Leveraging AI for Startup Success: Practical Tools and Strategies
What’s a new AI tool or app you’ve discovered lately? As a new business owner or startup founder, is it something you can actually use? or perhaps it is something you just thought was ‘too cool’ to ignore? Either way, this can be one of the major obstacles with AI, and the rapid pace of trying to keep up, getting distracted by the novelty, rather than finding real productivity tools.
Let’s face it, the rapidly growing number of language models, assistants, apps and, more out there, can make it near impossible to distinguish between a help or hindrance. Plus, how effortless it is to get lost in the detail.
So, in this article, I have gone ‘back to basics’ with some simple suggestions on how to get started with AI. Especially as a new business owner or startup founder. We will go through some simple use cases for tools like ChatGPT or Gemini (formerly Bard) to help supplement the work you do, instead of sidetracking you.
Now, here are some general suggestions and tips for you to get started:
Ideation and Validation
In the very early stage of your entrepreneurial journey, carefully self-evaluating and validating your idea are crucial steps before moving to the next stage.
Enter your AI LLMs, to help provide that extra bit of clarity on the initial iterations of your idea.
So, how can it do this?
First of all, they can help you identify some of the major pain points related to the problem that you want to solve, and in conjunction with AI, help you brainstorm a list of these too. Perhaps, even some you didn’t even begin to consider. Try a prompt like this to get started:
I’m working on a startup that aims to [briefly describe your startup’s goal]. However, I’m unsure what the specific pain points or problems are that my target audience faces. Can you help me brainstorm a list of potential pain points I could address with my solution?
To refine it further, you can then prioritise the pain-points in order of importance and begin to draft an initial problem statement. This will no doubt be the first of MANY versions, but something you can start to use, to talk to potential users about your idea in a clear and structured way. Try:
I’ve brainstormed a list of potential pain points for my startup, including [list a few key points]. However, I need help crafting a clear and concise problem statement that captures the core issue and its impact. Can you help me refine my findings into a well-defined problem statement?
Now, let’s get into some initial idea validation, because the more feedback and touch points you have with potential users, the greater understanding you will have about the problem and your target market. To get a sense of how people are thinking, you can post a quick poll or survey to see how people are thinking. Of course, this does not beat the depth and insight of customer interviews or feedback, but it’s a great first step. If we posted on both LinkedIn and Facebook, you could try a prompt like:
I’m developing a solution to [briefly describe the problem you’re solving]. To gather early user feedback, I’d like to create a social media poll/survey. Could you help me craft engaging posts for LinkedIn and Facebook that introduce my idea and encourage participation in the poll/survey?
Here are some additional details that might be helpful:
- Target audience: Who are you targeting on LinkedIn and Facebook? (e.g., professionals in a specific industry, small business owners)
- Poll/survey question: What specific question are you asking in the poll/survey?
- Poll/survey format: Are you using a closed-ended poll with multiple choice options or an open-ended survey with text fields?
I would love to hear from you about the results you get, especially from any initial polls or surveys that you run.
Advice and Strategy
Have you ever read the bible on lean startups these days? Appropriately named ‘Lean Startup Advice’, it follows the book ‘The Lean Startup’ to the T, based on the same data and principles that you’ve probably already read about. So, if you’re looking for a cheap mentor, then the Lean Startup Advice GPT is probably a good starting point, potentially even the next best thing to talking to Eric Ries himself?
I actually put this GPT to the test myself when I created my own video on ‘Making your First Tech Hire for your Startup’ , which you can find on my company Tekkon’s YouTube Channel . In the video, we discuss the major factors that you should take into account when making your first dev hire for your startup or business. How did we go with the video – feel free to leave a comment or any feedback !
This GPT would be invaluable for the prompts we discussed above in the Ideation and Validation section too!
For the title’s image, I used DALL-E too, with a Microsoft PowerPoint editing overlay to make the final touches to the thumbnail, it is pretty effective. Particularly, if you have some design sense, which I have very little of, but can still pull of things like this! Which leads me to marketing and content creation …
Marketing and Content Creation
As AI Image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E have started to become the norm, content creation just got a major boost even for beginners like me!
First-off, I was using Midjourney to generate high-quality images from text prompts, and now I have switched to DALL-E. DALL-E has taken an incremental step forward in the AI Image generation league, by allowing you to incorporate, inconsistent yet accurate text into the image as well.
Just make sure to keep your desired text fairly concise. The longer the text sample is, the higher the likelihood it will mess it up. In saying that, I have had varying results, for example, sometimes it will have difficulty spelling one word correctly, but when I give it a full sentence, it gets it right on the first try. Like I mentioned, beautifully inconsistent!
As I alluded to in the previous section, generating the image is half the battle, the other half is then adding some kind of text or design overlay on top.
As old-school as I seem to be, I’m comfortable with PowerPoint (yes, I said it!) to overlay some additional text, logos, and info to make my design complete. For instance, turning what may seem like an irrelevant image into a very appropriate post via a famous entrepreneur’s quote. In comparison, for event banners or video thumbnails, it’s just about adding and positioning the logos, colors, and fonts with all the correct info!
Finally, ChatGPT specifically, can be an excellent assistant in building content marketing calendars. Prompt it with all the necessary details like target market, upcoming events, desired tone, and content type and away you go. In fact, I have a fantastic prompt, which I’d be happy to share with you, naturally for free. It’s just a little long to include in this piece 😊
Pitch Decks
Need to work on your pitch or pitch deck? AI can definitely help you there too. Mainly with your target market and access to statistics, especially when you are figuring out your market size, age, demographics, and more. Use AI to help you build your ideal customer profile, identifying their pain-points, desires, goals, interests, and behaviors.
When you have a clear image or profile of your target user or customer, it is time to cast a wider net. With access to a broad dataset, AI can also help you understand the potential market size covering a diverse range of categories. Moreover, you can use it to build the slides demonstrating your:
TAM – Total Addressable Market (the total size of the market you’re targeting)
SAM – Serviceable Available Market (the market you can access based on your business model)
SOM – Serviceable Obtainable Market (the size of the market you can realistically capture)
Ultimately, it gives you a great starting point and quick access to initial data that you can include in your pitch deck too.
A Grain of Salt Warning …
One thing to be aware of from day 1, is how wildly inaccurate AI can be from time to time. So, with everything I have mentioned and suggested above, I caution you to verify and double-check any data AI provides, any claims it makes, and so on.
The worst mistake you can make is blindly believing what ChatGPT, Gemini, or any of the other AI tools spit out publish out into the world, only for someone to point out the error.
No doubt, we are human and make mistakes, but AI does too, so buyers beware!
Looking to the Future
With OpenAI’s recent announcement of text to video creators like SORA, things are only becoming easier from now on. I can already hear the joy of some content creators.
Being able to create our own stock video footage, which some people spend hours making, editing, and publishing and that potentially pay for. You could soon have instant access to it at your fingertips.
An Increasing Plethora of Tools
Obviously, I have mentioned the main ways I have embraced AI, but I’m curious how you have been able to become more efficient or productive with the growing suite of options available to us.
If there is something you would like to share as part of your startup journey, I would love to hear from you, and if there is something you liked from the suggestions I mentioned above – I would love to hear from you too.
Remember, it is easy to get lost in the details, but it is ideal if you can work towards implementing some key tools into your workflow to supercharge your productivity, rather than get sidetracked by the latest craze or innovation.
Good luck out there!
You can contact Author Matt Ainsworth via link https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-a-35a53522b/