Adapted for an AI world from Chapter 4 of Colin C. Campbell’s Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat.
In 1993, I made a decision that looked questionable on paper.
My partners and I had built ComputerLink, a profitable BBS company. The business worked. It had customers. It made money.
And we decided to shut it down.
Why?
Because we could see something much bigger coming: the internet.
We loved what we had built with ComputerLink—the community, the connectivity, and the ability for technology to bring people together. But we realized that the BBS itself wasn’t the thing we loved most.
It was the idea behind it.
The internet was becoming a vastly better vehicle for that idea.
So we took the assets of a profitable company and used them to start Internet Direct, venturing into an industry that was still largely uncharted.
More than three decades later, entrepreneurs are facing a remarkably similar moment with artificial intelligence.
AI is changing how companies are built, how work gets done, and what customers expect. New tools and business models seem to appear every week.
That creates enormous opportunity.
It also creates enormous distraction.
The founders who thrive in this environment won’t necessarily be the ones who chase AI the fastest. They’ll be the ones who understand what they truly care about, what their customers care about, and how AI can become a better vehicle for delivering it.
Here is a framework for doing exactly that.
1. Separate What You Love From the Vehicle Delivering It
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur is this:
Don’t fall so deeply in love with your business that you go down with it.
Fall in love with the purpose instead.
In the early 1990s, BBS operators had built thriving businesses. When the internet arrived, some couldn’t let go. They had fallen in love with the vehicle rather than what the vehicle accomplished.
The same danger exists today.
Maybe you love your SaaS product.
Maybe you’ve spent years building a marketplace, agency, app, consulting business, or software platform.
Then AI arrives and suddenly customers can accomplish part of what your product does with a prompt.
The wrong response is to protect yesterday at all costs.
Ask instead:
What did customers actually love about what we built?
Was it the software itself?
Or did they love saving time?
Making better decisions?
Feeling more creative?
Connecting with other people?
Growing their business?
Removing frustrating work?
Once you understand that, AI stops looking purely like a threat. It can become the next vehicle for delivering the thing people already value.
That leads to the first question in the framework:
What do we love about the problem we’re solving—and is there now a better way to solve it?
2. Don’t Confuse AI Excitement With Customer Love
There’s another problem with transformational technologies: entrepreneurs want to build everything.
I know this problem well.
I’ve joked that entrepreneurship should be classified as a drug. A new idea can produce an incredible rush, and serial entrepreneurs often don’t struggle to generate ideas.
They struggle to pick one.
AI has multiplied that temptation.
Every week brings another model, agent, platform, capability, or startup category. Suddenly you can imagine dozens of businesses that weren’t technically possible a few years ago.
But possible doesn’t mean valuable.
And interesting doesn’t mean customers will care.
Instead of asking:
What can I build with AI?
Try asking:
What do people already desperately want that AI now allows me to deliver dramatically better?
That distinction matters.
Technology can create capability.
Customers create businesses.
Before committing significant time and capital to an AI opportunity, look for three overlapping signals:
Founder Love:
Would you still care about solving this problem after the novelty of the technology disappears?
Customer Love:
Do people genuinely want the outcome enough to change their behavior, recommend the product, or pay for it?
AI Leverage:
Can AI make the solution substantially faster, cheaper, easier, smarter, more personalized, or previously impossible?
The strongest opportunities sit at the intersection of all three.
Love it. Prove others love it. Then use AI to amplify it.
3. Avoid the Shiny-Object Trap
In previous technology revolutions, entrepreneurs could spend years riding a trend.
AI cycles can move much faster.
Today’s breakthrough can become tomorrow’s commodity.
That makes focus even more valuable.
When every founder can rapidly prototype ten ideas, the competitive advantage isn’t necessarily producing the eleventh.
It may be having the discipline to decide which one deserves the next ten years of your life.
Ask yourself:
If AI stopped being exciting tomorrow, would I still care deeply about this problem?
That’s a powerful filter.
Because building a meaningful company remains hard.
There will still be difficult customers.
Hiring mistakes.
Cash-flow problems.
Competitors.
Failed experiments.
Slow months.
Products that don’t work.
Strategies that have to be rewritten.
AI may accelerate parts of entrepreneurship, but it doesn’t eliminate the emotional roller coaster of building a company.
Which is why love still matters.
4. Build Something Humans Still Care About
The more capable AI becomes, the easier it is to become obsessed with what machines can do.
Founders should spend just as much time thinking about what humans want.
People still want to save time.
They still want to belong.
They want status, convenience, security, entertainment, health, wealth, connection, confidence, and meaning.
They want someone to understand their problems.
They want products that make their lives better.
Those human motivations don’t disappear because the technology underneath a business changes.
So don’t start your strategy with the model.
Start with the human.
Ask:
Whose life gets meaningfully better if we succeed?
Then ask:
How does AI allow us to improve that outcome by 10x?
That produces a very different company than simply attaching AI to an existing product because the market expects you to.
5. Make Sure the Idea Reflects Your Values
Love is difficult to quantify.
One useful way to evaluate it is through your values.
Write down the ideas you’re considering and ask what genuinely excites you about each one.
Then ask:
Does this idea reflect something I care deeply about?
If sustainability matters to you, how does the company contribute to it?
If education matters, how does the company help people learn?
If entrepreneurship matters, how does the company help founders succeed?
If you care about improving people’s lives through technology, where does that show up in the product?
This becomes especially important with AI because founders aren’t simply choosing what they can automate.
They’re choosing what they should automate—and what role they want technology to play in people’s lives.
Values can become a strategic filter.
Just because AI can do something doesn’t mean that’s the company you should spend a decade building.
6. Use Other People’s Excitement as Evidence
Loving your own idea isn’t enough.
Other people need to love it too.
Talk to potential customers. Show them prototypes. Explain the vision. Watch their reactions.
But don’t only listen to what people say.
Look at what they do.
Do they ask when they can use it?
Do they introduce you to someone else who needs it?
Do talented people want to join you?
Do potential partners start suggesting ways to help?
Most importantly:
Will customers pay?
Authentic enthusiasm has a way of spreading.
When the founder loves the mission, customers love the outcome, and talented people want to participate, you may have found something worth pursuing.
7. Let AI Change the Business Without Changing the Mission
This may be the most important lesson of all.
ComputerLink wasn’t our mission.
It was a vehicle.
When a better vehicle arrived, we moved.
Entrepreneurs in the AI era should develop the same willingness.
Your product may change.
Your interface may change.
Your pricing model may change.
Tasks that once required twenty employees may eventually require five employees working with AI agents.
Entire features may disappear.
Your competitive advantage may move from software functionality to proprietary data, distribution, community, trust, workflow integration, brand, or customer relationships.
That’s okay.
Preserve the reason the company deserves to exist. Be willing to reinvent almost everything else.
The AI Founder Love Test
Before pursuing your next idea—or deciding whether AI should transform your existing company—answer these seven questions:
- What do I actually love about this idea?
- What outcome do customers love?
- Would I care about this problem if AI weren’t fashionable?
- Does solving it reflect my values?
- Does AI materially improve the solution rather than merely decorate it?
- Are customers demonstrating love through behavior, not just compliments?
- Am I willing to change the vehicle while protecting the underlying mission?
If you can’t answer those questions clearly, keep exploring.
If you can, focus.
Because the abundance created by AI makes focus more important, not less.
We’re entering a period in which entrepreneurs can build more, test faster, automate more, and pursue opportunities that would have required enormous teams and capital only a few years ago.
But that doesn’t mean you should pursue all of them.
Life is still too short to spend your time, attention, and resources building something neither you nor your customers truly care about.
Find the problem you love.
Make sure other people love the outcome.
Use AI to build a dramatically better way of delivering it.
Then focus long enough to make it matter.
And once you’ve found that idea, two timeless questions remain:
Can you scale it?
And can you defend it?