Finance · Do this yourself

Score and summarize earnings calls in plain English for retail investors.

In short: an AI-agent-run business you oversee about an hour a week. Tools cost $30–$175/mo, agent setup is advanced, and our estimate is 300 subscribers × $12 = $3,600/mo.

How it makes money: Charge retail investors $12/mo for scored, plain-English summaries of every earnings call.

Agent setup: Advanced · Needs custom code (Cursor) and hosting you maintain. How we rate this

Found on Reddit in r/SideProject (1 thread).

🔥 1.1k posts this week · 124 likes

Based on u/realjlj on Reddit (opens in new tab)

Where this came from (Reddit)

Retail investors don’t have time to read hour-long earnings calls, and the useful signal hides in the unscripted Q&A.

The threads (in our words)

Reddit blocks automated reads, so we couldn’t record upvote or comment counts. The business below is our own design inspired by these threads.

Who it’s for

Retail investors and finance newsletter writers.

Adapt it to your industry

  • Start with one niche or customer type, then expand.
  • Ask your first 10 customers what they would pay before you build more.
  • Keep a human check on anything sent in a customer’s name.

Step by step

  1. Pick a coverage list (for example the S&P 500) and a licensed transcript source.
  2. Have an agent summarize each call within hours: guidance, margins, surprises and dodged questions.
  3. Score each quarter with a rubric you publish, so readers can check it.
  4. Keep past quarters free as SEO pages and sell alerts and watchlists as Pro.
  5. Post one chart or takeaway a day on X with Buffer.
  6. Monitor transcript freshness and errors daily.

Ready-to-copy prompt

Here is an earnings call transcript [paste]. Summarize guidance, margins and risks in 6 bullets, list the 3 analyst questions management answered least directly, and quote nothing longer than one sentence.

Start with AI

Opens the AI with this guide and the prompt filled in.

Open in ChatGPT (opens in new tab)Open in Claude (opens in new tab)Open in Grok (opens in new tab)
Time
1–3 hoursOur estimate

Your autonomous stack

Autonomy: Reminders and reports run on a schedule from connected accounts. Your part: Weekly: check exceptions the agent flags (about 30 minutes).

Every layer an agent-run business needs, in order. Prices are public list prices, checked Oct 16, 2026.

  1. Agent (the brain): Grok Bot (agent + scheduled routines) (opens in new tab) (Included with The X Subscription Premium $30/mo (Super $100/mo for more usage; Plus $8 does not include Grok Bot)). Grok Bot runs the business day to day: writes, answers, decides small things and reports to you. Claude Code or Codex are alternatives.
  2. Build and hosting: Cursor (opens in new tab) (Free tier · Plus $8/mo · Premium $30/mo), Vercel hosting (opens in new tab) (Hobby free · Pro $20/mo), Supabase database (opens in new tab) (Free tier · Pro from $25/mo). The product or service your customers use.
  3. Payments: Stripe payments (opens in new tab) (No monthly fee · 2.9% + 30¢ per card payment). Automatic checkout and receipts. Other options: PayPal Checkout (3.49% + 49¢) or Lemon Squeezy (5% + 50¢, handles sales tax).
  4. Customer acquisition: Buffer (scheduled X posts) (opens in new tab) (Free plan (3 channels, 10 queued posts each) · Essentials $5/mo per channel, billed yearly), beehiiv newsletter (opens in new tab) (Free up to 2,500 subscribers), Apollo (find business emails) (opens in new tab) (Free tier · Basic $65/mo). Agent-written SEO pages, scheduled X posts and a weekly newsletter, plus cold email to businesses that follow CAN-SPAM/GDPR (real sender, opt-out link, no bought consumer lists).
  5. Delivery: Grok Bot (agent + scheduled routines) (opens in new tab) (Included with The X Subscription Premium $30/mo (Super $100/mo for more usage; Plus $8 does not include Grok Bot)). A Grok Bot routine delivers the product or result as soon as someone pays.
  6. Support: Grok Bot (agent + scheduled routines) (opens in new tab) (Included with The X Subscription Premium $30/mo (Super $100/mo for more usage; Plus $8 does not include Grok Bot)). Grok Bot answers the support inbox; anything unclear is flagged for you.
  7. Monitoring and schedule: Grok Bot (agent + scheduled routines) (opens in new tab) (Included with The X Subscription Premium $30/mo (Super $100/mo for more usage; Plus $8 does not include Grok Bot)). Grok Bot scheduled routines run each day: send, check for failures, alert you if something breaks.
  8. Analytics: Google Analytics (opens in new tab) (Free). Tracks visits, signups and sales so the agent can report what works.
  9. Human checkpoint: Weekly: check exceptions the agent flags (about 30 minutes).
  10. Price: charge $12 per subscriber (monthly pro plan). Offer the first 3 customers a founding price for honest feedback.
Monthly cost$30–$175/monthFree tiers → paid plans of the tools above. Card fees come out of each sale.
What you could earn · EstimateEstimate: 300 subscribers × $12 = $3,600/moOur estimate, not a fact or a promise. It’s simple math if you land these customers at this price.
Details: source, numbers and tags

What they did

Agents read every earnings call transcript, score the quarter on a published rubric and flag what changed in the analyst Q&A. We designed this business from real Reddit threads; it is an idea for you to build, not a description of the posters’ businesses.

How it went

Found on Reddit in r/SideProject (1 thread). Upvote and comment counts weren’t retrievable, so none are shown. On X, 1,092 posts matched our search for this idea in the 7 days to 2026-10-17.

Worth knowing

This is information, not investment advice: say so on every page, link the source and use transcripts you have the right to use.

Difficulty
BeginnerOur rating
Time to build
Not reportedOur estimate
Monthly cost
Not reported
Revenue
Not reportedWe only show revenue the source states
Engagement
No public countThe source shows no number
X buzz
52.9 · 1,092 posts in 7 days124 likes, 37 reposts, 18 replies, 0 quotes on 18 top posts · fetched Oct 17, 2026 · query: ("earnings call" OR "earnings calls") (AI OR summary OR summaries OR transcript OR transcripts) -is:retweet lang:en

Posted · Added Oct 17, 2026

Original builder recipe

  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
  1. Pick a coverage list (for example the S&P 500) and a licensed transcript source.
  2. Have an agent summarize each call within hours: guidance, margins, surprises and dodged questions.
  3. Score each quarter with a rubric you publish, so readers can check it.
  4. Keep past quarters free as SEO pages and sell alerts and watchlists as Pro.
  5. Post one chart or takeaway a day on X with Buffer.
  6. Monitor transcript freshness and errors daily.

Tags

Read the original

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