaders worth following:
12. How I AI by Claire Vo on YouTube (or wherever you listen to podcasts – but the screensharing is gold)
13. Aakash Gupta on X
Hope a few of these are new to you. Was your favorite mentioned?
