What Entrepreneurs Need To Know To Leverage AI In Creating Faster Startups

Like the Internet and perhaps mobile before it, Ai offers many potential benefits for startup businesses, including increased efficiency, cost savings, new kinds of customer service, and growth opportunities. Ai tools today are software that use algorithms to carry out requests, tasks and can be useful for automation. Their potential applications for entrepreneurs include automating business processes and analyzing information for better planning and decision making. So, what do we do with this powerful new tool, or as some would see it, in the entrepreneurial process of creating new startups?

Babson, a very entrepreneurial college, has a point of view based on an article they published in their magazine in the summer of 2023. The article, The Age of AI: Seven Things Entrepreneurs Need to Know, provides several insights which we will examine on behalf of entrepreneurs who are considering the use of Ai in their existing or new startups. Ai is a fascinating new tool or even platform that can conjure up a prototype image of a can of sparkling water, perhaps craft that perfect email or even create a new company logo. But at what price? Will we create mediocre or passable work at the cost of creative design? Will Ai ultimately cost people their jobs or will it be a compliment to perform mundane tasks and routines?

We don’t know yet but this technology is too powerful to ignore, so at a minimum, you need to know what you don’t know about Ai. Here are some insights:

You don’t need to code to write code. One of the early uses of Ai is to create prototypes of things based on just text requests. Write a better email based on these prompts, create a line of code that makes a simple change to a shopping cart checkout, design a website that will sell leather handbags and so on. For perhaps the first time, non-programmers will be able to create ‘things’ that were, in the past, left to software architects and coders. While there will be downsides perhaps, the other side of this coin is rapid prototyping and trial and error at lightning speed.

Knowledge acquisition speed will triple. It used to be that if you wanted to know something you did not know; you went to the universities of Google and YouTube where you could spend 20 minutes or two hours finding or viewing information and then try and make a determination of how helpful that information might be. Now, in less than 10 seconds, you can get, based on prompts or questions, a dissertation of exactly how something works and perhaps even a suggestion of a better version. You could do something fairly mundane like have an Ai tool write a proposed travel policy. Or you could ask it to examine your competitors social media marketing and look for insights. Either way, the speed of data or information gathering will be amazing.

Prototyping reality. As an entrepreneur, especially with a new startup, you are trying to showcase your vision for the new company in as many ways as possible. Well, with Ai, you can utilize the tool to create a small plan, a business model, then prototype a new website, an image of the new product, a social media ad, a spokesperson demo video and a financial forecast. Fast. Like perhaps over a weekend if you are super-efficient with an Ai tool. It will all look fairly real but not be perfect. But if you want rapid feedback, from either customers or investors, it will help you present your ’dream’ as if it were already real.

Regardless of your point of view on Ai, it is here. As Ai tools and platforms grow, entrepreneurs will have to strike a balance and navigate ethical considerations. While Ai can enhance decision-making, prototyping and automate processes, it will still need both technology and human expertise. Ethical situations will arise, as will legal issues regarding copyrights and so on. But at a minimum, entrepreneurs should investigate and ‘play’ with these new sets of tools as some of them will be gamechangers.