How do you go from dropping out of college to building an AI engine that hits 100,000 organic views a day on TikTok?

In this episode of Hooked, Zuhair Lakhani, founder of DoubleSpeed (backed by a16z’s Speedrun program), joins us to break down the future of AI video content, the creator economy’s next phase, and what happens when AI replaces the influencer.

Zuhair reveals how he:

• Used Midjourney + ElevenLabs to generate content that made $100K in 30 days• Built a phone farm to automate posts and boost views without ads• How he generated 100k organic views per day on TikTok• Developed a system to warm accounts, test hooks, and scale virality• Turned technical chaos into a business backed by a16zIf you’re building in the creator economy, experimenting with AI tools, or just trying to grow faster online… tune into this episode.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro: Who is Zuhair Lakhani?

01:00 – From high school side hustles to A16Z-backed founder

04:00 – How to “warm” TikTok accounts for algorithm success

07:00 – The $100K TikTok Shop experiment (AI content only)

09:00 – How AI saved 15+ hours per video

10:00 – Scaling content with slideshows and automation

12:00 – Getting banned from TikTok Shop and pivoting to software

14:00 – How Zuhair landed a growth role at Cosmos

17:00 – Why managing real creators is harder than AI personas

19:00 – The rise of synthetic influencers

22:00 – How DoubleSpeed automates viral UGC content

26:00 – Why “AI + human touch” beats fully automated content

29:00 – Who should (and shouldn’t) use AI automation tools

33:00 – AI vs UGC: What wins long-term?

35:00 – Why “faceless creators” will dominate the next wave

40:00 – Zuhair’s advice for aspiring creators and founders

47:00 – How a restaurant waitlist taught him viral psychology

49:00 – Closing thoughts + how to follow Zuhair

James O'Brien

The AI-powered Podcast Player