In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Anthony Sapountzis welcomes back Gareth Rydon, Co-Founder of Friyay.ai, for his fourth appearance on what’s fast becoming a regular monthly AI catch-up. Gareth, a seasoned product strategist and startup advisor with a passion for practical AI adoption, brings his signature insight and candour to a wide-ranging discussion. From hands-on use cases with Claude’s Gmail and Calendar integration to big-picture reflections on education, disruption, and the fut...
In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Anthony Sapountzis welcomes back Gareth Rydon, Co-Founder of Friyay.ai, for his fourth appearance on what’s fast becoming a regular monthly AI catch-up. Gareth, a seasoned product strategist and startup advisor with a passion for practical AI adoption, brings his signature insight and candour to a wide-ranging discussion. From hands-on use cases with Claude’s Gmail and Calendar integration to big-picture reflections on education, disruption, and the future of work, this episode offers something for tech leaders, builders, and business owners navigating the evolving AI landscape.
The conversation kicks off with Gareth sharing a “discovering fire” moment using Claude’s integration with Gmail and Google Calendar. Despite its limitations, the tool’s ability to categorise emails, find calendar gaps, and prioritise tasks significantly enhanced his productivity. This led into a broader discussion on how businesses are moving away from rigid, custom-built systems in favour of exploring AI-native capabilities within existing platforms like ChatGPT. Gareth and Anthony both highlight the need for teams to simply spend time using these tools, discovering how features like web search integration or native assistant functionalities can streamline daily work.
They also dive into the rising importance of making digital content discoverable by AI agents. As Gareth explains, businesses must begin optimising their web presence not just for Google SEO, but for what he calls “agent search”, ensuring tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity can extract, understand, and act on their content. Despite this being a clear gap in the digital marketing space, few agencies are actively tackling it. Anthony shares strategies around structured data and schema markup, reinforcing that the early adopters of agent optimisation will have a distinct advantage, at least before the landscape becomes monetised and competitive.
The episode then shifts to Model-Connected Plugins (MCPs) and how small businesses can tap into their potential without needing to code. Using examples like Shopify or Stripe integrations, Anthony explains how AI assistants can act on behalf of business owners by interacting directly with their tools. Gareth notes that this evolution in tech is empowering everyday people to take ideas further, faster; especially when combined with user-friendly automation tools like N8N. As he puts it, the time to get fluent with prompting and working alongside your digital assistant is now, not later.
In lighter but equally eye-opening moments, Gareth describes an experiment where he got different AI models: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—to critique each other’s writing. The resulting “prompt battle” showed just how rapidly these models are evolving and improving. From there, the conversation deepens into AI safety, with references to new guardrails in Claude, and even reports of companies preparing “AGI bunkers” to protect research teams. Both speakers agree that while we’re far from true Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the trajectory is steep and public trust will hinge on how responsibly this tech is developed.
The discussion wraps with a thoughtful look at how AI is reshaping education, creativity, and economic opportunity. Referencing a post by Darren Coxon, Gareth questions the ROI of traditional degrees in an era where AI can teach and guide learners for a fraction of the cost. He and Anthony reflect on outdated university curricula, the skill of "learning to learn", and the future of work, from developers to labourers, facing increasing automation. With AI tools flooding the market and even Amazon capping eBook uploads due to AI content overload, Gareth ends with a grounded reminder: focus on what you can control today. Try one thing. Switch on an integration. Ask better questions. And above all, keep learning.
#AIforBusiness #SmallBizInnovation #FutureOfWork #ChatGPT #AgentOptimisation #TechDisruption #ProductivityTools #DevReadyPodcast
